College's Winners and Losers

By Daniel F. Linsalata | Friday, July 22, 2005

BOOK REVIEW

How to Win at College: Surprising Secrets for Success from the Country's Best Students
Cal Newport '04
Broadway Books, 2005

It is with great frustration, dear reader, that I must once again lament my failure to exploit the American public with superficial, smack-you-in-the-face obvious self-help books. To add insult to injury, this time my plans have been foiled by none other than a graduate of our dear College. And this book would have been no great challenge to write: How to Win at College, by Cal Newport '04, deals with exactly the subject that the title suggests in a blindingly simple fashion. The one hundred eighty-seven page, large-type book, written at what cannot be higher than a fifth grade level, is divided into seventy-five "chapters" of one to three pages each. Each chapter is titled with one piece of advice or rule which Newport culled from dozens of interviews with high-achieving college students across the country. It is less a book than a "how to" manual for life in college.

Newport's introduction is at once disheartening and logical. Things begin poorly when Newport cites as two of the most inspiring people he met at Dartmouth the ubiquitous Buzz-Flood impresario Kabir Sehgal '05, as well as unwashed vagrant Janos Marton '04. While, in Newport's defense, the book was published last year, it should nonetheless be noted that Marton failed spectacurlarly in his bid for state house, about which Newport waxes eccentric, and Sehgal has not been featured in the national media in nearly a year. Wishing to embody these personalities in a book, Newport searched in vain for pre-existing competition and, finding none, set out to write a book not about getting into college (a market thoroughly suffocated by Princeton Review, Kaplan, et al.), but rather about succeeding once one attains that chimerical spot at Harvard, Yale, or, god forbid, Dartmouth. This seems like a fair enough proposition, especially when he adds a warning not to take all ensuing advice at face value, but rather to pick and choose which works for the individual reader.

An old maxim states, "Any advice which needs to be explained probably isn't very good advice." While one can debate the veracity of this claim, it is true that the intrinsic value, or at least the usefulness, of a morsel of advice is lost when it necessitates extensive explanation. And unfortunately, How to Win is ripe with long-winded and rather presumptuous explanations. This lamentable content can only imply one of two meanings: either that Newport is remarkably clever and is very in tune with his target audience, or that he considers himself to be quite intelligent, and the rest of us are pathetic and helpless, and must therefore be condescended to. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt and presume the former is true. Allow me to explain: the advice within How to Win is, by and large, so glaringly obvious that most students do not need to be told it, and certainly would not spend money on it. Especially high-achieving high school students bound for Ivy League schools, the very ones the book nominally targets. Whether or not the students follow the advice (or their own intuition) will not change if the student buys the book. The low achieving, apathetic student certainly will not spend money on such advice either; he probably just doesn't care that much.

Newport, a computer science major and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, is clearly smart fellow and can deduce similar logic without much trouble. So why, then, would he expend the effort to write the book? Because he knows the parents of the high-achieving students will come in hoards to buy it, believing that it contains sacred advice that their fifteen hundred-board-scores, four-point-a-lot GPA student had not figured out long ago. Companies like Kaplan and Princeton Review thrive on parents' obsession for seeing their children admitted into only the best schools; bravo to Mr. Newport for milking the same cow for a few more years of the students' lives.

To be sure, much of the advice Newport conveys in How to Win is good advice which most students realize, on some level, they would be wise to heed. Things along the lines of, "Don't Do All of Your Reading," "Study Abroad," "Find an Escape," and "Eat Healthy" are all nuggets which, if they do no know them already, most students quickly acquire a few weeks into freshman year. Other chapters, such as, "Don't Binge Drink," "Never Nap," "Sign Up for Something Your First Week" transmit equally valuable, self-evident advice, but some which might not be quite as easy to follow. And thus emerges a pattern which weaves its way through most every section of the manual: it becomes littered with advice that, while sound, can be impossible for most people, or at least severely hamper their college experience. For instance, Newport advises rising students to "Blow the Curve Once a Term." Issues of endearing oneself to classmates aside, there is a fundamental flaw here: it presumes that one is able to set the curve, as if at will, to begin with. And for the vast majority of students, it just isn't that easy. Same goes for "Join an Honors Program" or "Tack on an Extra Major or Minor"; these are no small feats, and an academic prowess that many simply do not possess is requisite. Newport never seems to consider the possibility that much of his advice poses challenges, rather than mere stepping stones, for the majority of students.

These almost condescending chapters, however, are balanced with others that, while seemingly bizarre, contain some of the most insightful, original advice that Newport offers. One brief chapter, for example, implores students to "Do One Thing Better than Anyone Else You Know." Delving further into the topic, Newport explains the importance of "developing a skill that you can be known for." My own ability to knot cherry stems with my tongue, for instance, helps me stand out in a crowd. By Newport's logic, students often struggle to "maintain a strong sense of identity and instead begin to peg their self-worth on receiving the respect and admiration of others." Thus, only when good things happen to such students does their self-esteem remain afloat. Students who become dependent upon good things happening to them rarely take chances, rarely do anything extraordinary. And while my cherry-stem-knotting ability is extraordinary in only a few select contexts, the concept remains sounds: students who are unable to detach their self-confidence from the judgment of others simply will not stand out.

A handful of other chapters fall into the same category of being seemingly inane, but at least well-reasoned. "Use High-Quality Notebooks" might seem like it just asking you to drain your wallet every term, but the reasoning is simple: if you're not reusing the same tattered notebooks over and over, you have a much better chance of keeping things organized. Other chapters concern attending political rallies and guest lectures. And why not? It is not as if these opportunities will be nearly as common beyond graduation, so it is best to take advantage of them now.

Finally, when one considers the work as a whole, its major strength and major shortcoming are revealed simultaneously. Careful reading of the book reveals that the key to success in college is routines. And not just routines for studying, but routines for socializing, sleeping, and recreation. Such a structure, even if it is minimal, allows students to stay focused on the task at hand, namely academic and extracurricular success.

The problem, however, is that the routines prescribed by Newport offer almost no flexibility. Variety and spontaneity make college exciting and vibrant; dogmatic adherence to a routine can only lead to a miserable existence. Sometimes, one cannot help breaking a routine; all-nighters may be necessary from time to time, three healthy meals a day is a rarity for most, and from time to time, there are a couple students out there who may even binge drink on the weekends. Newport produced a fair product, but do not expect it to start changing students' lives any time soon; most of them already know what Newport has to say. I, in the meantime, will be busy distilling a beverage which will induce students to follow his advice upon consumption. I can sell it in blue cans for twelve dollars a case and call it the anti-Keystone.

College's Winners and Losers

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