Thus, professors Andrea Malkin Brenner and Lara Hope Schwartz have pooled in their experience teaching and designing programs for thousands of first-year college students to help guide the freshmen and their families through the transition process and prepare the students to succeed and thrive at their new place. As a result of all this, first-year college students report higher stress and more mental health issues. And also on how most students and parents are often unprepared for what college is really like because college rules and regulations differ so much from high schools’. The book begins with how stressful the transition from high school to college can be. But goodness me, it took an awfully long time to finish it! I finished it a week ago and had been reading it for more than a month! Since I’m only a year away from college, my mom suggested reading this book when she came across it somewhere.

The book draws on the authors’ experience teaching, writing curricula, and designing programs for thousands of first-year college students over decades.How to College is a sort of practical guide to help soon-to-be college students experience a smooth transition from high school to college. Professors Andrea Malkin Brenner and Lara Schwartz guide first-year students and their families through the transition process, during the summer after high school graduation and throughout the school year, preparing students to succeed and thrive as they transition and adapt to college. In fact, up to one third of first-year college students will not return for their second year – and colleges are reporting an increase in underprepared first-year students.

Academic standards and expectations are different from high school families aren’t present to serve as “scaffolding” for students and first-years have to do what they call “adulting.” Nothing in the college admissions process prepares students for these new realities.Īs a result, first-year college students report higher stress, more mental health issues, and lower completion rates than in the past. Students and parents often arrive on campus unprepared for what college is really like. The transition from high school – and home – to college can be stressful.

How to College by Andrea Malkin Brenner