What the Best College Students Do

Bain (What the Best College Teachers Do), the provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of the District of Columbia, weaves a narrative from a series of interviews with a group that includes physicians, lawyers, politicians, Nobel laureates, and MacArthur “Genius Grant” winners to create a qualitative study of the habits of people who distinguish themselves in their postcollege careers. These interviews are supplemented with sociological and psychological research on the characteristics of a “good” student. Common threads include passion, creativity, and flexibility. Indeed, the diversity of Bain’s subjects, including comedian Stephen Colbert and engineer (and Palm Pilot inventor) Jeff Hawkins, adds veracity to Bain’s arguments about embracing curiosity and failure on the path to making an impact. In the last chapter, Bain offers more concrete advice to college students, but again, the author challenges these future leaders by framing his collected wisdom in the form of questions and considerations. Rejecting the notion that a liberal arts education leads to becoming “jack of all trades and master of none,” Bain finds that broad brushstrokes allowed the most successful among us to draw connections between the world at large and a chosen specialty. This straightforward book about learning habits should appeal to the teenager heading off to college and mindfully planning his/her approach to education. (Aug.)