Preparing for College: Books that I Wish Had Been Written Before I Went to College

Now, I graduated college before any of those three books listed in this article were written. But I've read all of them and learned so many things that I wish I had the chance to read them all in high school before I went to college. There are some aspects of college life that I didn't learn about until after I read these books and some aspects of high school that I didn't know about either.

The first book that I'm going to recommend that a high school student read before considering where they want to go to college is Alexandra Robbins' The Overachievers which examines a group of students from the author's alma mater in Maryland. Ms. Robbins followed the students' activities throughout the course of a year and was able to get candid interviews with each student at various points throughout the year.

The Overachievers follows a diverse group of students that the author selected to participate in the book: a couple of juniors, a college freshman, and the rest are seniors. We're introduced to the modern scholastic environment within a high pressure world. Students are expected to perform at astounding levels just to keep pace with their peers. And for the average student, they have to keep adding more and more activities to their already-busy daily structured lives.

Readers will be able to gain insight into overworked and overachieving teenagers, from academics to their lives outside of school. We learn about who's hooking up with whom, how they feel about athletic events, and the stress from preparing for standardized tests. Several students suffer breakdowns from the application process to colleges while others rejoice with their acceptance letters.

The Overachievers sets the stage for the transition between high school and college, but to get the full freshman experience, we segue to another book. Tom Wolfe has written an excellent book that documents the modern collegiate freshman experience with I Am Charlotte Simmons.