Ever start a reading comprehension passage on a standardized test and recognize halfway through the first column that you have absolutely no idea what the passage is about? Ever sit down to read a book or magazine and suddenly realize that while your eyes are running down the tracks of words and lines, your mind is on a completely different train? Yeah, um, you’re not alone.
Now that summer is well under way and most of you have wound down from the rigors of the past academic year, it’s a great time to start executing a summer reading plan. Whether or not your school requires summer reading, it’s a great, relatively painless, and highly productive way to keep your intellectual wheels oiled and to position yourself to have a great start to the next academic year. If you have a choice of some or all of your summer reading books, I recommend choosing classics. That is, pick books that you want to have read, even if […]
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how most students lose academic ground during the summer and, consequently, why summertime presents a great opportunity for ambitious students to get ahead. But short of signing up for summer school classes, what specifically can you do to improve your grades and better position yourself for college admissions? One easy thing to do, whether you’re an incoming freshman or senior, is to read a few good books. Dickens, Hawthorne, Salinger, Dotoyevsky, Steinbeck, Hesse. Classic books that you know you won’t regret having read. The trick is not just to read them, but […]
