8/11/2026 update:
The College Success Rulebook: Practical Advice for College and Beyond
Practical Advice for College and Beyond
By Nathan Nobis
Freely available in Google Docs and PDF and at MERLOT; also available in Kindle and Audible and soon in paperback; other freely available formats are forthcoming!
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College gives students a remarkable amount of freedom—but succeeding in college requires knowing what to do with it.
The College Success Rulebook offers straightforward, practical advice for becoming a more successful and independent college student. It explains many of the habits and expectations that professors often assume students already understand, even though students may never have been explicitly taught them.
How should you prepare for class? What should you do when you don’t understand something? How can you use office hours effectively? What does it mean to study well rather than simply study longer? How should you use AI without allowing it to do the learning for you? And what habits will help you not only earn better grades, but become someone others can depend on?
Drawing on years of experience working with college students, Nathan Nobis offers concise guidance on attending and preparing for class, reading and writing, studying, managing time, communicating with professors, using technology and AI wisely, seeking help, responding to feedback, and developing your own ideas.
The larger goal is not simply to follow a collection of rules. It is to develop habits of excellence: habits that can help you learn difficult things, think independently, do good work, and prepare for life beyond college.
The College Success Rulebook offers straightforward, practical advice for becoming a more successful and independent college student. It explains many of the habits and expectations that professors often assume students already understand, even though students may never have been explicitly taught them.
How should you prepare for class? What should you do when you don’t understand something? How can you use office hours effectively? What does it mean to study well rather than simply study longer? How should you use AI without allowing it to do the learning for you? And what habits will help you not only earn better grades, but become someone others can depend on?
Drawing on years of experience working with college students, Nathan Nobis offers concise guidance on attending and preparing for class, reading and writing, studying, managing time, communicating with professors, using technology and AI wisely, seeking help, responding to feedback, and developing your own ideas.
The larger goal is not simply to follow a collection of rules. It is to develop habits of excellence: habits that can help you learn difficult things, think independently, do good work, and prepare for life beyond college.
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© 2026 Nathan Nobis. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You may share and adapt this work for any purpose, including commercially, provided appropriate credit is given. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
A Rulebook for Students
Success
in College
&
Beyond
About this book
Some
rules are meant to be broken and there are exceptions to many rules. For
college students, though, there are rules they can follow that will
contribute to success in their classes: they will learn more, have more
enjoyable and rewarding class experiences, impress their professors with their
involvement and quality work and, perhaps most importantly, get better grades.
College is an opportunity that can open
the door to greater opportunities, and the more you make of your opportunities
in college, the greater your chances for success beyond college, in many ways.
Following these rules below will increase your likelihood of success, in many ways.
Below is first a list of rules, and
below that list is a discussion of each rule. When any rule seems obvious,
consider it a good reminder of what you should do. If any rule is new to you,
think about how you can integrate into your practices as a student. And since a
basic rule of college is to think
critically, if you think some rule is a bad one, let us know why: you may be right!
With this all in
mind, let us turn to the rules and the discussion of them.
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