Help students get the most out of their time in college. Understanding Your College Experience addresses the needs of the widest possible range of students through its content coverage and organization, activities, assessment, and design. Using a research-driven approach informed by decades of information on the first year experience, the author team provides students who need the most support with the practical help necessary to flourish in college, in life, and in their chosen career.

This less expensive, streamlined edition of Your College Experience presents a straightforward, realistic, and intelligent review of the skills students need to succeed in college. The text focuses on the academic skills taught in college success courses, providing students with tools and strategies for building a solid base of critical thinking, time management, research, study, and test-taking skills. Additional coverage of emotional intelligence, learning styles, diversity, and money help students get off to a great start. Goal setting has always been central to this text, and the Tenth Edition has been revised with added coverage and activities to strengthen this material throughout. In addition, a new focus on assessing their own strengths will help students see where they are already succeeding so they get off to a great start and stay in college. A full package of instructional support materials – including an Instructor’s Annotated Edition, an Instructor’s Manual, PowerPoint slides, videos, and a Test Bank – provides new and experienced instructors all the tools they will need to engage students in this course and increase student retention.

Written by the leading authorities on the first-year seminar and grounded in research, Your College Experience by John Gardner and Betsy Barefoot offers today’s diverse students the practical help they need to make the transition to college and get the most out of their time there. While maintaining its hallmark theme of goal setting, the Eleventh Edition reflects a focus on practical strategies across all topics of the book to help students be successful from the start. Chapters on Time Management, Communication and Information Literacy, and Careers and Majors have all been thoroughly updated to fully incorporate the tools and strategies students use on campus right now. A full package of instructional support materials—including an Instructor’s Annotated Edition, Instructor’s Manual, PowerPoint slides, videos, and a Test Bank—provides new and experienced instructors all the tools they will need to engage students in this course and increase student retention.