On May 10 when our seniors rejoin their parents, diplomas in hand, will they say, "I really got what I came here for"? Richard Light's Making the Most of College presents the findings of a ten-year research project analyzing how the decisions of students, faculty, and administrators help ensure they do.

INTEGRATE ACADEMIC AND CAMPUS LIFE
Light recommended integrating academic and campus life since learning outside classes is "vital" (8). He discusses the importance of group activities and group studying, contributions from the arts, the high interest in foreign languages, satisfaction with small classes, misperceptions of science, the value of volunteer work, and the importance of religious beliefs.

ENGAGE STUDENTS WITH WRITING
While some of the results were expected, one finding stunned Light:

The relationship between the amount of writing for a course and students' level of engagement-whether engagement is measured by time spent on the course, or the intellectual challenge it presents, or students' level of interest in it-is stronger than the relationship between students' engagement and any other course characteristic. (55)

The more writing assigned in a course, the more time students spent on the class: "Courses with more than twenty pages of final-draft writing per semester draw nearly twice as much time as courses with no formal writing assignments (an average of eleven hours work per week versus six hours)" (56). Yet assigning longer papers was not the key. Another unexpected finding was that students spent more time on courses with more, shorter papers, "about 40 percent more time on average . . . when asked to do four five-page papers than when asked to write one twenty-page piece" (56-57). Students in the study also reported a dramatic increase in engagement in a course with more writing, and according to the student surveys and interviews, "[m]ore writing is also highly correlated with more intellectual challenge" (56).Light was surprised at "students' strong attitude toward writing . . .how deeply many of them care about it or how strongly they hunger for specific suggestions about how to improve it" (10). Students wanted to improve their writing skill three times more than any other skill (54).

GIVE EARLY FEEDBACK
Rather than writing a paper due at the end of the course with no chance to revise, students preferred early feedback with the option to make changes (8). One in five students felt it was "frustrating and unhelpful" when the professor seemed to forget whose paper it was and took over (60). Another interesting result was that the best time to emphsize writing, according to students, was during the junior and senior years when they began writing in their particular discipline. This finding reinforces the emphasis of PC professors on writing in their disciplines. Faculty members and students recommended the one-minute paper most often as a way to improve learning through writing. At the end of each class, students wrote the main idea of the day's lesson and one question they had. The professor addressed the questions at the beginning of the next class.

Available in Thomason Library, this book is full of ideas for faculty, administrators, student life staff, and students and well worth reading by all who want to give our students the best possible college experience. by Jill Frey