Get the book

Author: Alison Leigh Cowan

Posted on

Family Circle’s Helpful Take On Sending Loved Ones Off To College

Leave it to Family Circle to drive up with a smart, back-to-school September issue crammed with advice for anyone heading off to college — and their parents. “How to Survive Your Freshman Year” was happy to share some tips on office hours and navigating free speech on campus and especially pleased to be featured in the coverage.

You can read Louisa Kamps’ full story here at: familycircle.com

And for more tips on how to survive the exciting months ahead, pick up a copy of the sixth edition and give it to someone you love! 

How to Survive Your Freshman Year Book
get the book
Posted on

Alison Leigh Cowan ’82 Compiles Tips to Navigate College Life

The book: Heading off to college is daunting. Always has been, always will be.

That’s why, in 2004, Yadin Kaufmann ’80 and Mark W. Bernstein published How to Survive Your Freshman Year (Hundreds of Heads Books), a collection of tips from hundreds of college students across the country. It’s part of why, 15 years later, the book is going into its sixth edition.

The latest version, edited by Alison Leigh Cowan ’82, addresses timeless concerns such as what to pack and how to deal with roommates. Laura Wolter from University of Texas at Austin suggests using “Mom’s laundry detergent and fabric softener to make your dorm room smell a little bit more like home!” J.T. from the University of Florida advises caution when buying used books, as “the person who had the highlighter before you may have been an idiot.”

Read the full review:
https://paw.princeton.edu/article/alison-leigh-cowan-82-compiles-tips-navigate-college-life

Posted on

Survival Gear for New Freshmen

May 1st is “Decision Day, Part II,” when nearly 2 million high-school seniors pick their future colleges and begin planning their next four-year (okay, sure, maybe five-year) adventures. Show them you care, wherever they’re bound, by sending them off with a copy of our newly-updated “How to Survive Your Freshman Year,” for just $16.95, and one of the cool, reasonably-priced graduation gifts we’ve created just for them at https://howisurvived.com/shop. Who, for instance, could resist this clever mug with sure-fire excuses to use if late for class?

Posted on

Book is #1 New Release on Amazon in Education, History and Theory!

Pleased to see that our 6th edition of “How to Survive Your Freshman Year” only debuted this week and is already ranked the #1 New Release on Amazon out of all new titles touching on education, history or theory.

Posted on

Best Read by Those Who’d Rather Laugh than Weep

Turns out “How to Get Into College,” a quickly-forgotten, 1989 flop starring Nora Dunn & Phil Hartman as high-falutin’ college advisors, was not off-base. Just ahead of its time. Waaay ahead of its time. What a difference 30 years and the current pay-to-NOT-play scandal have made. Our editor, Alison Leigh Cowan, shares her take on all this, courtesy of the Washington Examiner.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/playing-ball-so-you-wont-have-to-in-college

Posted on

When Getting In Was Practically a Snap

Anyone who has just run the gauntlet to win a coveted spot at college could be forgiven for wishing for simpler times and a simpler process, certainly one with better odds. 

Acceptance rates have been dropping with each passing year. But it was not always this impossible to get in. Turn back the clock a century or more, and applicants practically waltzed in to their top picks, showing up just before classes resumed to take the entrance exams, and, more often than not, hitting the books that same week.

As reported for the New York Times back when I first spotted the historical evidence, getting into college in the late 19th-century was a buyer’s bazaar for qualified students. Sitting down? Universities rolled out the red carpet for students who could handle the work and even tossed in fancy perks to close the deal.

Classified advertisements that ran in the New York Times between 1867 and 1872, sandwiched between come-ons for cured hams and steamship bookings, tell the story in jaw-dropping detail. Vassar College promised applicants in one fall 1867 ad that its trustees had “appropriated some of the most desirable rooms in the Professors’ houses,” so that “50 additional students can now be well accommodated.” The City University of New York went one better: it dangled “free tuition” in an ad that ran in the New York Times four years later. 

Harvard University took pains in an ad it placed on September 27, 1870 to play down the difficulty of that week’s entrance exam, noting that of the 210 candidates who took the test the prior June, “185 were admitted.” That is no typo. Nearly 7 out of 8 candidates who sat for the test got in. 

New York’s Columbia College, meanwhile, encouraged candidates the following September to “present themselves” at the college that Friday, a mere three days before classes were resuming. No appointments necessary, according to the ad. 

How times have changed. Just this week, Harvard announced that only 4.5 percent of the hordes of students who applied for admission this fall gained acceptance. Columbia’s acceptance rate was only a smidge higher at 5.1 percent, barely one out of every 20 people.

Unless they have access to a time machine, current students who have their hearts set on certain schools have little choice but to place their faith in the process. Whether they land exactly where they had imagined or somewhere else, most students emerge stronger for it. 

Still, how thrilled this year’s graduates must be to finally have the whole ordeal behind them. Congratulations, Class of 2023! You did it. You are college-bound!    

 – Alison, Editor of “How to Survive Your Freshman Year,” 6th edition.

Posted on

Decision Day for the Class of 2023!

April 1st. It’s the day that high-school seniors await each year with equal parts anticipation and dread. News from colleges has been trickling in all month, but by day’s end on Monday, the much-anticipated stream of envelopes and email will have all been opened and dissected around dinner tables throughout the country.

Important decisions lie ahead for the 1.7 million college-bound students who are receiving these notices, fat and thin. Some recipients who are content with their offers of admission – as Corey Parker’s character was in “How I Got Into College,” the trippy 1989 movie, pictured above – will celebrate. Others will cry. Many will spend the next few weeks feverishly cramming in trips to colleges that are now on their shortlists or conducting other last-minute research, so they choose wisely.

This year has been particularly brutal on future members of the Class of 2023 with all the headlines about improprieties in the admission process. But one way or another, much of the panic for these prospective students will start to ease within the month. By May 1, most seniors will have made their picks, and even made room for others sitting on waitlists, and a great sense of relief will wash over everyone. Colleges, here they come!  

In the meantime, here’s a way to show a little love (besides some much-appreciated hugs) to anyone in your life who is just now hearing back from colleges: send them off this fall with the latest edition of “How to Survive Your Freshman Year.” It’s the perfect gift.  

Published by Hundreds of Heads Books, the book is an indispensable, yet light-hearted, guide that features frank advice from 1,000 current and former students representing more than 200 campuses.

Edited by yours truly, a former New York Times reporter, and illustrated by Lisa Rothstein, an award-winning cartoonist whose irrepressible artwork has appeared in the New Yorker, the coming 6th edition has been wholly reimagined and updated to reflect the myriad ways that college life has changed, not always for the better. So, expect all-new content on:

  – the hidden hazards of free speech on campus

  – arranging accommodations if you have a disability, plus an inside look at how colleges learned to welcome emotional support animals in the dorms

  – frank talk from parents of freshmen who did NOT survive their freshman year because of hazing-related incidents

  – new rules of dating and consent in an age of Title IX and #MeToo

  – what to do (and not do) if you are arrested on campus. (For the record, we have zero advice for those whose clueless PARENTS are arrested.)

  – practical advice aimed at helping kids beat the Dining Hall blues, find the best-paying jobs on campus and figure out all the free swag you can get from the library, everything from sleds and shovels to dressy clothes for interviews.

    Lisa’s witty cartoons and drawings throughout perfectly capture the zeitgeist of the modern college campus. There is even an all-new chapter on “Coping” that addresses the stress students universally report feeling these days, and no wonder.

    Ingram is distributing the book, which will be released on April 9 online and at all stores near you. But it is available for order here at howIsurvived.com as well as online stores like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Books-a-Million. Feedback always welcome, as are reviews!

      – Alison, Editor of “How to Survive Your Freshman Year,” 6th edition.

Posted on

A Guide for Young People, by Young People

One key difference between a “Hundreds of Heads” book and other advice books geared for the college set is the extent to which the Hundreds of Heads book features multiple points of view.

Hundreds of Heads’ newly released 6th edition of “How to Survive Your Freshman Year” is a case in point. It draws its strength from 1,000 pieces of straight-talking advice collected over many months from students and recent graduates fresh off the experience at more than 200 campuses around the country. 

These young voices, who represent the ever-shifting, kaleidoscopic spectrum of college life, are the ones that readers hear most from in the book – a point of distinction between this classic how-to and the many guides that are squawk boxes for lone experts.

By contrast, the hundreds of ordinary “experts” who participated in the making of this plain-spoken guide are peers of the reader, and there is little they have not seen, experienced or beheld. So, it’s easy for incoming freshmen to find out just what works, what doesn’t work, and when people disagree about the best way forward. This book lets you hear all sides. Vive la difference!

Alison, editor of “How to Survive Your Freshman Year”

Posted on

To all high school seniors just now hearing back from their future colleges!

Congrats on the exciting days ahead and on becoming one of nearly 2 million lucky souls to be starting college this year in the United States!

You’ve worked hard to get this far, and you have every reason to feel proud. We know you’re anxious. You’re not wrong to think that college is harder today than it was when your parents and teachers may have attended, (and not just the frenzied getting-in part that you can now happily put behind you.) Certainly, college is more nerve-wracking than it was in the zany days when Lisa Rothstein, the book’s illustrator, and I, its editor, each settled in to our first dorm rooms. (Lisa with her art posters, me with my electric typewriter.) The art of the job hunt has changed. Stress is lurking everywhere, and the glare of social media only magnifies the pressure to be perfect, one reason why we have created an all-new chapter in this edition all about “Coping.”

But here’s a secret the elders in your life may not appreciate. The Straight-A Life is highly overrated. Success depends on so much more than compiling that perfect GPA, as new research keeps finding. Failure has never been more fashionable – or helpful to your career. Robert F. Scott’s perpetual daydreaming may have made him seem lackluster as a student, though that same restless curiosity about what lay beyond his classroom walls also led him to glory in Antarctica (see image.) Steve Jobs’, George W. Bush’s, and J.K. Rowling’s spotty grades in college never held them back, either.

So, remind yourself to breathe, and give yourself permission to have some fun. College may or may not be the best four years of your life, but for sure it shouldn’t be the dullest, either. Sample new foods. Make some unlikely friends. Try out for an extracurricular group you think is way out of your league. You may surprise yourself (and the doubters back home who said you never could.) As a freshman, I tried out for an a cappella group, which quickly showed me the door. (To this day, I can’t believe the group did not explode in laughter upon hearing my first off-pitch note.) But I also auditioned for a dance troupe that I was sure I had no chance of making, only to be stunned when I got in. That ended up being one of the more thrilling experiences of my college years. By all means, take basic statistics because it’s good for you, and maybe a course in computer coding. But mostly take the courses that interest you. Yes, even philosophy majors can land big jobs out in the real world. Just ask Robert E. Rubin, the former Treasury Secretary who credits the time he spent studying philosophy at college for much of his success. Or Megan Rooney, the classics major who went on to write speeches for the White House. Challenge yourself, when you can, but if a subject proves too much, take it pass-fail. Worry less about having all the answers, more about asking the best questions.

Oh, one more thing. Try not to leave college without getting to know some professors. To their credit, most American colleges encourage this kind of up-close exchange. Take advantage of all those office hours. (Wish I had.) Your teachers could end up being your greatest mentors and champions.

Most of all, relax. This book and website have your back. Hundreds of contributors have generously drawn from their experiences, so you have the benefit of all they learned along the way. The chorus of voices you’ll hear in the book and on these pages will not always be singing in perfect unison (any more than I was years ago.) But the multiplicity of views represented will help you make more informed choices and take on ticklish situations with fewer surprises.

Meanwhile, we’ll be continuing the conversation over on Facebook @hundredsofheads, Twitter @FyHow2, and Instagram @how2survivefreshmanyear, not to mention Goodreads and Amazon. So, please check us out there, too. We’d love to hear about your new adventures and what’s on your mind.

Alison, editor of “How to Survive Your Freshman Year”