You Got In! Now What?: 100 Insights Into Finding Your Best Life in College

For high school graduates and anyone heading off to college, this book is packed with 100 lessons to help shape your college experience and prepare for what comes afterward. It makes the perfect gift for the new college student.

Once you’ve been admitted to college, the next step is to develop a strategy of how to find your best life there. But for decades, Professor James T. Hamilton has seen students struggle with their college journey. Some avoid challenging experiences, follow a path of familiar expectations, and rely on shortcuts. Others aim for perfection, ignore their friends and health, labor over what subjects to study, and neglect spending time outside the classroom. The pressure to make college valuable and interesting can feel overwhelming.

If only students could learn how others have navigated these challenges. You could ask alums to look back on friendships and college-to-career paths and provide advice. Now, you don’t have to wish because You Got In! Now What? tackles the burning questions you have.

Hamilton designs lessons to help you find purpose, manage time, maintain friendships and family relationships, stay physically and mentally healthy, and choose classes, majors, and careers. Each lesson is accompanied by an essay based on research and reflections from students, alums, and professors to provide observations for how you can embrace the best that college has to offer.

With these insights, you’ll explore new ideas, meet people, have adventures, and most importantly, beyond just earning a degree, get an education.

James T. (＂Jay＂) Hamilton is a published author, award winning professor, and was recently named vice provost for undergraduate education at Stanford University, where he has been chair of the Department of Communication and First-Year Requirements Governance Board, which he has led since 2013. Winner of eight teaching and research awards at elite universities (Harvard, Duke, and Stanford), he’s spent decades teaching and mentoring undergraduates and designing programs to help them thrive in college.

As Chair of the First-Year Requirement Governance Board at Stanford, Hamilton helped implement the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education requirement for first year students. This set of classes prompts students to reflect on the goals of their college education and their roles as citizens in the 21st century.

Hamilton is the author of three award-winning books about media research. He earned a BA in Economics and Government (summa cum laude) and PhD in Economics from Harvard University.