You Got In! Now What?

“This is exactly the book I wish I had when I started college! In short, snappy, well-referenced chapters, it provides poignant advice and memorable stories about how to get the most out of your college experience.” – Tina Seelig, Executive Director, Knight-Hennessy Scholars, Stanford University, and author of What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World



“Incoming freshmen put an inordinate amount of effort getting into college, but surprisingly little making the most of their time there. This is the book I wish I had before I started college. It’s a buffet of earned wisdom that you can use as a compass to navigate these critical years of your life.” – Simone Stolzoff, author of The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work



“This book is a ‘must’ for those heading to college. It will help them make decisions that expand new ideas, friendships and lifelong success.” – Myra Strober, Professor of Education, Emerita, Stanford University, and coauthor of Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life’s Biggest Decisions


“People who obsess about getting into college can forget that another, more important challenge comes after: actually getting the good of your education, allowing it to create the maximum enlargement of your powers. Funny, practical, wise, and rife with life-lessons from successful contemporaries, Jay Hamilton’s book meets this need head-on. This is an essential companion for anyone asking, ‘I’m in. Now what?’—and maybe even more, for parents wondering how to truly help.” – Richard Brodhead, President Emeritus, Duke University
“So many important parts of life are squished together into a four-year college experience: mind-bending ideas, new skills, brushes with love, difficult trade-offs, finding your people, and the very real consequences of an unsupervised soft-serve ice cream machine in your dining hall. This book offers a wide array of powerful provocations for how to take advantage of that messy, lovely, all-too-brief time when your day job is to be a student, and your real job is to learn to be yourself.” – Sarah Stein Greenberg, Executive Director, Stanford d.school, and author of Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways
“You Got In! Now What? is a gem. Toss out all those ‘college success’ volumes that tell you to take good notes, go to professors’ office hours, and learn time management skills. Hamilton offers students far deeper and more enduring lessons about how to make the most of your college education. Wise, insightful, engaging, and accessible, this book will transform the way you approach your education and your life. Read it before you begin college and return to it repeatedly. You won’t find a better guide to navigating college.” – Louis E. Newman, former Dean of Academic Advising and Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Stanford University; John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor, emeritus, Carleton College; and the author of Thinking Critically in College: The Essential Handbook for Student Success</

James T. (“Jay”) Hamilton is Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Hearst Professor of Communication at Stanford University. The winner of eight teaching awards at Harvard, Duke, and Stanford, he’s spent decades teaching and mentoring undergraduates and designing programs to help them thrive in college.

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