Honestly, I'm not into the underlying smugness of this book. It spends so much time convincing you that there is One Right Way to get good grades (at least, if you want to have any downtime), that you may want to slightly tweak the details but the underlying methods and ideology are superior. That what you're currently doing is wrong, but it's okay, you too can mold yourself into a Straight-A Student.

And in what I assume are attempts to be funny and/or relatable, there's a lot of generalizations, such as non-STEM courses being "ridiculously long reading assignments and dignified professors lecturing from behind a podium." Sometimes it's just unnecessary negativity, but other times it leads to flawed advice — depending on the university or professor, some ("non-technical") courses may require you to recall many definitions and dates, so "identifying the big ideas" won't be enough.

Even allowing for how long this book has been around, the advice isn't one-size-fits-all perfect. Some of it is even objectively flawed. For example, studies have shown that taking notes by computer actually decreases retention and comprehension (students transcribe, because they can, rather than parsing concepts to record them in their own words); even disregarding the financial component, it's not a "no-brainer" to type your notes.

So while there are some interesting thought processes illustrated here, I didn't really get much out of reading this; 200+ pages is a lot to basically say work smarter, not harder. [b:How to Win at College: Surprising Secrets for Success from the Country's Top Students|253197|How to Win at College Surprising Secrets for Success from the Country's Top Students|Cal Newport|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1417855862l/253197._SY75_.jpg|245358] was more helpful, and also easier to read since it's broken down into tips that are easy to understand and implement.