What 5 Principles Do I Need to Succeed in College or University?
Let’s talk about 5 must-have success principles you should implement for your college life: 1) Goal-Focused Action, 2) Prioritization, 3) Creative Brainstorming, 4) Self-Reflection, and 5) Daily Awareness. These are your secret weapons for crushing college or university life, and they’re also great principles to help you shape the life you want ahead of you. Each one sounds sensible just by looking at the title of the principle, but it’ll make way more sense once we go into examples to show each principle in action, and explain what could be the flip side if you don’t implement that principle. We’ll give examples of two routes your life can take, envisioning this through Sam, who chooses to implement these principles, and Nancy, someone who doesn’t know about or chooses not to implement these principles. Ask yourself which route do you want and choose to take?
1. Goal-Focused Action
Why It Matters: Goal-Focused Action is the principle of creating a roadmap to your dreams. In short, it’s picking clear goals and targets—like nailing a 3.8 GPA or landing that sweet internship—and acting on these goals to make them happen. You identify a goal, and once you’ve done that, you’re not just wishing something will happen but taking action toward achieving it.
Choice S, Success Principle: Meet Sam, who just got into college and believes he wants to be a software engineer. He’s got a goal of attaining a strong GPA when he graduates, at least a 3.75. To achieve that, he’s decided to ask questions and work with TAs and professors without hesitation. He’s excited about the freedom that college can offer him, and decides to set a goal of become fluent in a programming language such as Python by semester’s end. Sam plans out the actions he’ll need to take to act on that goal: two online tutorials a week, 15 minutes of daily coding practice, and joining a coding club.
Choice N, No Principle: No goals? You’re basically wandering in the dark. Without goals, you’ve got nothing to direct your life. There are so many distractions with the freedom college life can offer you. Meet Nancy, who also got into college the same time as Sam. Her goal is to graduate (she’s never really taken the time to write it down either) and says she’ll worry about things after she graduates. She’s also excited about the freedom that college and what that means for her, being away from parents and she can now binge-watch all her favorite shows, and with her allowance, signs up for all the streaming apps- Netflix, YouTube. Heck, she can even scroll through TikTok while the shows are on their boring segments.
Don’t expect good outcomes if you have no goals or don’t take action toward them.
2. Prioritization
Why It Matters: Prioritization is the principle of ranking your goals and actions in order of importance to you. It’s about figuring out what needs your attention first — because college life tends to throw at you competing demands that will require you to shift your priorities. If you’ve already decided your goals, you can then figure out which needs your attention and is most important. Tackle the most important stuff first, the less important secondary stuff after, and also make sure you set aside time for fun. It’s a skill you need to learn to keep stress low and grades high.
Choice S, Success Principle: Sam has some assignments coming due soon that he’s reviewed in advance and expects they will be particularly challenging. He’s also got some other priorities expected around this time, like his coding club and his Python tutorials. Between the priorities of his 3.75 target GPA and his coding club, he chooses to prioritize the assignments since they’re weighted more heavily In his final grade. He lets his friends at the coding club know he can’t make it this week and will see them at the next event.
Choice N, No Principle: Not prioritizing is a recipe for chaos. Nancy knows she just wants to do the bare minimum to graduate, and fingers crossed she gets a good grade. Her friends invited her to three late night events back to back that entire week. She’s also got the same assignments coming due and thinks they’re going to be hard work, and are really going to cut into her party time. Her friends who invited to the events warn her, “Hey, you’re totally going to miss out, these are going to be super fun! Don’t flake on us.” She figures she’ll just work harder on the next assignment or make it up on the final exam. Unclear on her priorities, she decides to make sure to attend all of these events.
Don’t expect to allocate your time properly if you are unclear what your most important priorities are.
3. Creative Brainstorming
Why It Matters: Creative Brainstorming is a way to unleash your brain and start thinking about how you’ll solve the problems that college life provides. You can do this by asking yourself an open ended question, usually beginning with ‘what’ or ‘how’. For example, let’s say you’re trying to figure out how to study more effectively, or to learn more about a certain future job. Then you write down on a piece of blank paper a question to be answered, for example: “What can I do to study more effectively?”, “How can I learn more about a future job as a ______?”. Don’t restrain yourself or try to rank anything yet- you just write down anything that comes to mind. There are going to be things you’ll miss or don’t know, and that’s okay. So make sure to also ask yourself another question as part of this: “What else might I be missing or not know about?” Then after you’ve done a brain dump, it’s time to incorporate the prioritization and goal-focused action mentioned before.
Choice S, Success Principle: Sam is trying to figure out what sorts of companies he’d want to work for after graduation. His parents say to target big stable companies that pay well. His friends say to just apply for any internship and grab whatever job you can get, because recent grads have been having trouble getting hired. Reddit gives some other generic answers too. His coding club isn’t much help either. A little confused, he decides to do some creative brainstorming. He writes down a question: “What sort of company would I like to work for after graduation?”. Some of the criteria that spring to mind include- innovative, building inspiring products - a good place to learn - pay is important but opportunities to grow - willing to move out of state/country. He doesn’t know any companies off the top of his mind and also notes that he doesn’t know anyone working in the industry right now. So he resolves to find companies that fit these criteria and marks down another goal to reach out and find some people who work there to listen to their perspectives.
Choice N, No Principle: No brainstorming? Your ideas come out half baked, poorly evaluated and you don’t ask yourself what’s missing. Nancy is also trying to figure out what she’d like to do after graduation. Her parents say she can just come home and move back in. Her friends in her hometown say they miss her. Her friends in college say California is where it’s at. Some Reddit comments say that software sales pay really well. She doesn’t really like the city her college is in. She doesn’t do much thinking beyond that and decides that it’d be easy to just move back home for a while, see what positions open up in her hometown and figure things out later.
Without taking the time to consider the key factors that are important to making your decisions, and being open to consider relevant ideas, these can be positively influential or detrimental to your future.
4. Self-Reflection
Why It Matters: Self-Reflection is a way to pause and reflect on on how things are going, to have an honest discussion with yourself. It is a choice you can make to consciously stop and think about what’s working or not, like your study skills or career plans. Regularly implementing self-reflection sessions helps you figure out what you did well and also bounce back and learn from mistakes, because no one is perfect and knows everything, but we can certainly choose to improve our current situation.
Choice S, Success Principle: Sam has been a little concerned about how he’s doing in one of the elective non-programming courses he had picked to help boost his grade. The title of it had sounded really fun: “Introduction to Graphic Novels”, and the description said using mainstream graphic novels, students would learn to analyze and evaluate them critically. He’d read many of these comics before and liked them so he thought he’d ace it. Other English lit students who took it said they’d done well and it was easy since the readings had so few words. After he turned in his first assignment, he got the shock of his life, getting 58%. If things kept going this way, it would pull down his overall grade. Doing his weekly self-reflection and evaluating what he could improve, he realized that his overall writing ability- grammar, tenses and essay construction skills turned out to be key weaknesses and the English lit professor would not be lenient even if he identified the right themes. His two options were to either drop the course before the drop deadline, or brush up on his writing abilities. He picked to drop it, as he expected that it would be inefficient and would take too long to upskill before the next assignment came due for this one English lit course.
Choice N, No Principle: No reflection means you’re prone to keep messing up the same way. Nancy had also taken a few non-programming courses to boost her grade. She wanted to have an easy semester so she picked, “Introduction to Astronomy”, “Introduction to Graphic Novels”, and “Introduction to North American Botany”. She was also shocked after receiving the first grades on her quizzes and assignments. Astronomy- 88%. Graphic Novels- 65%. Botany- 55%. She had no idea how she had done so poorly on Graphic Novels and Botany. “I probably just need to get used to these courses,” she figured. She’d make up the grades on their next quizzes/assignments, she thought to herself.
Be careful of falling into the trap of not evaluating yourself, because the same errors can reappear and multiply and compound over time.
5. Daily Awareness
Why It Matters: Daily Awareness is about setting out your intention for the day, which can influence how you go into each moment. When you’re caught up in the daily grind of working on assignments, studying for quizzes, and other longer term priorities, it’s easy to get tired or demotivated when things don’t work out the way you wanted, especially when you’re running from one thing to the next, and the next, and the next. It’s about choosing how you want to be present, being focused on the moment, and resting between these moments.
Choice S, Success Principle: Sam has been knocking his goals out of the park. But he gets tired too- it takes energy, time and hard work to listen intently to his professors, put together code that compiles, debugs well and chair his coding club. He knows that his energy goes down over the day especially after 2 hour long classes, so he’s learned to implement something that keeps his energy levels and motivation up. Between classes or during breaks, he likes to just sit somewhere just for a minute or two and relax. He also walks a little more quickly to the next class and pumps himself up with his favorite phrase, “Let’s do this!” to help get in a more positive frame of mind.
Choice N, No Principle: Not implementing awareness means days can blur into long, dreary stretches of monotony and grinding. Nancy often rolls out of bed and curses at her phone alarm before putting on some makeup and going off to her daily commute and college grind. She desperately relies on her coffee to wake her up for her first class, and often has another two coffees to get her through her 4 hours of afternoon classes and another expresso for her 3 hour study sessions. There are some classes she likes, and some she detests the professor. She can’t wait to be done with these four years, and thinks it’s got to get better when she graduates.
When you don’t set your intention for the day or from moment to moment, it’s easy to fall into the trap of hating what you’re doing.
Key Takeaways:
Which choice would you make? To implement these 5 success principles consciously, or go through college without any principles? These 5 success principles for college—Goal-Focused Action, Prioritization, Creative Brainstorming, Self-Reflection, and Daily Awareness—are extremely important for college success. They were integrated into our student college planner/university planner because they are key aspects required to succeed. You can see how contrasting Sam and Nancy, who have different principles, responded differently to the same situations. Their method of thinking and mindsets will result in vastly different outcomes, so choose your principles and your plan (and planner!) wisely. At times, college can be tough, it can be a grind, and you might not always get what you want. We have no doubt that if you decide what success principles you want to implement, plan and act on how you want to shape your life, you’ll be well-positioned to succeed in college and beyond!
Integrate the knowledge above into our Ultimate College Planner for Students.