How to Win at the Game of College: Practical Advice from a College Professor

3,000,000 new freshman enroll in college every year and most have no idea about the game they are about to start playing. A failure to understand that the game of college is different than the game of high school is the cause for most of the issues faced by incoming freshman and is a major reason why one half of all students that start college never finish. In this book, Professor Otter explains the truth about the game of college and provides practical advice for all students, including a novel step-by-step approach on how to pick the right career. His no-nonsense style gets right to the point and lets you know what it takes to win at the game of college. He explain why graduation should not be the goal for college, how to pick the right career and major, how to maximize time and energy at college, how professors think and how to best interact them, and much more.

Born in suburban Detroit, Ryan Otter was raised in a family closely related to the auto industry. After deciding to go to college at Michigan State University, he struggled the first couple of years with what he wanted to do for the rest of his life until the fear of graduation and life after college sank in.  After talking with professors and trying the tools that were already developed to help students like him with this type of problem, he decided to develop his own method of how to pick the right career path.  After applying his method he chose the field of science and graduated from Michigan State University with both his bachelors and masters degrees in zoology in less than five years.  He continued on in science and started his Ph.D. in environmental toxicology at Clemson University.  After graduating with his Ph.D. at the age of 26 he took a post-doctoral research fellowship at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. After an 18-month stay at Miami University, Ryan accepted a research and teaching position in the Department of Biology at Middle Tennessee State University where his lab works on variety of research projects. He chose to write How to Win at the Game of College to help students transition from high school to college and help them pick the right career path using the same steps he used when he was in college. His unique insight into the college transition comes from the fact that he is a young professor that still remembers what it's like to be a college student. He currently lives in Murfreesboro, Tennessee with his wife, Liz, and his two sons.