Robert Neuman says he has seen “every student problem imaginable” in his 25 years as an associate dean of academic advising at Marquette University in Milwaukee. Now retired, he shares strategies to help middle school and high school students avoid common problems in Are You Really Ready for College? One secret, he tells USA TODAY’s Mary Beth Marklein, is to start early. Q: What’s your core message? A: College is a world very different from high school. College demands that students possess a solid, basic body of high school knowledge. They must also come equipped with the self-management skills to control the learning process. And lastly, in college, there’s no time to learn how to learn. Q: Why is “really ready” in the title? What’s your point? A: Many students enter college clueless about the level of work required of them. They believe college will be high school away from home and have a false sense of the effort needed to earn high grades in college. Studies of college-bound high school students prove the point: High school seniors study not much more than they did in middle school, yet more than half graduate with A averages. This is due, in large part, to the rampant practice of cramming that serves so many students too well in high school but fails them in college. Q: What’s wrong with cramming? A: Mistakenly, students think they’re learning because cramming often produces good grades. Yet it yields only short-term knowledge. It lasts long enough to pass the test but fades long before teens get to college, where professors expect a solid background at the outset of their courses. Furthermore, in college, fewer tests are given, and they cover much more material, making cramming impossible. Grades plummet. Cramming is one of several student deficiencies. Q: You make a distinction between study and homework. A: For many high school students, simply doing homework earns them acceptable grades. Why do more? Merely doing homework does not lead to real learning. On the other hand, studying does, but it entails more: preparing for every class, besides doing homework, by rereading chapters; taking, organizing and refining notes; memorizing and reviewing; and working beyond minimum expectations. Study takes time and produces learning excellence. Q: Why do students need to “practice” talking? A: Talking must evolve from overused teen-speak to speaking and listening with intelligence and purpose to teachers, counselors and adults in general. Why? Private studying aside, learning is a social activity. Contributing to class discussions, asking provocative questions and listening carefully to teachers and other students are crucial to maintaining an interest in every subject. Plus, talking privately with teachers and counselors covers everything, from getting needed advice to clarifying academic goals or career paths. An articulate student excels in college and the workplace. Q: How do students get the most from guidance counseling ? A: Students must schedule more than one appointment per semester with the guidance counselor. Good counseling sessions require good talking skills. Yet these meetings are often perfunctory and unproductive because students lack the ability to communicate. Students who just sit waiting for the guidance counselor to read their minds and then tell them what to do will be disappointed. Productive counseling sessions require good questions as well as good answers for both students and counselors. Q: Could all this advice end up stressing kids out even more ? A: Much of everyday teen stress comes from being unprepared and disorganized, not having enough time, and not knowing how to handle problems. My strategies actually help relieve stress, giving teens ways to take control. Teenagers who don’t learn these lessons now will become a part of the dismal statistics that universities know so well and that are becoming a topic of the national conversation. I have seen student stress firsthand in college. It’s demoralizing for students and carries serious life consequences. Q: Where do parents fit in ? A: Parents do whatever they can to equip their children for college, buying microwaves, laptops, calculators and so forth. But helping teens develop these skills to succeed academically early — as early as middle school — is the best equipment of all.

Many students dread public speaking and say they only sign up because the class is required. But in Sam Blank’s classroom, they find it isn’t so terrifying. “I’m a pretty well-liked person, considering the fact I teach a course that creates fear in people,” jokes Blank, 62, a communications professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York . Blank is among millions of educators who are praised, glorified — and sometimes verbally torn to shreds — on websites where students go to rate their professors. Luckily, he got a stellar rating: the No. 1 community college professor on the website RateMyProfessors.com . RateMyProfessors.com, known as RMP, is the front-runner among such sites, with about 1.9 million unique visitors a month, says comScore, which tracks Web traffic. Owned by MTV ‘s college network, mtvU, RMP lists more than 1 million professors from 6,500 schools in the USA, Canada and England . Other smaller such sites include KnowYourProfessor.com and ProfessorPerformance.com . On RMP, professors are rated on a five-point scale, for overall quality, helpfulness, clarity — and how easy it is to get an A in their class. Students also give chili peppers to professors they consider “hot.” Despite some harsh comments warning others away from professors some raters didn’t like, the website is about “shining a spotlight” on the best professors, mtvU’s Carlo DiMarco says. “College students always sought the advice of their peers, friends and family members” about which classes to take, he adds; online, they can seek advice from thousands of voices. Rodney Kashem recently bought RMP’s rival, ProfessorPerformance.com, and has revamped the site. Kashem, 24, a grad student at Dartmouth College, says it’s the same as checking hotel ratings before spending money on vacation; students are “customers” who want to make sure their tuition is well spent. Blank says he didn’t know about his top rating on RMP, but when a reporter told him, he said it was “absolutely wonderful. … Perhaps it’s an affirmation of my ability to teach.” Juann Watson, a psychology and mental health professor at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, N.Y., was rated the site’s “hottest” professor of the year. Watson, 44, says she’s honored to be recognized, but “a chili pepper means nothing at this stage in my life or in my accomplishments.” Ted Coladarci, director of institutional research at the University of Maine, has studied how closely RMP’s ratings align with the teacher evaluations students write at the end of courses, and he says there’s a strong correlation. His findings , with co-author Irv Kornfeld, were published in the journal Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation. But he cautions that students motivated to go online to rate a professor do not necessarily share the same opinions as everyone who took the class. “An instructor’s RMP ratings tend to derive from an exceedingly small and arguably biased sample of all students the instructor has had,” he says. Coladarci adds that some instructors receive less-than-stellar RMP ratings but nevertheless enjoy high ratings on their school’s official student evaluations of teaching. These cases, he says, “serve as an important cautionary note for RMP users. In short, it’s risky to form judgments about instructors and their courses based solely on what you see on RateMyProfessors.com.”