College Students: These Soft Skills Lead to Academic Success

The growing importance placed on soft skills both in education and in the workplace is affecting the way students prepare for college. While standardized testing is still competitive and hard study skills certainly remain in play, high school seniors should make sure to also hone the soft skills that can improve the way they approach their work and their interactions with others.

These help students present themselves as winning candidates on their college applications and ensure they are equipped to handle the new challenges college throws at them. A few current college students reflected on how soft skills helped them remain successful when they ran into challenges.

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Organization

Many soft skills would likely not be feasible without developing organizational skills first. Northwestern University senior Joseph Lee said he was thrown into immersive group engineering projects during his first semester of college and was grateful for the organizational skills he had already acquired.

"A big component for these projects is documentation and effective record of product design, testing and research," he said. "The organizational skills that I practiced during high school allowed me to effectively plan, record, and organize the direction of the team's approach."

Lee said he first began using organizational tools during his junior year of high school when classwork started to pile up.

"By consistently using my student planner, everything became significantly manageable. Throughout the rest of my high school career, I explored new tools and tested various techniques such as RAM charts for projects and the Cornell note-taking method," he said.

As college is significant preparation for a student's professional future, it is pivotal to establish skill sets in these soft areas early on, as many prospective employers will notice them.

"I also have close friends who were recently accepted to work at Microsoft due to their team management skills for software projects," he says.

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Time Management

Cesar Delgado, a sophomore at the University of Chicago, explained how early in college he was faced with deciding whether or not to join extracurricular activities. He said he drew on his high school experience balancing participation in various school clubs, Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes, a part-time job and an internship -- all of which helped him develop time management skills.

"To even attempt to do all these things, I had to have a clear and organized list of goals and priorities," he said. "I tried to tackle these in order of descending importance one at a time, with flexibility but persistence. I now use this same approach in college."

He said he waited to make commitments outside of class. "Sure enough, soon teachers were assigning about three or four hours of homework per hour of class," he said. "While I was able to make time to be very involved in one or two extracurriculars, without my developing time management, even that would have been impossible."

Laurie Wolford, a University of Nevada--Las Vegas freshman, also honed time management skills in high school in order to handle the heavy work load of honors and AP classes. She is using what she learned back then to succeed in her first college semester now.

"One of my classes this semester is very homework and reading heavy, so making sure that I have a plan for getting all of my reading done with enough time to get my homework done is important."

Wolford also described balancing her class assignments with her social life, saying that cutting out a block of time to complete a certain amount of work helps her focus, as she will only allow herself to pursue her social commitments once those goals are met.

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Teamwork

The ability to work effectively in groups, often comprised of members you did not choose, is a soft skill that comes in handy throughout all levels of schooling, as well as in many careers.

Hayley Botts, a senior at the University of Iowa, said that in college she had to work with people whom she didn't know well.

"Soft skills serve a significant purpose because they help you address different situations and adapt to changing circumstances," she said. "It also teaches you to interact with others and to step outside of your comfort zone."

Botts said that working in group projects in high school helped her develop teamwork and communication skills. She noted that these experiences taught her how to depend on others -- as well as herself -- to complete the required work.

Botts said that these teamwork skills were put to use once again when she started college, noting that she had to work with people whom she didn't know well, which meant she had to be flexible with her schedule and compromise on certain things to accommodate her group members.

"Soft skills serve a significant purpose because they help you address different situations and adapt to changing circumstances," she said. "It also teaches you to interact with others and to step outside of your comfort zone."

Cathryn Sloane is a marketing coordinator for Varsity Tutors. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Iowa.