When people ask me the number one thing students can do to prepare for the future, specifically the college application process, the standardized testing cycle, even just the anxieties of potentially studying abroad in a new school system, they are inevitably disappointed by my answer.
It’s not because I don’t give them one, or that the answer comes in a dollar amount that is too high for the average person to pay, it’s because the best thing they can be doing is also, for many, the hardest. They whine, they cajole, they try to justify why I’m not correct in my advice, but I stick by it, and I would give the same advice to anyone, no matter who they were. I don’t care how good or bad your grades are, how many internships you’ve done or recommendations you have from teachers, coaches and bosses. The number one thing you can do is read.
You need to be reading more. You just do. There is no shortcut, no trick, and no way to get around it. Students need to read a lot more than most of them currently do, and Indian students need to be reading more than they can potentially imagine. For American students, reading is a big part of the curriculum in their schools, are it is also deeper encoded into the cultural zeitgeist in many places. The availability of books through public library systems and downloads of digital copies on devices means that everyone has the potential to be an active reader, although of course not everyone is, and studies have shown that American high school students read less now than their pre-Instagram counterparts. Still, the demands of school system across the United States in both public and private institutions push students to read between 6 and 10 books a year, at least, in English classes alone.
Additionally, the fact that English, History and Humanities course are mandatory for students for all four years of high school is an attempt to ensure that students are exposed to reading in a consistent way. But in India, between the tracked education system, the linguistic differences from region to region and often household to household, and the lack of public lending libraries, reading has somehow taken a backseat to the average Indian student’s understanding of how to self-improve. When I first arrived in India, I was amazed by how comfortable people were stating calmly “they don’t read”. On a questionnaire one student filed out, their response to “what is your favorite book?” was “I don’t read enough to have a favorite”. Day after I day I hear about students who “don’t have time to read”, or those who talk about their exhausting school curriculum which required them to read two whole books over the course of the school year. Yet when students struggle with the SAT, with writing their college essays, with preparing for interviews and expressing themselves on paper and to admissions officers, they are confused and don’t make the connection between their lack of preparation through reading and their lack of skills.