There are many books dedicated to how to study. This book differs from them in two ways. First, it starts where the others end. It is the rest of the story. It describes events and activities that go on inside and outside of your classes that can potentially impact your grades in significant ways. It provides techniques that you can utilize to turn these events and activities into opportunities to improve your grades beyond what studying alone can provide. Second, it describes why grades matter. It explains how recruiters, managers, and universities look at candidates that apply for jobs and advanced degrees. It notes that grades are an important key, but there is another key: job skills. What helps to improve your grades can often improve your job skills as well. The combination of the two keys is what really gets a candidate noticed. Seeing the potential rewards can provide the motivation to really work on the keys. Two good questions are where did these concepts and techniques come from and do they work? Here are the answers. The author entered the adult world with little more than a poor high school education. He soon realized that his lack of job skills and poor grades had put his life on a direct path to nowhere. At 191/2 he began a quest to improve his situation. It took him five years to get into college. Once there he realized that the easy part was over. The real problem was staying there and earning a degree in his chosen field. With a strong desire to survive, the author studied the processes by which grades came about in each class and developed techniques to increase his probability of getting top grades. He also trained his subconscious, an incredibly powerful human mental capability, to help him on exams. Did the combined approach work? You be the judge. In the book, the author explains his methodology and how it helped him graduate with a 3.94 average, get outstanding job offers, and then go on to obtain a doctorate from one of the best engineering schools in the country. Employers are always looking for qualified candidates. Grades and job skills are keys to getting them to look your way. If you want to be the one offered exciting opportunities, this book can help. As time passed and the author became a project leader, a manager and, at times, a college recruiter, he realized that what you do in college, and how you do it, sets the stage for your career as well as the rest of your life. Understanding the many ways grades and job skills can impact your career and life is fundamental to achieving success in those worlds. These keys are a springboard to opportunities. The stronger your springboard, the higher your potential. While this book provides techniques to help you improve your grades, it does much more. It shows that working on grades can enhance one's problem solving skills. Skills which are crucial to success in one's career as well as in one's life. Skills that will further strengthen your springboard. Remember: companies hire to obtain skills, not people. This book will help you learn, refine, and maintain those skills. The book goes deeper. While many people unknowingly use their subconscious in problem solving in an undirected manner, the book shows that the subconscious can be use actively, in a directed approach, in many different ways as long as it knows what problems to work on. Further, it describes a number of ways to tell it. Being able to direct his subconscious' activity dramatically changed the author's career. It can change yours to.