Paul Smith Rivas has a blunt message for parents of high schoolers: Your kid is not ready for college.
While tutoring a wide spectrum of students in the Washington, D.C., area, this Santa Barbara native, San Marcos High grad, and UCSB alum watched kids from the best high schools struggle in college because they had no clue what was in store for them. “The road to college is littered with kids who were not prepared or who never had a chance of paying for college,” said Rivas. He wants to change that, at least as far as preparation is concerned.
He hopes to change by publishing This Book Will Not Be on The Test: The Study Skills Revolution, in which Rivas takes everything he’s learned about conquering college and presents it in an accessible way that often challenges conventional thinking. The study-skills specialist argues that college today is largely a scam, a system guilty of “overcharging for on-campus housing and extorting you emotionally by charging you for knowledge available free online or at the public library because students will think less of themselves if they don’t graduate from a respectable college.” Rivas is certainly not echoing the rosy platitudes one might hear at a high school college-night presentation or campus visit.