Reading List For New Students

note for every­one who’s not a new stu­dent: there’s a new stu­dent ori­en­ta­tion thingee hap­pen­ing today and on our pro­mo pieces I promised them that we’d have some read­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for them

So you’re com­ing to Stanford–that’s great! I know you’ve got a lot to read and do before you arrive, but I’d like to sug­gest some books you real­ly need to check out.

How To Stay Chris­t­ian In Col­lege by J. Budziszews­ki. If you only read one book from this list, make it this one! The author lost his faith while an under­grad and regained it after attain­ing his doc­tor­ate, and he’s packed this book full of extreme­ly prac­ti­cal advice!

The Diver­si­ty Myth by Peter Thiel and David Sacks. This book is all about Stan­ford and its agen­da when it comes to reed­u­cat­ing stu­dents (writ­ten by two Stan­ford grads). I need to pref­ace my rec­om­men­da­tion with sev­er­al dis­claimers: you should keep in mind that these guys have a huge ide­o­log­i­cal axe to grind and that there are always two sides to every sto­ry. In addi­tion, the book is about a decade old, and so some of the details are no longer accu­rate. Final­ly, they’re not writ­ing from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive. Even after all those qual­i­fi­ca­tions, I rec­om­mend that you read this book before you show up for your first day at Stan­ford. In case you’re curi­ous, the title comes from the authors’ con­tention that there is no true diver­si­ty on cam­pus.

Final­ly, con­sid­er read­ing The Spir­it of the Dis­ci­plines by Dal­las Willard. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Some peo­ple find it dense, and if you fall into that cat­e­go­ry I rec­om­mend The Life You’ve Always Want­ed as an alter­nate. Either of these books will help you learn a life-chang­ing lesson–that there’s a dif­fer­ence between try­ing to be like Jesus and train­ing to be like Jesus. If all you do is try, you can kiss your faith good­bye once you go to col­lege. If what do now is begin to train, you can thrive spir­i­tu­al­ly at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty!

You might also want to check out pre­vi­ous posts we’ve made on Tips for New Stu­dents, Becom­ing Wise In Col­lege, and Books Every Edu­cat­ed Chris­t­ian Should Know.