What makes a good student 

Many of us spend years or even decades of our lives as students, and some of us are better at it than others. We asked professors and lecturers from around Harvard University to share the qualities and practices they notice in their best students. Get out a pen and paper: You’ll want to take notes. 

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Integrity matters

I’ve had the good fortune of working with many wonderful students in my time here. In my experience, the best students have had four qualities. 

The first and most important is a genuine, deep, persistent curiosity that extends beyond the student’s core area of study. Curiosity like this is really a love of learning and discovery, in a very broad sense, and it gives students the motivation to keep going even when the material gets difficult, which it always eventually does. This expansive kind of curiosity also helps students make nontrivial connections that can lead to novel insights and breakthroughs.

The second is rigorous thinking, of the kind taught in a serious philosophy course. Students who can formulate their ideas as carefully reasoned arguments, from clearly stated premises to precisely argued conclusions, are not only more likely to understand what they’re doing, identify hidden assumptions, make new discoveries, and avoid making mistakes, but are better at teaching and communicating their ideas to others.

The third is integrity. My best students are honorable. They hold themselves to high moral standards, do their work honestly, and earn the trust and respect of their peers and colleagues. These students don’t cheat or take ethical shortcuts, especially the sorts of ethical shortcuts that don’t seem like a big deal or that seem widespread.

The fourth and last is knowing when what they’ve done is enough. It’s easy for curious, rigorous, honorable students to go down rabbit holes or never manage to finish projects. It’s difficult to develop a sense for when it’s time to conclude a project and move on to the next one — but it’s a crucial skill, and one well worth working on.

— Jacob Barandes, senior preceptor in physics and associated faculty in philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

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Process-oriented

One of the key skills you need as a medical student is prioritizing information. Often when medical students struggle, they are trying to remember everything. This comes from a place of deep caring, a commitment to their future patients. In these moments I try to talk with the students about the differences in how experts and novices process information. Novices first need to build scaffolding for the new information — they need to focus on the connections and bigger picture — before they can add all the details. Experts can take in details much more quickly. They already have a lot of knowledge to connect the new information with, so it “sticks” with much less effort. Building that scaffolding is hard, slow work, and it may feel like you are missing out in the moment. I encourage students to examine their relative “expert-novice status” on any topic and adapt their study strategies and expectations of themselves accordingly.

— Henrike C. Besche, director of education at the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology

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Drive defines them

The quality I’ve found most consistently in good students is inner drive. They don’t need an external push; they’re motivated by a genuine desire to understand rather than just to perform well on an assignment or exam. That kind of drive is hard to teach, but when it’s there, everything else tends to follow.

Tied to that drive is genuine curiosity. Good students want to know how things work and why. They ask deeper questions and follow threads that go beyond what’s strictly required. That curiosity is what keeps them engaged when the work gets challenging — and in physics, it will get challenging. That’s where perseverance and resiliency become essential.

— Cora Dvorkin, professor of physics in the FAS

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Passion and purpose

I like to draw a distinction between what it means to be a good student versus a good learner. I often see kids, even young ones, who have learned what’s expected of them in school and they aim to perform well in that context: They know how to be organized; they have beautiful binders; they get good grades. But too often these kids get to the end of high school, or maybe even college, and they’re asking, “What have I really learned?” Much of what they have learned doesn’t transfer to their lives beyond school.

Good learners, by contrast, are motivated by their passion for finding out. They are willing to take risks and work at “learning edges.” They don’t play it safe; they learn from both their successes and their failures. They’re mastery-oriented, which means they see intelligence as learnable, which it absolutely is. They have a purpose for what they want to do — the changes they want to create in the world — so they’re motivated to develop the skills they need to make those changes. Interestingly, sometimes they have a disregard for what it means to be a “good student” as they make choices in favor of their learning over grades, requirements, tests, etc. 

In the work I do at the Next Level Lab, we encourage learners to be agentive, but beyond that, we teach people how to use their agency to leverage their contexts toward their best learning and performance. This includes looking for malleability, where possible, in their social, emotional, technological, cognitive, and physical environments. I have had students physically rearrange their workspaces to support their attention and perception. Often in schools, teachers are the ones creating contexts that are conducive to learning, but it’s the students who need to learn this. They’re not here to please their teachers. They need to do it for themselves. 

— Tina Grotzer, faculty and principal research scientist in education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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The right questions, on repeat

In law, as in the University more generally, we are teaching students to think about the world in a different way than they have before. We are teaching methods, perspectives, and techniques in addition to imparting detailed knowledge. The good students ask questions — and keep asking them. They see a phrase in a legal opinion, or hear something the professor has said, and want to know more. They are conscious that no matter how much they know, there are more questions to ask. And they see the project of university learning as not simply the validation of their preexisting political and ideological beliefs, nor the balancing of different ideological or political views in a stilted discussion, but rather, the shifting of one’s perspective. Good students work hard and persevere. They aren’t afraid to come see the professor at the end of class to say they don’t understand something. My students have gone on to be professors, big city mayors, members of Congress. But the ones I remember best, and who have impressed me the most, are the curious ones. They always want to know what they don’t know.

— Kenneth W. Mack, Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law and affiliate professor of history at Harvard Law School 

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Seeing what others miss

The qualities I’ve noticed that support success in design begin with a sharpened attention and a willingness to commit to closely reading things in the world. The form of attention that I refer to enables students who possess it to pick up on details that others might miss. The capacity to lock in and sustain a close read of these pickups unfolds new details and questions that can be explored and advanced through iterative thinking, visualizing, and making — the methods of design. 

Most importantly, these traits allow the student who wields them to first problem-set, and then to problem-solve — dual actions that define design. First: What is the right question to ask? Followed by: What material, scale, and making technique is best suited to exploring possible solutions to that question? 

These traits can be cultivated with knowledge of their power and with practice — things that are regularly taught, talked about, and then put into play in the design studio.

— Megan Panzano, senior director of early design education and lecturer in architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design

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Deep curiosity

There is an old story in medical education about what the professor tells their students on the first day of class: “Half of what we will be teaching you in the next four years will be found to be wrong in 20 years; the only problem is that we don’t know which half.” While this is probably not unique to medicine, the field continues to evolve at an incredible pace. Given the nature of medical practice, what kind of student do I want? What kind of student will make the best doctor not just on the day they graduate school, but decades later as well?

For me, curiosity is the key ingredient. Curiosity to keep asking questions, to want to know not just what to do, but why one should do that. Curiosity about how things work. Why did the blood pressure fall? Why did the chest pain change? How is this shortness of breath different from what the patient experienced in the past? Not only is curiosity the key to understanding human biology, it is also the key to being a humanistic physician. One needs to be curious about the patient sitting before you. Who are you? What is important to you? How do we make a decision on your care that is consistent with your values?

Mix curiosity with the humility to admit that none of us has all the answers and the determination to always get better at your craft, and you have the right student.

— Richard M. Schwartzstein, Ellen and Melvin Gordon Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Medical Education, Harvard Medical School

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Never indifferent

Each student is different, and so are their learning styles and study habits. The hallmark of a good student is a commitment to learning rather than solely achieving high grades. Good students demonstrate critical, analytical, and imaginative thinking. They abhor both laziness and indifference to learning. Such students are organized, prepared, and diligent, and they pay close attention in class. They consider alternative viewpoints while remaining open-minded, and are receptive to feedback without being defensive. Over time, good students develop a growth mindset, fostering healthy curiosity and a desire to acquire new knowledge. They reflect on the significance of mistakes, move beyond them, and extend grace to themselves. Good students recognize preparation and curiosity as essential virtues. They seek assistance promptly and use professors’ office hours effectively. Motivated by setting and achieving learning goals, good students are also good citizens because they contribute positively to the learning environment as responsible members of the academic community.

— Dehlia Umunna, clinical professor of law, Harvard Law School 

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Up for an argument

A good student is defined by a willingness to engage with perspectives different from their own. In government, we deal with questions that are often contested and rarely settled. The strongest students take disagreement seriously: They listen carefully, try to understand where others are coming from, and respond thoughtfully rather than reactively. They are open to revising their views when the evidence points them in a new direction, while still expressing their own arguments with clarity and respect.

— Yuhua Wang, Ford Foundation Professor of Modern China Studies and Harvard College Professor, FAS