The Student Success Manifesto

Rating:
Summary: Explosive Material!!
Review:
The Student Success Manifesto is one of those rare books written from the perspective of a successful young adult. The valuable advice available on every page is a must read for anybody who seeks to achieve whatever they want in life. While the title of Michael's book obviously targets the younger crowd from 15-25, the strategies and concepts laid out in the book would definitely apply to all.

To top it off, each "EXTREME" concept is clearly explained and backed up with credible sources. Making the reading much more convicing compared to the other flak out there.

For those who are confused, at a loss or desperate for success. Read this book and I wish you EXTREME Success!

Rating:
Summary: Sucess!!
Review: I am so very fortunate to have been able to get my hands on this book while I am in my JR year at the University of Delaware. Had I not read this book, I would not have had my eyes opened to all the wonderful opportunities out there. Michael Simmons's Student Success Manifesto is a must read book, especially if you want to make the best of a bad situation, such as wanting to come out the rat race and becoming a successful entrepreneur. I recommend this book to everyone who is the slight bit interested in starting a successful business. Michael will open your eyes and change your life, he did mine. I wouldn't be surprised if this book was an Amazon best seller by the end of next month. Thank You Michael!!

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: I was fortunate to have received one of the first copies of this book while in Boston in July. I read it initially a year ago in ebook form and found it very valuable. I have put many of Michael's 'extreme entrepreneuer' tips to use in the mean time including shadowing and building my own business. It wouldn't surprise me if Michael ended up the next Covey, Kiyosaki, and Napoleon Hill combined. I would highly recommend this book to any person young or old, but especially those 15-25. 5 Stars!

Rating:
Summary: I thought I was the only one who felt this way
Review: I'm glad I'm not. When I ordered this on Amazon.com with the rating it had, I was suspecting it to be a nice encourager for young adults. When I received it in the mail and had read just the first few pages I had seen what I feared. It's is just another ego-blowing scandal. To the bitter end there's nothing but rhetoric about what 'success should mean'. Smoke and mirrors!

Rating:
Summary: Cheesy and cliche
Review: Michael Simmons' THE STUDENT SUCCESS MANIFESTO is exactly what I needed right now. It reveals that success later in life does not depend on your performance in school, that many of the wealthiest and most successful businessmen and women did not do well in school. Further, there are different standards of success. Maybe your idea of success is different from that of the next person. What I appreciated the most, however, is Mr. Simmons' revelation that we are our own teachers - each individual is his own best teacher. That puts a hole in the notion that success in later life is gauged by how well you performed on your SAT test.

I also appreciated the multi-cultural aspect to Mr. Simmons' work: within the first few pages of the book he references a tribal ritual in Africa. This is not typical in books about success. Only a few pages later he references the scholastic performance of inner city African American students, noting that according to statistics African American students do not perform well in school - but that doesn't mean they aren't smart! This point resonated deeply with me because I graduated from Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon, which is the high school with the highest percentage of African American students in the entire state - something like 70-80%. I can honestly say that in many ways I received more education from the African American student body than I did from the teachers at Jefferson High School. School, in my opinion, and I believe in the opinion Mr. Simmons expresses, tends to teach you how to follow rules, and then you graduate and realize that life itself does not follow any rules. And, by the way, school didn't teach you anything about life! On the other hand, many students at Jefferson who were African American did teach me a lot about life, and one of the few teachers at my high school who actually taught me about life was the teacher of the class on African American History, a class I was not required to take, but elected to take on my own. (And it was actually one of the only classes where I felt the teacher actually cared about his students.)

THE STUDENT SUCCESS MANIFESTO is exactly what I needed right now because lately I have been battling with regret. In a little less than a year I will turn 30, and I often regret that I did not do well in school, that I didn't study harder and didn't take the whole process more seriously. But as Mr. Simmons points out, your school performance does not really guarantee anything after school. And there are different meanings for the word "success." One type of success is happiness, and I'm relatively happy with my life.

The reader may also be interested in John Taylor Gatto's DUMBING US DOWN and Noam Chomsky's UNDERSTANDING POWER.

Andrew Michael Parodi

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Tactical and Philosophical Manual
Review: Mr. Simmons' book provides higher-order-insight along with rubber-meets-the road applicability. Forward thinking people of all ages would benefit from this text. This book can help people with ownership of their own identity and lives and help them on their own road to personal fulfillment.

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Tactical and Philosophical Manual
Review: Mr. Simmons' book provides higher-order-insight along with rubber-meets-the road applicability. Forward thinking people of all ages would benefit from this text. This book can help people with ownership of their own identity and lives and help them on their own road to personal fulfillment.

Rating:
Summary: A Parent's Perspective
Review: The Student Success Manifesto is an exceptionally mature and well-thought-out look at life from the perspective of a college-attending 18 to 20-something-year-old. I have read widely in the success literature and was impressed that Mr. Simmons seems to also be. He makes excellent use of key ideas from many sources and puts them into a young person's framework.

Mr. Simmons was born with what we called an "old head" when I was young. Many people I know who are about to retire never get it together like Mr. Simmons has. That's a shame . . . because their lives could have been so much better for them and those they love.

Several qualities of this book really stood out to me. Mr. Simmons points out how you should seek to gain many different kinds of advantages (such as learning, networking, visibility, access and reputation) from every activity you seek out. Most young people don't realize that point and misdirect their efforts as a result.

Mr. Simmons also uses graphs and charts to make brilliant points much more explicit than I have seen them done by other authors in the same subject areas. Bravo! You're ahead of the older generations here.

Finally, Mr. Simmons is able to relate to a number of different kinds of life goals and explores them thoughtfully. I was very pleased to see that he emphasizes goal setting in many different ways. That's the most important thing that college students should be doing.

What are the book's weaknesses? First, the book appears to have originally been an e-book. The text refers to my soft cover copy as an e-book and mentions red lines that appear nowhere in the book. So a little copy editing was missed here. Ignore that. Second, Mr. Simmons is at his best on starting businesses. Many college students have no interest in that possibility and won't find the book to be compelling for them unless they get to near the end of the book where the paths he describes branch out quite a lot. Third, he doesn't really follow through on some of his best ideas. For example, he points out that Kinko's got started by a student. Now, I have been watching students start local copy services for years, and most of them never built a lasting business or a decent career (after having harmed both their business and their education). Why was Kinko's such a big success while tens of thousands of others wallowed in a blind alley? There would be important lessons there.

Three of my children are well along in their careers now and seem to like what they are doing. But my daughter is a college freshman. She dislikes business so this book isn't one that she would ever read. But she would surely benefit if she did.

Perhaps Mr. Simmons will write another version of this book that my daughter would like to read. I would be delighted to send her a copy. But it would be better if a friend suggested it to her.

I wish this book had been available when I was 18 and someone had given it to me.

Pick out your goals and start achieving them, no matter what age you are.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: This book is a great start for young entrepreneurs not only because it promotes the "extreme entrepreneurship" mindset but also because it provides the readers with tips on how to to make the best out of all the resources available and how to improve relationships with others including friends and family members. I strongly recommend this book, you will enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: This book is a great start for young entrepreneurs not only because it promotes the "extreme entrepreneurship" mindset but also because it provides the readers with tips on how to to make the best out of all the resources available and how to improve relationships with others including friends and family members. I strongly recommend this book, you will enjoy it.