Many students new to academic learning do not know what it takes to be successful in the DePaul Training Center environment or a future place of employment. They understand good and bad grades in a general way, and they sense that they should attend classes, but that is where their knowledge begins and ends.

Most instructors know what a good student is—and is not. Most employers know what a good employee is—and is not. For one thing, a good student is not necessarily the most intelligent individual in the class.

The following is a list of some characteristics of successful students. Characteristics of a successful student transfer into positive work place behaviors. This list is a description of what a hard-working student does and what a teacher likes to see. By learning these characteristics, you may better understand the day-to-day and class-to-class behavior of successful students. The idea is to provide you with guidelines you can follow which will help you get down to the business of becoming a serious, successful student and future office professional.

• Successful students attend class regularly and on time.

• Successful students have the ability to work independently and monitor his/her own progress. Training programs at DePaul are based on independent study and one-on-one training

• Successful students listen and train themselves to pay attention.

• Successful students take responsibility for themselves and their actions.

• Successful students turn in assignments that look neat and sharp. They take the time to produce a final product that looks good, and reflects of a care and pride in their work.

• Successful students demonstrate that they care about their grades and are willing to work to improve them 

• Successful students demonstrate a willingness to receive instruction/direction from an Instructor and follow through with the presented expectations.

• Successful students ask appropriate questions and are active participants in their learning.

• Successful students pay attention in class and are courteous and polite.

• Successful students have the ability to apply reading strategies to extract important information from text and apply this information to their work. Our classroom textbooks are written at approximately a 9th grade reading level. Successful students have the ability to apply upper elementary level English skills to writing assignments.

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