How to develop strong analytical skills?

[Ryan McClain]

For my college internship at a company I am required to have strong analytical skills (basically for understanding a project assignment, understanding the problem domain, finding the right patterns (OO, UML, etc), the right system design etc).

My question is: how do you develop strong analytical skills? Is it a talent you are born with? Is it something you can learn in software engineering books?
I've been through all the software engineering (101, 201 and 301) classes and I passed them, but I am afraid of not having these skills.

[Tapas Chand]

IMO though analytical skills are somewhat inborn qualities, but can be improved through practice.
Quantitative aptitude, Logical reasoning, solving Sudoku are few I know of.

[Stephan van Hulst]

Practice practice practice practice. I really think that's all to it.

Apply what you know to the problem you want to solve. Initially, your solution will probably have many mistakes. If you keep making the same mistakes over and over, eventually you will learn to recognize the situation in which you make them, and make a better solution from the start.

Some people are quicker at learning from their mistakes. I think this is what we call an 'analytical person'. However, I think everyone is able to become good at recognizing certain situations, given enough practice.