<p>I have a question for you guys. How often do you guys study (including homework, looking over notes, etc)? Do you guys study on the weekends too or are the weekends left for partying/hanging out/ etc? </p>
<p>I ask this because I have a 3.0 cum. GPA and I want to raise it significantly from here on out and I think it'd be good to hear from people who have the GPA that I desire to obtain. I also it varies from person to person but I would just like to get a sense of everything.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance for all responses that answer my question. :D</p>
<p>Well let’s see. First semester I had very easy classes that I kinda took not too seriously so I got a 3.6. I did homework every night, but studying I never really did more than a day in advance. I’d just sit down and go over notes, review sheets and any troublesome chapters the day before the exam and that usually worked out well. Weekends I didn’t spend too much time studying largely because I never had Monday exams lol, and that also applies to last spring. I didn’t go partying much at all last year since I commuted.</p>
<p>Second semester was tougher but I managed As and A-s. My overall habits didn’t change for the most part, I still did homework each night and studied one or two days before an exam. I sat in the front of every class, took good notes and asked my classmates for help when I didn’t understand something. I tried to do the reading for accounting and economics as often as I could which definitely helped. I was on the border for most of my classes though, so for finals week I really buckled down and studied my ass off for each exam (again, using review sheets, notes and the textbook). </p>
<p>I’m sure if I was an engineering major it would have been much more difficult for me, but so far all of my classes (except for stupid statistics) have made sense and I didn’t find it THAT hard to get good grades. I had to work, yes, but I wasn’t losing sleep over it. I’m sure if I’d been partying several times a week it would have made it harder as well, but that’s just me. I also studied and did homework in environments that were conducive (for me) to learning, namely the library and my house.</p>
<p>I study probably about an hour for every test that I have. Well, that was last year at least. Since I’m going to be a sophomore this year, and I’m taking all honors and AP, I’ll probably have to study a lot more. I study more for the classes that are more challenging for me (science) but, if I pay enough attention in class, all I really have to do is look over the material. Flash cards help me a lot with vocab and math I just do a couple problems until I get them all right. For classes like history or science, I simply read my textbook. Sometimes I don’t understand the way my teacher teaches or I don’t understand the textbook so I either ask a friend for help or I go on YouTube and watch people teach the lesson. That seems to help me a lot.
I think if you pay attention in class, do ALL your work and study for tests/quizzes, you can definitely raise your GPA. Remember not to slack off or blame your teacher for not receiving the grade you wanted. Like I said before, if you don’t understand the way your teacher teaches, ask someone else for help or go online. You should also set goals so that you know exactly what you’re striving for. Good luck!
P.S What grade are you in?</p>
<p>EDIT: whoa! Just realized this is the college life thread not the high school life one…oops </p>
<p>For the typical week (psets, reading):
-No studying on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. A couple hours on Sunday just to get started on things. Then probably four to nine hours each on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday back down at two to four hours. </p>
<p>For midterms I’ll generally start studying 2-3 nights in advance. For finals I’ll start studying 2-4 nights in advance. For short essays (<6 pages) I’ll generally start writing 2-4 days in advance. For long papers (8+ pages) I’ll generally give myself 4-6 days.</p>
<p>Looking at it now, it sucks that I didn’t try as hard as I could’ve my freshmen year because freshmen year, in general, we have the easiest classes. As the years goes on, the courses get harder so now I have to work twice as hard. I brought it on myself so I’m up for it. I care too much to just “whatever” it lol.</p>
<p>I’ve heard mixed things about that actually. You might find the upper-level courses not necessarily tons harder (don’t know your major though) simply because the bad students have been weeded out. So you’re generally surrounded by equally motivated people which can have a good effect on your grades. Just for comparison’s sake, look at the grade distribution for introductory financial accounting at my uni (which every hopeful business major has to take) and managerial accounting (which only admitted accouting majors end up taking, in junior year):</p>
<p>I spend about 2-3 hours a night Monday through Friday. I do work on homework and such over the weekends, but I try to take a break from homework for at least 3 hours every weekend. That way I don’t get frustrated and tired.</p>
<p>:) Hi! It’s so hard to give you an idea of how long/how often I study because every day/week is unpredictable! Not to mention the fact that, on top of high school classes, I’ve also taken around three to five college classes at the community college in my town since my freshman year of high school every semester! (I am now a senior. :D) I would say that since I average a schedule of about eleven to thirteen classes at a time, my study schedule on an average day is about two to five hours. It just depends. Like Senior0991 mentioned, I usually give myself a certain amount of days in advance to study for midterms, finals, or write short or long papers. For example, I had a fifteen page paper due for a history course I took online a few semesters ago, so I knew I would need plenty of planning time. I gave myself three weeks in advance to write the outline and then write the paper. (I got a 98!) </p>
<p>Anyway, if you need anymore help or info, let me know. I’d be glad to help. I’m extremely organized and whatnot, and I have a really hectic schedule, but I’m great with making sure everything gets done to the best of my ability.</p>
<p>The amount of time I would spend on work would vary depending on what I had due and when. For example, marathoning a 10- to 13-page essay could require four to six or seven hours straight, while reading should be spread out, French homework would be done a half hour before class in the morning, and studying would be maybe an hour dedicated to looking over my notes and making note of those terms and concepts I wouldn’t necessarily remember to look over right before the test. For the most part, unless I had a huge exam (that I’d put off studying for) or a number of assignments all due around the same time (see: finals last semester, where I had three 10- to 13- page papers due within days of each other), my weekends would be mostly open, and I was easily able to balance five classes with mock trial and a cappella and whatever other things I wanted to attend to (like semi-weekly late-night “Wendy’s runs”).</p>
<p>I have actually been taking upper level classes more than intro classes, so I haven’t really had tests to study for. Less than 1/3 of my classes were test based. For those that were, I would generally study an hour or two the night before the test. For Spanish, I would do a little vocab every day instead of cramming. </p>
<p>I try to spread out my assignments. If I have a < 5 page paper due, I’ll usually do it all the research two weekends before, then I’ll write it the weekend before. That way I can sleep on it. A 5 page paper usually takes me less than 2 hours to write. Any bigger and I’ll give myself an extra weekend or 2. By weekend, I really mean Thursday and Sunday because I worked all day Friday and Saturday. By the time I was done with my two jobs on Friday and Saturday, I usually crashed lol.</p>
<p>I end up having a lot of spare time and I have a 3.75 in EE. I do all the homework from the solutions manuals and cram for the tests 2 days in advance. Stuff like labs or projects in between I do the day before.</p>
<p>Personal opinion though is that it isn’t always about how or how much you study that really makes a difference. I’m just smart enough to get away with “lazy studying”.</p>
<p>YMMV, but…5-7 hours a day 6 days a week. I tend to give myself Sunday off (meaning I work Friday nights). It escalates near the end of the term and when I have projects for CS, but math and Classics are pretty steady workloads. I take 20 credit hours a term and work c. 15 hours a week, though, so I don’t have much free time, and a decent amount of my work is just time consuming in nature (especially translation of classical texts). I’d imagine that my totals look higher than many others because of the nature of my courseload.</p>
<p>I got good grades in college. I think the best think to do is to start things as early as you can. This includes being prepared for lectures by doing the readings and/or skimming the notes covered in lecture before the lecture. Doing things early is using your time more efficiently. </p>
<p>I’d also suggest actively thinking about what the professor is saying in lecture during lecture instead of being slightly attentive and filing away what he says for later study. Notice that doing this makes better use of your time and is a lot easier to do when you’ve prepared for lecture. In a similar manner, when working on homeworks, don’t just work the problem to see that it is finished: try to see why the problem was assigned and why the calculated result is important. A lot of homework problems are assigned for a reason.</p>
<p>When you do this, I think you’ll find that you don’t need to spend much time studying before exams. It’s a less stressful way of doing things too. Take as much time as you need. It isn’t useful to compare studying times with other people. Each person is different.</p>
(I got a 98!) </p>
I’d be glad to help. I’m extremely organized and whatnot, and I have a really hectic schedule, but I’m great with making sure everything gets done to the best of my ability.</p>