<p>hi! i am the parent of a freshman engineering student who is a hard worker- finishes assignments on time and gets 100% on quizzes and assignments but gets extremely poor grades in exams (math, physics, chem...<br>
any suggestions from experienced engineering students on what could be going wrong with the studying bit on exams?
please help</p>
<p>Define extremely poor. It is not uncommon to get poor grades on exams in engineering, especially as a freshman. It isn’t high school.</p>
<p>I know a couple people who have similar problems. From my experience usually the problem is what the student is studying. Some people I know just don’t seem to have a concept of what is relevant and what is not (in terms of exams). </p>
<p>I would try to find someone to study with who does do well on exams. You want to focus on key areas only - and usually the best way to do this is by going through repetition after repetition of old exam problems. For all of my math/physics/chem etc., by the time an exam came around I really didn’t focus my energy on anything but old exam problems. If there was something that I just didnt understand then I might look at the book, but otherwise I really didn’t. Homework problems are usually much different than exam problems - so you have to get comfortable with the type of stuff you’ll see, and also the time constaints.</p>
<p>In courses like calc, physics and chem, it is not unusual for the average score to be very low (sometimes below 50 percent). This is a rude awakening for freshmen that are used to acing everything in high school. Just be aware that courses like calc II, chem II and physics I and II are many times considered to be “weed out” classes. In some of these classes a good portion of the class will not pass. This is a way for the college of engineering to more or less separate the men from the boys so to speak. You could think of these classes as filters for the engineering programs. These classes are designed to get rid of any student that won’t be able to hack it in engineering. And lets face it, if you really struggle with freshman calc and physics, engineering probably isn’t for you anyway.</p>
<p>That being said, tell you son or daughter to hang in there and try to find a group to study with. He or she is not alone. Every engineering student feels discouraged or apprehensive about courses at some point throughout their college career. Engineering is one of the most difficult and rigorous degrees to obtain. It will not be easy but it will be worth it in the end.</p>
<p>I’m not an engineering student, but a teacher who used to be a lawyer. When I was in law school, I belonged to a study group of students whose dedication and performance was consistent and I trusted them. We were usually four or five who worked together to explain concepts to each other and we worked together to shore up eachother’s weaknesses. The process had as much to do with learning the material as it did with providing confidence in ourselves. Sometimes this is more of a problem than the studying itself. </p>
<p>As a teacher, I frequently have my students do cooperative learning in order to help them understand new concepts. It helps to get ideas from different sources to see how different people learn. Sometimes how one person learns is completely different from how another learns and your child just hasn’t figured out his learning style yet. This is referred to by educators as metacognition and if your child doesn’t know what he has to do in order to learn at this level, then a study group would be the way to go, especially if there are several different learning styles involved in the group. It would give him an opportunity to see different methods of learning and try one that he thinks might work for him.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>I remember getting a 26% on a critical engineering exam once - I was very depressed, until the professor wrote all the scores (a large class) on the board and I found I’d gotten the high score. Then I was depressed again when he reminded us that he didn’t curve …</p>
<p>Thrill- similar story. I got a 12/100 on a mechanical dynamics exam and nearly died. Then I saw that I’d beaten the curve by a lot, and noted that the guy in front of me got a whopping 2/100. Somehow, I made it out of the class alive, made it into an excellent grad program, and have landed a job at an actual engineering firm instead of dealing fries at a fast food establishment, miracle of miracles…!</p>
<p>thanks everybody. all really good advice
i will pass on the study tips- </p>
<p>“Define extremely poor.” the grades this semester in spite of extra hours of study have dropped on average 20 points below class average :(</p>
<p>20 pts below class average certainly isn’t great, so I would second what the rest of the posters have said in that your son/daughter probably just doesn’t know how to study effectively yet, be it which material to cover or the best method of studying. Definitely have them find a study group that can help out there.</p>
<p>Just like a few said on here, I would try the study group approach also.</p>
<p>I would try some study guides/outlines…but they are hit or miss as far as realistic sample problems but are great for the concepts. Sometimes for Math and Physics courses, if you nail the concept (and write it down), that will get you some good partial credit.</p>
<p>One more longshot route…and this depends on the size of the school is get access to the syllabus before registering for the course. May not apply much for freshman-type courses, but for the Diff EQ and Linear Algebra (and higher courses), I chose the professor who made computer projects and/or homework count a great deal for the course. I would try to avoid the professor who just gave a mid-term and a final.</p>
<p>Try studying in groups, it seemed to never work in hs, but doing MATLAB assignments and studying together works really well if it is some1 who wont get you distracted.</p>
<p>Does he actually study for exams? Getting good grades on quizzes and homework assignments is usually easier because they mostly cover recent material, where tests are more comprehensive.</p>
<p>Sample/previous exams are a good way to practice for exams.</p>
<p>My son and I attended a UC Berkeley info seminar for Engineering/Math/Sciences. We were told to utilize resource programs or any related programs, study groups, office hours, TAs, anything and everything. As someone mentioned above, it is not high school.</p>
<p>Office Hours with prof helped our student a lot. Also, review sessions held by the TAs, usually night before the exam as I recall, were also very helpful. As I have listened to our student about studying habits thru the years (student is now a senior, about to graduate), the study group approach seemed to have become much more important as the years have passed. Tell your student to try all of suggestions made ^^, and more importantly, hang in there. It will get better, and yes, GPA might suffer for a bit until the passage of the freshman courses.</p>
<p>it is normal that ppl do better on quizzes than on exams. In general, the exams are harder compare to the quizzes. If the professor puts 4 problems on the exam, it is very likely that s/he will make 1 of those 4, if not 2 of the 4 problems to be challenging, so the ones that really understood the material can stand out. So before i give out any suggestions, i just want to say that dont be depressed about not doing too well on the exams, b/c it is normal in engineering.
im a senior majoring in ee, thinking back, i don’t think calculus was not that hard compare to some of the engineering concepts that i had to learn later on. To do well in calculus, basically, you just need to practice, integration by parts, using different techniques to take the derivative of a function. Personally, i think some of the concepts in physics are harder to understand compare to calculus. To do well in physics, you need to spend a lot of time studying the stuff, especially maxwell eqns. Try to read different books, study the same concept from different angles.<br>
Also, when u do poorly on an exam, i think it is important to ask yourself why, is it b/c i didn’t truly understand the concepts or something else. if you still cannot figure out why, go talk to your professor and see what advices s/he can give you.</p>
<p>another thing, do past exams! a lot of them, so you can get a good feel of the kind of questions that are gonna be on the exam. Sometimes professors don’t post past exams, so you just need to use ur connections and ask upper classmates to help you out.</p>
<p>^^ Agreed</p>
<p>A lot of people say that classes get easier as you get into the upper divisions. But the truth is they don’t, at least in my case. There’s more work (a lot more), and generally this involves recalling things you learned one, two, three, and four semesters ago… Truthfully, if I didn’t have the network I do I’d work around the clock and my GPA would be decreasing quickly.</p>
<p>However, generally grades increase because the curves get less intense - and most importantly, because you have a network of people who’ve taken the classes. Out of my six classes right now I have old binders for five of them. This means similar hw problems, similar test problems, similar quiz problems, old projects to reference, etc… It becomes exponentially easier to earn higher grades when you know what to expect. Fresh/soph year you haven’t really made all the connections yet. But, if you somehow could - it would help tremendously.</p>
<p>I attended a seminar on “how to study/succeeding in college”. They basically went around and surveyed top students at various schools and asked them what they did. It seemed that they were basically just highlighted what helped people do better. A few examples were things like, immediately after the lecture while everyone was leaving the room, stay in your chair and re-read all of your notes, it helps you remember what you just heard better. Another student only wrote class notes on the pages on the left in his notebook while leaving the page on the right blank for personal notes that could come during class or after while studying the material. Some studied in groups, some studied alone.</p>
<p>The underlying theme to all of this was that different things seem to work for different people and it really is a matter of trying to figure out what works for you. It takes time, but I think you’ll find that the longer you progress down the road in college the better sense you’ll get what works for you. </p>
<p>For me, I ended up stop taking notes in class and just listen to the professor. I found that I was writing stuff down but not really grasping what was going on. Before exams I would work with others on problem sets and assignments but I would study by myself when it came exam time. I’d always make a detailed outline of notes from the lectures and from the textbook before doing any problems to make sure I was learning the material and not how to solve the problems. </p>
<p>But like I said, find your own style and rock it.</p>
<p>wow thats a lot of resources- thank you all for your concern and advice.
the studying in a group and attending office hours and making connections is definitely on the list!</p>
<p>Kevindai- you are right about the quizzes being easier than the exams-also apparently the old exams were easier than the actual one? but definitely worth keeping at it.</p>
<p>thank you all for the time you have taken to respond- definitely encouraging! :)</p>
<p>An interesting paper i found online that i though i should share.
It highlights different study stules and might help students facing difficulties.
[Felder</a> & Soloman: Learning Styles and Strategies](<a href=“http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/ILSdir/styles.htm]Felder”>Teaching and Learning STEM)</p>