I’m having a bit of trouble grade-wise. I want to preface this by saying that I’m lucky because my university is pass-fail for the first year, and I’m having no trouble passing. However, my grades aren’t very good. I’ve always been a high achiever, and unlike some of my fellow students, I’m not out partying like crazy and not studying, I’m putting in a lot of work in the library because even though I know it’s only pass-fail I want to do the best job possible.
Now, my grades aren’t reflecting that. I’m not doing as well as I like (around B/C scores) on my tests and essays, and I really want to be pulling A’s. I’ve been meeting with professors more for office hours, but what else can I do? I feel like I’m studying a lot, going to all my classes, etc., so I feel quite lost as to what I can do to bring my grades up.
It sounds like you’re covering most of your bases. When you talk to professors, do you learn exactly what you did wrong on the last test and how you can prevent making that same mistake in the future? You’re working as hard as possible, so it might be time to take a step back and polish your study methods to make sure you’re reaching your potential.
A method I’ve used to get me from B’s on tests (1st half of first semester my freshman year) to a 4.0 was finding practice tests/questions online and making sure I could get 100%s on every practice test I found before taking the real thing. I iron out all the mistakes I’d make on the real test with the practice ones, so I won’t make those careless errors on the real thing.
You need to analyze what’s bringing your grades down. Are you not understanding the material? Is there a gap where you understand the concepts but don’t know how to apply them to the problems or questions that are being asked on homework or exams? Do you have test-taking anxiety? What about your study habits is not working?
Have you gone through your exams to see why you got the scores that you did? Did you not understand the material? Were the exam questions hard to understand or did you have difficulty applying your knowledge to new questions that you’ve never seen before? Was it a bunch of silly mistakes that added up? Did you have trouble with running out of time? If you don’t really know why you got the grade you got, you can go through your exam with your professor or TA to see if they have any suggestions for how you can improve your exam scores. Depending on why you got the grades you got, there might be different strategies you can try to improve your scores. Have you asked your professor for suggestions?
Essays can be harder to go through by yourself to figure out why you got the grade you did and how you can improve, unless there are a lot of good comments on it, so it might be a good idea to talk to your professor or TA about how you can improve your essays in the future. You can also see if your school has a writing center and see if someone there can look at your essay to give you suggestions. You can bring in a past essay to see what you need to do to improve, or you can see if you can bring in drafts/outlines of upcoming essays to get suggestions about how to improve.
If you’re having trouble understanding the material, going to office hours is good, but you can also see what tutoring services your school provides. You can try to start a study group where you can help each other with the material. You can also try teaching other people the material from your class. This a good strategy, especially if your problem is that you think you understand the material but when you take the test you find out you really don’t. Teaching someone else the material can help you understand it (by forcing you to actively think about the material step-by-step and in different ways), but it can also help you find the parts of the material that you don’t really understand that well and need to focus on (because you can’t explain it well to someone else).
If you’re having trouble applying your knowledge to new questions, perhaps you can try getting together with a group of students in your class and all coming up with possible test questions (based on previous exams and homework problems or just what you think the professor might ask) and practice taking those without any help (to simulate an exam). The process of making test questions can also help you identify what material is the most important and what possible ways the questions can be asked. If it’s a problem-based exam, you may be able to find more problems to practice online or in old textbooks on the subject. If it’s an essay-based exam, you can still practice answering possible questions that could be asked on the exam, and if you don’t want to write the whole essay, you can always outline so you at least go through the process of thinking through the question.
And don’t be discouraged! Many students struggle with college coursework, especially in the beginning, and it takes time to figure out what system works the best for you. The fact that your school makes the first year pass/fail suggests that your school expects students to struggle in the beginning, and they’re giving you a buffer to adjust to college work. Don’t expect it to happen overnight! The expectations may be very different than they were when you were in high school, and it takes time to adjust. Try different things until you figure out what works best for you, and try to figure out what is making your grades lower so that you can address those issues specifically.