How do kids do it? And by it, I mean, get straight A's

<p>I think some teachers may feel like they're not challenging you enough if you have absolutely perfect grades. I can understand why it would make them a little angry.</p>

<p>lol i love this title.. what a weird way to phrase it</p>

<p>you gotta be on top of your game 24/7, at least thats how i do it lol</p>

<p>I go to a fairly competitive hs and i have straight a's</p>

<p>our honors classes are a joke, and apus i just drew pictures and talked ( although there was TONS of reading)</p>

<p>Also, the other thing I always remind people is that every school, every teacher is different in difficulty. I admit, it angers me a little when I get a B in class with a difficult teacher, but another student gets an A in a class where the teacher didn't even check homework. There's no comparison. So, there are probably tons of people with straight A's that have easy classes or teachers. :)</p>

<p>Experience at my school (top ~20% competitive, the rest are future lifetime employees of fast food chains assuming they aren't too high to do that. Ap, Honors, etc. teachers are almost all good, the rest are hit or miss).</p>

<p>The top of my class, who would have to have straight A's, are very mixed in approach to getting their grades.</p>

<p>I know of one, aspiring toward Harvard, who studies almost continuously. She sucks up to most of the teachers and frequently spends 7-8 hours on regular homwork (she still hasn't explained to me exactly how she can function on 3-5 hours sleep per night).</p>

<p>Another, who is currently #1, studies moderately and kind of sucks up (I don't really think she is trying to do so, she is just very nice and relatively quiet)</p>

<p>Personally, I do little to no studying. The teachers I have had are all very good at teaching the material in all of the applicable styles (auditory, visual, etc.) and I am equally spread in all those areas so I effectively get the lesson multiple times and tend to pick it up rather quickly. </p>

<p>I am very good at math (but no genious) and I can usually "see" what needs to be done or the why in math problems. As a result, I am very good at sciences, especially physics. But I must admit, I love physics and I am told (but cannot honestly attest to) that skill in physics generally entails a different process of thinking that may or may not explain this.</p>

<p>I do well in histories for some reason, but I am unsure why. I find the subject to be rather interesting and have a great time in class as long as the teacher is good (both of mine this past year were, mostly because they allowed me some slack and alloud me to do the classes in a slightly independent manner and would debate with me on random topics). This year, I did well in US and European history classes, took the practice AP tests and got 5s (and then took the real AP test and got 3s)</p>

<p>I don't really care for English. As you can probably see in this post, it is not my forte, but I do ok because I can write well when I care to. Earlier it was suggested that you should learn to BS essays, and last year I would have completely agreed with this because I believed I was doing this and it works. However, I'm friends with one of my teachers, and I was in her room one day for a quiz bowl practice when she made me help one of her students with an essay. I was attempting to explain how to BS an essay after I told them what should be doen for that particualr essay to them because I thought it an useful tool, but she stopped me to tell me that I don't actually BS essays. Apparently certain styles of writing lend themselves to better essays despite sufficient information to write the essay and makes an even better one if you have that information. Oh and for those of you who complained that you couldn't get a 100 in English, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation: there is no correct answer in English, there is always a better answer and getting a 100 on an essay would be akin of given the status of an omniscient diety.</p>

<p>In my opinion, most of the people who get straight A's either have a natural ability or work extremely hard or some combination of the two. But my suggestions (however flawed) follow:</p>

<ul>
<li>take classes that you will enjoy if that is an option</li>
<li>suck up if you can bring yourself to do so, personally I can't</li>
<li>if there is EC do it, again I have an aversion to this due to fairness issues</li>
<li>find a way you can understand the material (ie, I try to relate it to math or physics - I remember dates as math equations :-) )</li>
<li>avoid groups when doing work: you need to be sure you know how to do it, not the group</li>
<li>do all work that is necessary for you to understand; if you complete the assignment and are still unsure, try to get more to practice with</li>
</ul>

<p>Personally, I don't think one should actually do this. While I only have 1 B and I may still in contention for valedictorian, there really are more important things and I could honestly care less if it actually happens (I haven't check my rank for over a year). There is simply more to life than going to the "best" colleges. Go out, have some fun. Make sure you get good grades, but they don't have to be spotless.</p>

<p>It's pretty simple.
Easy schools => more A's.</p>

<p>I just focus in class. I hate subjects based on rote memorization, since that is my weakness. </p>

<p>I personally feel that people who brag about straight A's or talk about it all the time aren't that confident. You shouldn't use letter grades to measure your intelligence. Don't kill yourself getting A's to get to Harvard, because if you can't live a normal life getting straight A's, you will suffer wherever you go.</p>

<p>Understanding the materials and subjects. I think this is the main reason to getting all As, well at least to me. When I don't understand something, I'd reread that passage or section of the textbook repeatedly until I have understood what it's talking about. Memorization is hard and is unstable because you can't expect yourself to always have memorized a hundred facts without forgetting at least one during a test. Through understanding what it is and how it comes from, you have a better chance of getting As on tests and stuff.</p>

<p>Go to a stupid school. Thats all to it.</p>

<p>haha. i know that fo' sho.</p>

<p>There are occasions where you meet someone like my friend who's in IB AND AP courses and makes straight As.</p>

<p>She's not that intelligent, either. Because I'm what you CCers would call a bad student. I don't study enough. I care more about my paintings and athletic ability than making a perfect GPA. And I play a lot of videogames. And yet somehow, on tests like SAT, free credit exams, TAKS, etc, I score higher than her.</p>

<p>Therefore, she must be some sort of study freak.</p>

<p>Hard work will do it... Straight As arent all that they're cracked out to be (unless you are obsessed with college admissions and think a less than perfect GPA will kill you). I got straight A's for the first time in my freshman year and i was like... oh. Straight As...</p>

<p>quitejaded, you are one of the students I would rank high on these boards. rather than suck your time memorizing rote facts, you concentrate on your inate skills, something that can carry you very far.</p>

<p>People would kill for straight A's at my school. We're ranked the #1 public in Jersey, with more than half of our kids going to schools ranked 50 or beter by USNews (including six Princeton ED, one MIT EA, a few Wharton ED, a bunch of Cornell, and a few Harvard and Yale acceptees). Seriously, NYU is the second most commonly attended school after Rutgers.</p>

<p>People kill for straight A's. Then again, less than 10 people actually have them (I'm not counting people who don' take honors classes). People here can kill themselves over a courseload of AP's - half of which they earn B's in - and still end up at Duke. Colleges understand how hard this school is.</p>

<p>With that said, the only people who manage straight A's are those who are seriously gifted and would ace a test on absolutely anything given to them. In order to succeed in my Physics class, you have to have sharp insight and, well, just GET it. Me, I didn't get anything, so I ended up with a B, thereby kicking me out of the "gifted at everything" club (I knew it was too good to be true last year anyway).</p>

<p>For all the academic classes, you really have to just get it. It won't help if you memorize the entire book; you still need to analyze, understand, and apply. Homework has never been more than 10% of the grade. Extra credit hasn't exceeded two points per marking period for bringing n a box of tissues. Teachers understand that there are students who will get A's and there are those that don't. That's why we didn't get homework in physics, for example. And I like to tell people that's why our teacher didn't teach us much. She gave us a summary of everything. Those who got A's in that class never studied, did extra work, or anything, so it was the easiest class in the world for them. Those who finally were able to study their way into getting an A third or fourth quarter came to the sad realization that they'd need a 104% in order to have an A for the year.</p>

<p>In my freshman year bio honors class, my teacher told us on the first da that those who get A's are gifted with insight, analytical skills, and understanding of the way bio works. Those who got high B's were hard workers who didn't have that kind of insight. Those who got low B's didn't work very hard nor did they have that insight. Those who got below a B didn't belong in the class. His summary proved true to his word. Although some people with B's were able to crack his tests so that they could study their way into an A by the end of the year found that their average for the year was still a B. And my school only reports final grades on our transcripts.</p>

<p>The same system applies to math, history (except for world history... all the teachers are jokes), language arts, spanish, science, and computer science at the honors or AP level. Any other electives, german, chinese, french and regular (non-honors) courses are easier and people who would get high B's in honors classes would get A's instead.</p>

<p>The point is, you can't study your way into getting straight A's. There is no strategy. You just have to EITHER be truly gifted OR get the right teachers (the other physics honors teacher is a joke... my american studies teacher didn't teach and expected us to regurgitate information that was falsely revealed to us - apparently a region is strictly defined as a PART of a continent, not a whole continent, so the murder that trigered world war I was not in Europe, it was in the Bulkans - the other teacher was extremely easy and very nice. I managed to get an A solely by kissing up; the only other people who got A's where the ones with 95%'s in bio honors. I guess it's like there is a certain crowd who is supposed to get A's, so they do.)</p>

<p>Some very bright second-tier students at my school would undoubtedly have been valedictorians had their parents decided to live a few minutes away (one of my friends was actually ranked 1 at a nearby somewhat competitive school. Now he has almost all B's and one C). However, now they're cursed at this competitive school where each B is a step down in the coolness factor for the asian crowd and a step up for the dumb blond crowd (our district's average income is about 100 grand, so we're very preppy as well). A C means that you're generally ignored by the asian crowd. And we're 40% asian.</p>

<p>We all rant about our school together, anyway. I've had many a conversation with summaries exactly like the one above. Most everyone would agree with me :P.</p>

<p>Here's a good motto to live by:

[quote]
You don't work, you don't eat. You don't grind, you don't shine.

[/quote]

Mike Jones.</p>

<p>you have to want it to get it, that is my motto. You need to be driven and be able to put your mind 100% to things.</p>

<p>I don't know about other people, but only the Top Ten at my school are really competetive. Val, sal, and #3 are competing over who screwed up more and has too many As instead of A+s. I'm currently winning that battle, but I wouldn't say my school is particularly hard. I never study until the night or class before a test unless I know it will be extremely hard. But that's just my two cents, and I come from a school of country/suburbanite kids.:)</p>

<p>If you are getting straight A's with absolute ease then your school is a joke. Simply put.</p>

<p>theone, I disagree with you. You go to a different school. For most of us, the way to get straight As is hard work. The way to get easy straight As is innate skilllzzz.</p>

<p>but that was very interesting to read. It kind of applies to my IB classes. PreIB, the only way to be making a C is if you... I don't know! I don't know how people were making Cs! Good for them that they dropped out.</p>