<p>I had a 2.9 gpa in HS an a 30 ACT and am going to a small fairly non-competitive school (About 2000 undergrads and about a 75% admission rate)</p>
<p>Anyways, i have ADD and started taking medication for it as a junior in HS and did really good from there on out.</p>
<p>My question: I am really good at math and science but not so good at writing (my biggest weakness). I hear that a lot of classes (English and such) base like a LOT of your grade off papers. How can i get a really high gpa? thx</p>
<p>Whats your major? If its like engineering, bio, or stuff like that, you can pretty much forget about it </p>
<p><em>disclaimer</em> I’m not saying its impossible, or that no one has ever done it, so no one get butthurt</p>
<p>However, I recommend just paying attention to details, going the extra step to make things perfect, and going to office hours as much as possible. There are many resources on campus which are available to help you, such as tutoring, take advantage of them.</p>
<p>Since your biggest issue is your writing, do you know if your school has a writing center that will help you improve your essays? Find a friend that’s first willing to proof-read your completed papers (so you can’t put these off for the last minute :)), then take them to the writing centers for the more significant assistance (they’re not going to assist you with the grammar errors or a paper that didn’t have effort put into it).</p>
<p>If there aren’t any writing centers, my only advice is to make sure you have friends who are willing to proof-read all your papers. Maybe brush up on some grammar rules to avoid any silly, glaring mistakes that can take away from an otherwise well-written paper (for example, you should use “well” instead of “good” for verbs).</p>
<p>How much reading and writing (and I am not including reading and writing on forums and other places where writing is done very informally) do you do?</p>
<p>Major in something easy and take the minimum credit hours to be a full time student. Try to get the best or the easiest teachers for all of your classes. Study all the time until you know everything like the back of your hand. You might not graduate in 4 years and you might not learn a lot, but you will have pretty close to a 4.0.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, go to class, read everything you are assigned, participate, and start studying at least a few days before every test. </p>
<p>You should try to improve your writing ability. Most people who don’t do well on papers have really basic problems with their sentences. Perfect syntax can be learned, though. Find someone who knows how to write and make them go through one of your papers word by word. </p>
<p>You should take advantage of any and all resources. This includes free tutors and at the very minimum visiting professors. I’ve found that just by regularly visiting a professor during office hours, it showed them I was making a sincere effort and if I was teetering between an A- and an A, they weren’t opposed to giving me the A.</p>
<p>i disagree that you should take minimum credit hours. you should take the maximum credit hours (should be around 18 or 20) and have that extra class or two be something super easy like cooking. its an easy gpa booster and you cant really count it as a class since it requires no outside work.</p>
<p>This blog is a source of much inspiration, imo. The writer went to Dartmouth for undergrad then computer science at MIT for post-grad. And he maintains a 9-5 schedule. It’s all very impressive.</p>
<p>thanks for the study hacks blog! it’s very interesting, i’m reading it at work now </p>
<p>i especially like where it mentions that doing alot of extracurriculars at college isn’t necessary. i mean, it’s good for finding friends and whatnot, but as a whole i really dislike spending my weekday evenings at some charity board discussing our next fundraiser or something (i’m more of a sit in my dorm in pjs on my bed while munching on chips and watching house-type). high school i was the extracurricular queen, so now in college i’m kinda like bleh. rather have time to do my homework. </p>
<p>tips for getting a high gpa… make sure you choose your professors wisely. the teacher often makes or breaks the class. if they are a notoriously hard grader, being the most awesome student ever won’t even break it. if you have to choose between a boring easy class and an exciting hard class, choose the boring easy class. why? unless you are motivated by LEARNING, but since you merely want a high gpa, always go with the easier prof. this has been tested, tried and true…</p>
<p>Big tip I’m going to follow: start things on time. If you know you want to do something, get off the internet, get out the work, and start. Just start. If it’s an essay, go to the writing center when you’ve just barely gotten started. They are paid whether they’re helping you brainstorm or proofreading a third draft of a major paper, so just get to your writing center and start getting ideas.</p>
<p>I’m not clear as to whether you have issues with just being able to write in general (like banging out a 20 page paper) or if you have issue composing your throughts to create good content for your papers… It’s not uncommon for a lot of people to have both problems. The idea of staring at a blank screen, with the thought of having to create some 20 odd pages, can be daunting. </p>
<p>I agree with the advice on finding a writing clinic/center at your school… Just keep on practicing. This way, you will develop a good foundation of writing skills in gneral. Then, when it comes to actually writing a paper, you will have no problem with the ‘writing part’ and you’ll be able to focus more on your thoughts. </p>
<p>Get help from your professors, start thinking about the material in different ways (that’s really what those sorts of courses - English - are about). Once you start thinking about the material critically (which is the idea), you will have plenty to write about.</p>
<p>I hope that helps!</p>
<p>PS: BigO999 - you’re bang on about that… Make sure you follow his advice!</p>
</p>