<p>College courses are much more challenging than high school was. I think I know everything for a test and then I don't do so well. Are there techniques that help to make A's in college courses? HELP...I need a really high gpa for grad school></p>
<p>Someone said to approach your college work like it is a job; give it 40 hr/wk (at least). That is 8 hr/day (counting going to class).</p>
<p>Go to all your classes, and pay attention to everything the prof says. A lot of them are expecting to hear things they have explained or examples they have given, used later in tests or essays. I don’t mean spouted back verbatim, I mean used in such a way you show you have been thinking about them & drawing conclusions (on your own) they helped you to reach. </p>
<p>Don’t let the hw pile up. Do little bits of work or study for each course, every day. </p>
<p>If you have trouble in some course, take advantage of the office hours the prof or the TAs have, and go there & say, “I am having trouble understanding this part.” If your school has help, tutoring, etc, use it. </p>
<p>Make a calendar/chart, either on paper (hang over your desk for fresh reminders) or on your device or whatever works for you, showing which assignments have to be read, completed, etc by whichever dates. Pay attention to it! It helps if you write in a different color ink for each course, if you are a visually oriented person. </p>
<p>If you have to read chapters in a book by such & such dates, open it to the table of contents, and in pencil write the dates by which each chapter has to be read, next to its title. That way the assignment is always with the book. </p>
<p>Don’t slack off & join others partying when you have something coming up. Finish your hw or whatever & join the party a little later. The beer willl still be there. </p>
<p>IF you are one of those people who found high school work easy and hardly had to work to get As, now is reality time. You have now gotten to a place, your college, where you are with your peers. When you were in h.s., you were not. Now you will have real competition, the kind your classmates in h.s. had but you did not.</p>
<p>Don’t knock it; it is great to be with people with who you can really discuss things. And who also take their work seriously. But, now you have to learn to work in a way you have never done before. It is not easy at first but you will be enjoying it much more in a few months when you have gotten your legs under you. </p>
<p>Good luck! It will not always be this hard!</p>
<p>things my D does that has helped all through HS and now into her Junior year at college are:
- take hand written point form notes then that evening sit down and transcribe those onto full notes on the computer. She finds that rewriting her notes makes her review and understand what was being taught. If not then she knows what to review.
- project or assignments-- As soon as they are given she puts them in her cell phone calender. she divides the time she has to do them in 2 and puts that date in as a reminder that she should be 50% finished. she then puts another riminder half between this point and the due date. Her cell is synched to her computer.</p>
<p>She has said the biggest help for her is time mangement. She is having a light year this year with only 19 credit hours but has never missed out on social events has never had to pull an all nighter and maintaining between 3.98 and 3.99 overall GPA on a double major. She is also and RA. She is not what anyone would call a wizz kid but she has always worked smart to keep up grades.
Dont know that helps you but it sure works for her</p>
<p>Find the people in your classes that do well and see what they do to prepare for a class…Study with them… Go to your professor’s office hours; if nothing else to meet him/her and ask how they feel you could better prepare for tests. If there is ANYTHING in the material that you’re a bit confused on, ASK. Go to the TA’s office hours. There is a world of difference between students who get to know their professors and those who stay anonymous. NOW, consider getting a tutor…an older student in the dept you’re having the problems with, or walk-in tutor sessions. Don’t wait until the last week before finals…do it before the next exam. </p>
<p>D1 was a TA and was amazed at the number of people who didn’t ask for any additional help. Those who did often got “breaks” if they were hovering between two grades at the end of the semester. Who gets the nod? The one who actually cared about learning the material. She was also called in a panic a week before finals to try to help someone “learn” the material. She was always more than happy to help someone who sincerely wanted to learn the material, and was sometimes able to get other students to look at the material in a different way than the professor presented, which helped.</p>
<p>One of D’s top supporters was a prof she had her first semester freshman year. She continued to take his classes through school, did research with him, and he provided stellar recommendations for grad school. She did spend a proportionally higher amount of time doing schoolwork than those people she knew who partied, btw. It was all worth it…graduated w/ a 4.0 and is in a Ph.D. program at Harvard now…</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Ask for help</p></li>
<li><p>Don’t let yourself get behind, especially in math, science, and foreign language courses</p></li>
<li><p>Ask for help</p></li>
<li><p>Get enough sleep</p></li>
<li><p>Ask for help</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Did I mention … ask for help?</p>
<p>In courses where grading is test-based, don’t just passively read the material. Find ways to actively engage with it – by making up questions and testing yourself, studying with a classmate, doing sample problems from the textbook, or trying to answer the questions on last year’s exams (if available). If you have difficulty with the material, read annasdad’s post.</p>
<p>In courses where grading is based on papers, it may help to ask the professor or TA to look at an early draft and explain what parts of the paper need improvement. If you have difficulty with the mechanics of writing, there is probably a Writing Center on campus where you can get help.</p>
<p>Most colleges offer free workshops on study skills. Another good source of info is [How</a> to Become a Straight-A Student: The Unconventional Strategies Real College Students Use to Score High While Studying Less](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/How-Become-Straight--Student-Unconventional/dp/0767922719/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318357844&sr=1-2]How”>http://www.amazon.com/How-Become-Straight--Student-Unconventional/dp/0767922719/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318357844&sr=1-2). As a matter of fact, if you PM me with your address, I’ll mail it to you. My S couldn’t be bothered to read it (and his crappy GPA shows it 
).</p>
<p>One helpful tool is to check out the textbook’s website. Often it has quizzes, flashcards, notes and outlines. This was a tip that my son (now a college junior) got from his APUSH teacher.</p>
<p>Just like in high school, getting an A is as much a function of who your Professor is as anything else… </p>
<p>In the general ed / calculus / science type classes with ‘common’ tests between sections, a good Prof will be able to explain stuff while the not-so-good Prof will confuse students even more. Likewise, a good TA can explain stuff in recitation versus a not-so-good TA with an accent worse than mine will make sure to confuse’em even more.</p>
<p>Junior and Senior year the A depends as much on how the grade is calculated as anything else… Or how the Prof grades, and so on.</p>
<p>The bottom line: study, ask for help, study, study, ask for help, take advantage of tutoring and the like if available, and remember to think outside the box. The stuff is not necessarily harder than high school, but requires a far deeper understanding of what is going on.</p>
<p>Back in my days (early 80’s) we knew who teaches what class / section and we’d crash the party during Add/Drop (nothing like adding 3 different sections of the same class thanks to the paper-based add/drop… By 1984 they caught on to it and switched to on-line… </p>
<p>In smaller colleges Pick-My-Prof may not work as well, and even in Purdue sized schools nothing more fun than meeting Dr. Staff or Dr. TBD on the first day of class (Dr. Mystery Meat). </p>
<p>There’s other heuristics also; taking pesky classes in the evening (presumably evening sections of Calc and the like are for ‘working adults’ and grading may be easier), taking super pesky classes at another school first and if successful, transfer, if not, no harm done, taking them in the summer where things are faster but generally ‘easier’, etc.</p>
<p>The best advise, tho of little use, is take classes as an adult. After a few years in the workplace one becomes a lot more ‘street smart’ when it comes time to study; also, after a few years in the workplace, one has experience in writing term papers and the like that traditional students simply can’t match (tho ‘traditional’ students are getting better). Or if you have access to work equipment that common mortals don’t :-)</p>
<p>There’s a great book by a Purdue grad who went onto medical school. He was from a farm I think, and his high school record wasn’t that great. I saw it in the MIT bookstore, but I forget the name of it. Anyone know the name of it?
It was a very small book, but it had some very good tips.</p>
<p>My D has learned that if she plans to study at the library after dinner, she should take her backpack/books with her to dinner and NOT go back to her room when she is done eating. It is far too easy to waste a bunch of time (and sometimes never get to the library at all). That little bit of discipline has helped her to a 3.9 GPA in college; she claims it is one of her most important habits.</p>
<p>A couple of tips from the book: take notes on the material for the lecture the day before the lecture (look at the assigned reading,) then take notes during the lecture. Later on you should take summary notes of your original notes (the book calls them “notes notes.”)</p>
<p>Does your institution have a study skills center or tutoring center? That may be something to look into. </p>
<p>I make formal notes that I organize clearly & designed for my learning style about 1 week before the exam. I combine class notes, text notes, & any other supplements in one document (combining items from different sources that are similar so it’s user friendly) . I consequently study while I make it & I can carry around with me all week.</p>
<p>Self-testing has been shown to be a good way to learn material.<br>
[Repeated</a> test-taking better for retention than repeated studying, research shows | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis](<a href=“http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/6715.aspx]Repeated”>Repeated test-taking better for retention than repeated studying, research shows - The Source - Washington University in St. Louis)</p>
<p>I am going to make sure to keep checking on this thread. Probably won’t help since I have a midterm tomorrow but they might help for finals? Haha. Oh college.</p>
<p>Along the lines of sacchi’s good link: my hs APUSH teacher taught us this study technique, which served me well in college (graduated college with a 3.8 GPA):</p>
<p>To prepare for a test, take a few sheets of paper and divide them into 2 columns. Go thru your notes and the book, and write down likely questions or important items in the left-hand column. Write down the corresponding answers on the right. When you have finished doing this, fold the paper back, go thru and quiz yourself. If you get the answer right, check that question off. When you finish the quiz, go back thru and only do the questions you got wrong. Odds are you won’t have to go thru a 3rd time - and if you do, it will only be in 1 or 2 areas you really don’t understand. Seek out help on those areas if necessary.</p>
<p>You should spend 75 - 90% of your time in this method creating the quiz. Go ahead and write down questions you are confident that you know the answers to, as well as questions you aren’t so sure about. For subjects like math, write down samples of different types of problems in the left column, and how to solve them on the right.</p>
<p>PS - many researchers have found that pulling an all-nighter rarely raises your test grade. Kids who get a good night’s sleep do better than those who stay up all night in an attempt to study, and show up bleary eyed and foggy-brained to take the test.</p>
<p>A lot of people swear by Cornell notes: [Cornell</a> Notes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Notes]Cornell”>Cornell Notes - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>goto each and every professor’s office hours. he is there for a reason… to help you.</p>
<p>I think one key to studying for exams is keeping the activity ‘active’. This will not only hold your attention better and make it more engrossing, but you will also learn more that way. Of course for quantitative courses, it may be a bit easier because you can always find and do problem sets. But for other types of courses that are more text based, you want to avoid just reading text or reading notes. You probably already do this but you might try to find other methods to supplement this active approach. </p>
<p>There are examples of active already on this thread but you can think of others: make a cheat sheet (everything on one page, even if you can’t bring it to class as a real cheat sheet), do as others have suggested and make up questions and answer them, work in a group and develop questions and quiz one another, make notes and more notes on the readings and maybe try to combine the notes into a meaningful whole or even diagram when appropriate, teach your friends, try to come up with metaphors when its applicable, think up examples to illustrate concepts, draw visuals…</p>
<p>These are just examples, but you have to find the active method that engages you, matches the material and also your learning style. </p>
<p>I also concur with others that have stated staying up on your work. Read the textbook and make notes before each class, not the night before the exam! Ditto with doing the problem sets…and then doing more if you haven’t mastered a particular area (the internet is great for that but so are TAs and professors if you want more). </p>
<p>As you go through the course, use some sort of scheme to make note of spots you are weak on: things you don’t really get yet, problems you kept getting wrong, and other cues. When it comes to studying, give those areas extra attention!</p>
<p>Don’t leave studying to the night before. Spread it out, so you have time to get help if you are stuck, work through tough spots, deal with fatigue or lack of motivation that sometimes we just can’t control. There are so many reasons to try to master the material before the night before (when you actually have the time to do so at least).</p>
<p>Visit your prof, especially if you don’t do well on a project or exam…seek him or her out for advice and guidance on where you went wrong.</p>
<p>Give this a try.</p>
<p>[The</a> Cornell Note Taking System](<a href=“http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/Departments/enreadtp/Cornell.html]The”>http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/Departments/enreadtp/Cornell.html)</p>