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Secrets of Getting Good Grades in College

Take charge of this thing. College isn’t like high school. There’s no teacher or parent to remind you every day of what you need to do, so step up to bat and take responsibility. What grades you get will depend on what you yourself do.

Don’t overload. Some students think it’s a mark of pride to take as many hours as the college allows. It isn’t. Take four or at the most five courses each semester. And, unless you are very special, don’t take more than one major. Each major comes equipped with 10 or 12 required courses, and you can really kill your GPA if you’re taking lots of required—that is, forced—courses in a major that you’re only half-interested in.

Make a plan. Part of getting good grades is balancing off the various things you have to do, week by week. So get a calendar—electronic is good—and enter in all your classes, exams, and papers, and professors’ office hours (more on that later).

Be a robo-notetaker. In many intro courses, the professor’s lectures form the major part of the material tested on the midterm and final. So you should be writing down everything the professor says in the lecture.

Avoid do-overs. It’s a really bad idea to plan to do things twice: recording the lectures with the idea of listening to them again when you get home, doing the reading three times, copying over your notes the day before the test. Focus as hard as you can the first time and do a really good job.

Study like you mean it. At college, you’re expected to prepare an hour or two (sometimes more) for each class meeting. This means budgeting the time each week and finding an appropriate “study environment.”

Don’t be a Wiki-potamus. If your course has a research paper, make sure you use proper, scholarly materials. Look to the assignment sheet and/or instructions in lecture or section to see what the prof is expecting. Above all, forget about Wikipedia and blind Google searches: These typically do not yield the sort of content that is right for a college paper.

Source link: https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/professors-guide/2009/08/19/15-secrets-of-getting-good-grades-in-college

 

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