Secrets to Scoring High grades in College
By Sarah Mwende Mwanza, Digital Divide Data, Alpha team member.
Getting good grades in
college can be difficult, especially in your first semester when you are facing
college classes for the first time.
If you feel
overwhelmed as the semester is wrapping up, don’t panic! Almost everyone I knew
in college (myself included) had difficulties in their first semester, but they
started getting good grades when they learned how to make the most of the
college system.
Talk to your professor during office hours.
Professors almost always have weekly office hours when they make
themselves available to students with questions. If you have questions, don’t
be too shy or embarrassed to go to the professor’s
office hours. Professors will
appreciate your effort and desire to do well in their course. Plus, this extra
one-on-one time can help improve your
relations with your professors.
Take advantage of teaching assistants.
If you’re at a big college where classes are huge and the lines
outside the professor’s office hours are long, turn to your TA. Teaching
assistants might not be at the top of the hierarchy of
academic titles,
but these grad students are probably pros with the undergraduate material
you’re covering in class. In fact, they may have even taken the exact same
class in their undergrad career and can be a big help in getting good grades.
Most TAs are happy to help, whether you need clarification regarding a theory
discussed during a lecture or want to bounce a paper idea off someone.
Get in touch with other students.
In every subject and
course, some students will simply take more readily to the material than
others. Talking to students who already have successfully passed the class you
are in can help give you an idea of what to expect. Peer tutoring exchanges
also can be helpful.
For example, if you’re
an English lit whiz but a math dwarf, a good tutoring exchange partner for you
might be a math whiz with subpar literary analysis skills. You can also pay a
student tutor, who will be way cheaper (and probably just as helpful for
getting good grades) as a “professional” tutor.
Get a head start.
Whether you’re writing a term paper or facing a final exam, it’s
always a good idea to get started early. Studying for a final exam is much more effective when you’re not rushing
through the material and trying to cram everything in at the last minute.
Likewise, writing a
research paper is pretty difficult if you save it for the last minute and are
trying to speed read a bunch of reference books, formulate a thesis and put it
all together in a well-worded essay while under time pressure! Avoiding
procrastination is a necessary first step to getting good grades.
Find out what kind of learner you are.
Knowing what type of
learner you are is also instrumental to getting good grades. Some people are
visual learners and best learn by seeing, others are auditory learners and best
remember something when they hear it, and still others are tactile or kinesthetic
learners and best learn when they are moving and physically experiencing
something.
Understanding how you
learn can help you study in the way that is most effective for you. For
example, I am an auditory learner, so I used to actually tape record myself
reviewing vocabulary and notes for an exam and then listen to the tape. I also
made up songs to help remember dates and events in history classes. (Of course,
I only sang them in my head during exam time!) Once you figure out how you
learn best, you can adapt your study style accordingly so that getting good
grades is less of a challenge.
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