đź“– ASUPEDIA

System

7 min read

Mindset and Experience

Transclude of Academic-potential

Perspectives

General Tips

How to Become a Straight-A Student

Periodic review of mindset and tips

You CAN achieve superb academic performance AND all other awesome things you’re working on

Productivity

Actually make use of lectures, tutorials, and labs

  • Check problems in exams and sheets
  • Pre-read before the lecture
  • Follow along in the textbook or other supplemental materials during the lecture
  • You should need almost no extra studying after class; only review and articulation
  • Ask cool questions
  • Make connections with the professor

How to apply these tips? Create reminders for preparation before lectures and tutorials and articulation of the contents after lectures and tutorials

Actually make use of your assignments

  • Don’t do them the day of the deadline; start early to space out your work in constant smaller chunks and genuinely get value of the assignment
  • Start it from the day of the assignment to distribute the load
  • Check the assignment before studying the material itself to motivate what you need to know
  • Group solving is nice (if done well)
  • Capture and plan straight away
  • Don’t get stuck
    • Attempt for a reasonable time
    • Ask classmates and TAs but don’t look at the answer
    • Let go and do other questions or even something else
    • Solve the problems on the go
    • Retry
  • Set the deadline at least 1 day before the actual deadline
  • Genuinely solve it
  • Look for similar questions elsewhere

How to apply these tips? Schedule the deadline of the assignment right away and schedule when you will work at it. When you’re about to study, remember to refer to the assignments first. Arrange with classmates for group solving sessions.

Studying Tips

If you're studying hard, you have done something wrong

Here’s a surprising fact

Most straight-A students don’t think “studying” is a big deal. They realize that the bulk of the work required to ace an exam has already been accomplished through identifying big ideas in lectures, extracting arguments from reading assignments, and solving problem sets. By the time the test date rolls around, all that’s left is a targeted review of the ideas that they have already mastered and internalized. Students who pull sleepless study marathons, on the other hand, are spending most of their time trying to learn from scratch the ideas that they could have been internalizing, bit by bit, as the term progressed. So forget the conventional wisdom that more studying equals better grades. — How to Become a Straight-A Student

Marshall and conquer technique

This technique is useful for preparing for exams and quizzes.

When faced with a looming quiz or exam, you have to do only two things.

First, organize your material intelligently. Second, perform a targeted review of this material. This section will teach you how to accomplish the former. Don’t worry—organizing your material properly is not a difficult task, but it is important that you do it right. Many students neglect this step, eager to dive right into the review, but by doing so they condemn themselves to hours of unnecessary work. You don’t want to be like these students. — How to Become a Straight-A Student

Define the challenge - Exam Scope
  • Which lectures and reading assignments (or problem sets) are fair game?
  • What type of questions will there be, and how many of each? As Christine from Harvard explains: “It’s helpful to know in advance what kind of knowledge will be asked for on the exam—IDs, dates, broad syntheses of the texts’ major arguments?”
  • Is the exam open note or open book? Will formulas be provided or do they need to be memorized?
  • How much time will be available? Does the professor expect the exam to be easy to complete during the test period or a challenge? Get this information early on…
Build a study guide - Marshall your resources

“I have always been a big fan of making a study guide,” admits Ryan from Dartmouth.

This is a technique that popped up again and again in my straight-A interviews. — How to Become a Straight-A Student

  • Simply look up sources for studying material that are important for covering topics that might pop up on the exam and organize them into digestible chunks
  • Think lecture slides, recorded lectures, sheets and solutions, tutorial recordings, old exams and solutions, other drive resources, YT, web search, AI, textbooks
  • Make sure to have resources for studying and practicing
Active recall - Digesting resources

Whether it’s philosophy or calculus, the most effective way to imprint a concept is to first review it and then try to explain it, unaided, in your own words.

  • This can be applied to problems as well

Practice solving old exams in timed conditions

  • Memorize over time and space out your studying
Acing the exam - Providing A+ answers

The final step of the straight-A process is actually taking the test.

Many students incorrectly believe that preparation is the only thing that counts. To them, taking a test is a simple matter of showing off what they know. This type of thinking is risky. Why? Even the most prepared student can bomb an exam due to poor test- taking skills. — How to Become a Straight-A Student

  • Skim the exam first then answer questions later
    • You get a feel of how the exam is like and how you would organize your time
    • You stimulate your brain to think about the questions, even when you focus on one later
    • You calm yourself down
  • Build a time budget
    • Know the maximum number of minutes to spend on a question before moving to the next
    • Take the time of the exam, subtract 10, and divide by the number of questions
    • Or use any other method like dividing the exam into equal fourths or thirds or whatever
  • Proceed from easy to hard
    • See the question, if it doesn’t click immediately or if it would consume a lot of effort and time, skip it
    • Avoid panicking
    • Allow your mind to think about difficult questions in the background while securing the easy questions
    • Make sure to review and not just leave early (if you have time)

Meta Tips

  • Constantly reflect (genuinely) and make sure things are going fine
  • Practicing cool high class mindset
    • Polymath aspirations
    • Genuine learning
    • Deep learning
    • Deep thinking
    • Academic beast
    • Geniuses
    • Accelerated Learning
    • High-achieving
    • …
  • Practicing cool abilities
  • Practicing cool tips and tricks
  • Practicing hard work and routines
  • Continuous improvement

Exam Success

  • Solve exam questions early on as the course progresses
  • Practice solving by hand early on

Learning Tips

Be Efficient

  • Solve hard problems on the go
  • Tackle hard concepts in passes instead of one setting
  • Interleave multiple subjects/studying material for staying active and avoiding fatigue
  • Avoid getting stuck in a dark alley
  • Make use of valuable time. Do not let minutes slip away unless you know what you’re doing. Make us of it for high priority tasks instead of wasting it at low priority ones
  • Make use of valuable resources
  • Don’t get stuck studying inefficiently
    • Dark alley
    • Dark resources
    • Dark concepts

Excelling Tips

  • Covering advanced
  • Be ahead

Routines

Daily Routine

  • Check in
  • Check out
  • Pre-reading before sessions
  • Quickly review outcomes of the day (max next day)

Weekly Routine

  • Weekly articulation
  • Weekly exams check
  • Make sure to prepare before sessions

Monthly Routine

Reflection Checkpoints

  • Midterms
  • Projects
  • Finals

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