Tips to Ace Your Exams This Semester
It’s two in the morning, you have a midterm worth a third of your grade in six hours, and you don’t even know what chapters it’s on. We’ve all been there. The story doesn’t end well. You
cram, show up to the exam, blank, and then fail the test. It’s an all too familiar cycle, one that I
hope you won’t have to experience this semester. It goes without saying that cramming the day before an exam is not a viable long-term strategy. The anxiety, stress, and tears just aren’t worth it. For many, the first week of midterms becomes a wake-up call to start taking school seriously. To help you in your journey to becoming a better academic, here are two empirically supported tips on how to achieve higher grades this Fall semester.
1. Participate in class.
Do you know what the top contributing factor to achieving a high grade is? Is it intelligence? Well, IQ certainly does play a contributing role, but that isn’t it. Then what about conscientiousness, or how much effort you put in during the semester? Putting in work is conducive to success, yes, but it too isn’t the top contributor. It’s attendance. Just showing up and participating in class is enough to bump up your grade by a half-letter or two. It’s as simple as that, but there is one small caveat. When you show up for class, ensure that you’re dedicating all your attention to the lecture. You can survive an hour or two without your phone, social media, or whatever fancy that distracts you from paying attention. Avoid becoming passive during class. Your professors are experts in their field; there is always something new to be learned. Ask questions, especially about concepts you are uncertain about. Of the some-odd thirty students in your class, a good portion of them is bound to be wondering about the same thing. There really is no such thing as a stupid question.
2. Utilize mnemonics.
Mnemonics are tools that are designed to aid in memory. Think of “Roy G. BIV” for colors of the rainbow, or the phrase “Never Eat Soggy Weiners” (NESW) for the four cardinal directions. Abbreviations and novelty are the most well-known mnemonics, but there are plenty more out there. The one I find most effective is concretization. For example, say you are studying for a psychology midterm, and you know that you will be asked to define what an independent (IV) and dependent variable (DV) is. In simplest terms, an IV is the variable in an experiment that you manipulate to assess its effect on the dependent variable. Conversely, a DV is the variable in an experiment that is predicted to change because it’s affected by the DV. To concretize this, we’ll use a real-life example: studying and test scores. The more you study, the higher your test score will be. The amount you study is the independent variable, while your test score will be the dependent variable.
By Darren Lacsado
