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How do I get better grades?

How can I do better in exams to get better grades?

  • I'm a college freshman and have recently declared a Physics major. It's been only two semester but I've only got Bs when everyone else seems to be getting As. I don't want straight As but no A at all in the 9 classes I've taken so far seems really bad. I do all my homework on my own and go to office hours for problems that I cannot solve. In fact, my homework-only-grades for all classes are pretty good. However, I bomb almost all tests and always get below average scores. And so, all my grades are barely Bs. Transition from high school to college was a big step for me but I'm trying so hard to do well but nothing seems to be working. Sure I wasn't the best student in high school but I did fairly well but now everything looks so dire. I've always loved Physics and enjoy my classes. What makes me very sad is that I really want to go to grad school but it feels like my GPA will hurt me really bad. What can I do to improve my grades?

  • Answer:

    I studied engineering, so I can only speak from the perspective of general physics. I often found myself in a similar situation, doing fine on homework problems, labs, etc., but struggling on exams. They often presented novel situations and were on a whole different level from homework. What started working for me was doing a LOT of additional practice problems in addition to assigned ones. I would do unassigned textbook problems, look up past exams, dig up different textbooks for more problems, and go to the TAs to ask for even more. Do easy and hard problems alike. Easy problems will build your speed and intuition (imagine trying to do algebra without being able to automatically comprehend arithmetic). Hard problems will develop your intuition even further and teach you better problem solving skills. Of course, it helps if you have answers/solutions available so you know if you're doing things correctly, but you can also go to the profs/TAs. It's good that you do all the homework and go to office hours, but at the end of the day, doing well on exams is largely an issue of speed, good intuition, and problem solving. It's okay if you don't have these things to start with, but you will have to take the extra effort to develop them.

Eugene Song at Quora Visit the source

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How is your life apart from academics? Are you happy? Are you sleeping well? Are you eating healthy food? Are you exercising? These things are correlated with good performance in school. I personally know they have a huge effect on me. I am not a physics student, but I have taken chemistry classes and I know that the concepts build on one another. If I neglected studying for a single test in a chemistry class, it could effect my understanding of concepts for the rest of my academic career if I did not make up the work. I would think this would be similar for physics students. If you want to continue in physics and to do well later on, especially if you want to go to grad school, you must go back and master the fundamental classes or your experience in grad school will be horrendous. I suggest that you work more closely with your TA's and your professors. Let them know that you are dedicated and motivated to being successful. They may be wary to spend too much time with you because of all of the other students, but milk them for all the time they will give you in 1 on 1 discussions. However, always be prepared for when you meet with them. Go over the textbooks, homeworks and exams, identify spots you struggled, and master the concepts. Confront them with whatever weakspots that you cannot strengthen on your own.

Derek Smishel

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