Are you unhappy with the grades that you’ve been getting thus far in your college classes? If so, you might not be studying enough at this time.
Some recent studies have shown that college students are studying a lot less as a whole than they used to. Back in the 1960s, college students spent an average of 24 hours each week studying. Today, they only spend about 14 hours studying per week.
Improving your study habits might be one way in which you can give your academic performance a big boost. But it’s not the only thing that you can do to improve your grades and enjoy academic success.
There are also lots of other steps that you can take to stay motivated in school so that you’re able to get better grades. Today, we’re going to walk you through a few of them so that you can turn things around before it’s too late.
Here is what you’re going to need to do to improve your academic performance one step at a time.
Set Academic Goals for Yourself at the Start of Every Semester
Have you gotten into the habit of setting goals for yourself throughout your time in college? If you haven’t done this, this could be one of the many keys to you accomplishing academic success.
At the beginning of each semester, you should take a look at your upcoming class schedule and set a series of academic goals for yourself. You should go as far as to write these goals down so that you’re more likely to hold yourself to them as you move forward.
If you truly have your eyes on the prize, you might want to make one of your goals to put yourself in a position to join an honor society like Alpha Kappa Mu. This will provide you with a great goal to shoot for and make you more motivated to get good grades than ever before. It’ll also help you begin to create a strong professional network for yourself.
Find Out What Will Be Expected of You From Different Teachers
In order to reach the goals that you set for yourself at the start of a new college semester, you’re going to need to have some expectations in place. Fortunately, each of your various teachers is going to provide you with clear expectations from the second that they hand a syllabus out to you.
You should go through each syllabus that you get from your teachers on your first few days of classes and find out what your teachers will be expecting. This will allow you to pair your teachers’ expectations with your personal goals so that you’re able to put forth your maximum effort in the classroom throughout an entire semester.
If you don’t know what your goals are or what your teachers are expecting of you, student success will prove to be elusive. It’s why you should spend so much time thinking about both your goals and your teachers’ expectations in advance.
Make Sure You’re as Organized as You Can Be
College students typically have a million and one things going on at any given moment. It can make it very difficult for them to stay as organized as they should be, which can result in their grades slumping if they’re not careful.
If you suspect that disorganization might be to blame for some of the issues that you’ve experienced in college so far, you should seek to change that ASAP. You should secure an organizer and use it to make yourself a more organized student.
You should write down the days and times when you’ll have classes in this organizer. You should also write down when you’ll have different assignments due and when quizzes and tests will be taken.
The more organized that you are, the better your grades will be at the end of your next semester. Organization should be a top priority all throughout college for you.
Stay on Top of All the Different Assignments That You Receive
Far too often, college students will slack off for the first few weeks of a semester and then spend the rest of it trying to play catch-up. They’ll spend more time socializing with their friends and not enough time with their heads in their books studying.
You should steer clear of falling into this trap at the beginning of a new semester. Instead, you should aim to complete any and all assignments that you receive. You should also stay on top of doing things like reading through the necessary course materials and studying for quizzes and tests a little bit at a time.
By doing these things, you’ll avoid having to try to play catch-up later on. It’ll allow you to focus on everything that’s happening at the end of a semester as opposed to trying to do a bunch of things you should have done at the beginning of it.
Plan Ahead for Any Larger Projects That You’ll Need to Finish
There will usually be at least one large project that all students will have to do for each of their college classes. Most teachers will assign these projects well in advance and give students plenty of time to think about them and work on them.
But unfortunately, a lot of college students tend to put these large projects off until the last minute. This often results in them putting forward lackluster academic performances when they’re working on these projects.
Rather than taking this approach to large projects, you would be so much better off planning ahead and working on large projects in sections. You won’t have to worry about scrambling at the last second to get these projects done when you have a plan for working on them gradually in place.
Develop Special Study Habits for Each of Your Different Classes
Even though college students should know better by the time that they actually get to college, many of them think that studying involves sitting and staring into a book for hours on end. But this is not going to be the best approach to take to studying in all cases.
There are, of course, going to be some college classes that will require you to sit and read your textbooks so that you’re able to retain as much information as you possibly can. But there will also be some classes that will call for you to practice skills that you’ve learned in class as part of studying.
Instead of studying for all your classes in the same exact way, you should develop specific study habits for each of your classes. In some cases, these study habits will involve reading through your course materials. But in others, they should involve putting skills that you’ve learned to good use to prove that you understand them.
Show Up for All of Your Classes Unless You Have a (Very!) Good Reason Not To
According to a survey that was done a few years ago, the average college student misses an entire semester’s worth of classes throughout the entire time that they’re in college. That amounts to hundreds of hours of classes that the average student is missing.
If you skip a class occasionally, it’s not going to be the end of the world. But if you skip several classes just about every week, you’re going to be putting yourself behind the 8-ball. It’ll be nearly impossible for you to achieve academic success when this is the case.
The simple act of showing up for all of your classes will work wonders for your grades. It’ll show your commitment to your teachers and provide you with a chance to avoid falling behind at any point during a semester.
Take Advantage of the Office Hours That Most Teachers Offer to Students
Despite what you might think, your teachers don’t want to see you get bad grades in your college classes. In a perfect world, they want to see all of their students pass their classes with flying colors since it’ll show that they’re doing a great job teaching.
With this in mind, just about all of your teachers are going to offer office hours to you when you can go and get some extra help from them. You should write down each of your teacher’s office hours in your organizer and show up for them as often as you can.
Even if you’re not having a ton of trouble in a particular class, it still wouldn’t hurt to stop by to see your teachers to show them that you care about your grades and take them seriously.
Ask Your Classmates If They Would Be Interested in Forming Study Groups
Showing up for the office hours that your teachers set up for students will no doubt help your grades to improve. But most teachers are only going to make themselves available for a few hours at most each week to help students out with any issues they might be having.
As a result, you’re also going to have to come up with some other ways to get a better handle on the concepts that you’ll be learning in your various classes. One great way to do it may be by talking with some of your classmates to see if they would be interested in creating study groups.
Some of them might not think it’s going to be worth their time to take part in these study groups. But others will jump at the opportunity to do it. You’ll be able to study with these classmates and learn from them while you’re doing it.
You might get lucky and have someone else take the reins on creating study groups in your classes. In this case, all you’ll have to do is agree to join them.
But if no one else takes the initiative, you should strongly consider taking it upon yourself to create these study groups. It’s a good way to start to sharpen your leadership skills while also improving your academic performance at the same time.
Give Yourself a Break Every So Often and Take Care of Yourself
To be the best college student that you can possibly be, you’ll have to spend a ton of time with your head buried in your books. There is just no getting around it!
But that doesn’t mean that studying should be the only thing that you do 24/7. If you don’t give yourself a break every now and then, you’re going to burn out before long. It might be counterproductive and it could make it a struggle to stay motivated when it comes to improving your academic performance.
To prevent this from happening, you should put your books down every so often and make it a point to take good care of yourself. You can do this by:
- Hitting the gym to get some exercise
- Going to the movies to catch the latest flick
- Asking your significant other to go out on a date
- Signing up for volunteering opportunities
By stepping away from your schoolwork for even just a couple of hours, you can come back to it later feeling rejuvenated. It’ll transform you into a much better student overall and help you improve your grades in no time.
You Can Improve Your Academic Performance by Utilizing These Tips
If you aren’t doing as well in college as you might like, it isn’t too late to change that. You can turn things around and improve your academic performance by leaps and bounds by utilizing all of the tips that we’ve listed here.
You might not be able to improve your grades overnight. But you should start to see them go up within just a few weeks. You should also find that it’ll be easier for you to stay motivated when your extra efforts begin to produce better results in the classroom.
Would you like to check out some more tips on developing better study habits? Look for them in the other education articles that we’ve posted on our blog.
