College is a significant time in one’s life. Aside from being away from familiar surroundings and faces, college is also when you get your first real sense of freedom.
However, the most significant one is that this is the last challenge you need to get through before commencing the career of your dreams.
For some students, getting by is good enough. For some, graduating is not merely enough: they want to emerge as top students as well. If you have your sights on graduating cum Laude, here are some tips and tricks to help you along.
1. Pick Your Course Wisely
The first step towards good performance lies in your course selection. This is something you have to put a lot of thought into if you are to succeed.
For starters, think about your interests. Picking something in a field of interest makes studying much easier as you will enjoy learning and discovering new things and going the extra mile for your studies.
The other is your skills and aptitudes. If, for example, you have always been lacking in math, picking statistical courses or engineering courses puts you at a disadvantage. This is because you are going against your natural abilities to perform and competing with students whose math is their forte.
2. Attend All Classes
College is much different from high school. You probably had to be accountable to someone if you skipped a class. Your teacher would also likely seek an explanation as to why.
College is much different. With larger classes and students being perceived as adults, there is minimal supervision. This freedom comes at a cost.
While no one will follow up on your attendance, skipping classes will affect your education. Your performance will suffer.
Use this time to nurture a culture of discipline. This will serve you well throughout your life. An excellent place to start this is by ensuring you attend all your classes and do so in time.
3. Have a Learning Attitude
Attending all your classes means nothing if you will twiddle on your phone or pass notes to your friends the entire time.
Instead, use this time effectively to learn and engage as much as possible.
This means picking a seat that places you in an optimal position to see the lecture, the board, and other learning aids. Once there, listening actively by ensuring you have cut all distractions.
Similarly, take notes as the lecture goes on, ask questions and contribute to class discussions. All these will help enhance your understanding of learned concepts and their applications.
4. Explore All Resources
Think of graduating a top student as a marathon. Before winning a marathon, athletes will take up different activities, big and small.
These efforts cumulatively work together to help them achieve the final goal.
Likewise, explore all the tools and resources you utilize to ensure you graduate cum laude.
You can get all the assistance you need in statistics from online tutors, and you can form study groups, talk to your instructors, and so on.
All these efforts will pay off in the end.
5. Create a Study Schedule
Aside from lectures and group work, it helps to carve out time for individual study.
During this time, you read your textbooks, fill-in notes, attempt problem solving, and so on. During this study, you will identify areas you need to focus on and those you will need extra help.
Therefore, create a study schedule that covers all your classes so that each unit gets ample time. The schedule itself is not enough; you need to follow it to the latter even on days when the last thing you’d want to do is study.
