<p>I wanted to add that many colleges have a place that can help you with study skills. You should check if your college offers this. Here is a link to some online resources: [University</a> of St. Thomas : Academic Support Center](<a href=“http://www.stthomas.edu/academicsupport/studyLinks/default.html]University”>http://www.stthomas.edu/academicsupport/studyLinks/default.html) There is also a book I highly recommend called “What Smart Students Know”. Written by a cofounder of the Princeton SAT Prep company, it aims to do for classes what their courses do for students studying for the SAT.</p>
<p>Also I want to suggest that depending on how long ago your school started, you may not have been studying enough. A rule of thumb for many math and science courses is that you’ll spend 3 hours outside of class for every hour of instruction. A typical college class meets for 1 hour 3x a week, so if this is the total amount of studying you’ve done for this class its about 3 weeks worth of studying.</p>
<p>It’s important to find out what you got wrong on this test. Think carefully about where you went wrong on this test-- did you fail to memorize something? did you not understand a concept? What was being tested? Was the info from the textbook, lab, lecture and/or problem sets/homework? Answering these questions will help you figure out how to do better next time.</p>
<p>How did other students do on the test? Find out how the successful students studied.</p>
<p>Milkweed just took the words out of my mouth. That’s all really good advice, and so is the idea of visiting the tutoring center at your school. (Your tuition dollars are paying for it - get your money’s worth!)</p>
<p>Sit down with the prof and go over the test - emphasize that you’re NOT looking for extra points but that you want to understand where you went wrong. </p>
<p>How are your other midterms going? Is the difficulty centered on this one class or are you noticing a general disconnect between your studying and the results?</p>