<p>I worked over 10 hours on a paper once and got a B on it.</p>
<p>I started studying for a final about 3 hours before the test, memorizing over 90 pages of 12-font single-spaced notes and got an A.</p>
<p>These kinds of situations have happened over and over again.</p>
<p>Obviously, hard work does not equate with good grades. So the smart thing to do would be to minimize the hard work and improve the grades, giving you more time to do non-academic-related things.</p>
<p>Post your suggestions and techniques here.</p>
<p>Here’s one I have learned:
Don’t write really complex papers. TAs have too much other stuff to do, and would rather read a paper that sounded like a preschooler wrote it as opposed to a thesis so they can stop caring about you earlier.</p>
<p>Here’s an obvious one:
Your selection of courses should partially be made on the basis of the final exam schedule. If you have too many exams packed too close to each other, or a number of tough exams immediately after your classes finish for the semester, you will probably suffer from greater stress and do worse on the finals.</p>
<p>I agree with ticklemepink; having TA’d for a number of classes and also knowing other TAs, we look for what our profs tell us to, and that almost always includes a clear thesis, well-defined and appropriate structure, and content of the paper.
If your paper is too difficult to be read by someone 2-4 years younger than you, then it’s probably not well-written. Some college students seem to think that using 8- or 9-line compound sentences with the biggest words they can think of is going to impress an instructor or TA, but they’re usually very confusing (even if you do manage to avoid making it technically a run-on sentence). If you did that on a paper, then I’d grade you down too. We DO skim papers, because often we’re asked to grade 50-100 papers and only given a few days in which to do it. Tests are much easier to grade (more objective) and also more straight-forward to study for than papers are to write, so it doesn’t surprise me that a few hours of studying for a test got you an A, while 10 hours on a paper got you a B.
I know for my mid-semester senior thesis, I spent between 40 and 60 hours (including research).</p>
<p>Anyway, go read a journal article written by a Ph.D. for his/her colleagues and you’ll see what I mean. The articles are written at a level that an undergraduate can read with very little (if any) difficulty, even though we have 5-10 years less educational training than a PhD does! (Even a high schooler could probably manage to understand most of them.)</p>
<p>Base your classes on what you intend to learn in college.
The final exam schedule shouldn’t really play into the equation if you go to class and learn the material throughout the semester!</p>
<p>Or take mostly classes that just give an hourly exam on the last day of regular classes but no cummulative final during finals week. And don’t take more than the minimum number of credits after finishing most of your major requirements.</p>
<p>Maybe you go to a bigger school. I go to a liberal arts college, not a single class has TA’s (except for science lectures, and they’re only used for extra tutoring sessions).</p>
<p>mm…cool. I actually go to a fairly small, private university (5,000 traditional UG; 10,000 total)… TAs generally don’t teach classes here or anything (SIs do the tutoring sessions for science labs and lectures as well as a few other depts’ courses), but most professors have TAs who help them with grading. It’s usually behind the scenes (i.e., you may never know you have a TA unless the prof mentions it or you argue a grade and they send you to the TA because the TA graded it so your beef is with them)</p>
<p>ask profs to give you an exam they used in previous years. Most won’t, but the odd one you can get tends to be a gem. They don’t tend to change them up much from year to year, so you get a really good idea of what you need to study. </p>
<p>Also, the day before an exam you’re better off going to bed at midnight slightly underprepared than staying up till four in the morning trying to cram.</p>
<p>Students who’ve taken that class (with that prof) may also have old copies of exams (depending on whether they were scantron or whatnot of course)</p>
<p>That’s not what I did. I did not use verbose language or massive sentences to attempt to appear more intelligent. What I did was exactly what should have earned me a higher grade: write a more thorough, complex paper, which I thought was sufficiently clear. There are also comments missing on almost the entire second half of the paper, leading me to believe he did not read it or skimmed it without actually reading into it.</p>
<p>Anyway, after seeing my final grade I’m almost completely sure that my TA is trying to be an *******, especially since I did significantly worse in this class while somehow managing to maintain As in all my other classes.</p>
<p>Anyway, on topic:</p>
<p>I agree that classes should be chosen on the basis of what your major/minor requires. It should also be chosen based on ratings. However, what I meant was that GIVEN these reasons for selection, then (if practical), one should improve their class selection further by also choosing classes based on final exam schedule. The final exam schedule alone can have a big impact on your grade.</p>
<p>I also DISagree that classes should be chosen just because they’re easy. First, graduate/law/etc. schools can sometimes tell if you chose the easy way out, and thus dismiss the grade as less significant. Second, sometimes your major requires more difficult classes. What is more practical is choosing, for each semester, a varied selection: some easier classes, some more difficult classes, which balance out the workload. Chances are, you will not have all easy classes every semester, unless you go to a ****ty school (and if you are, then ignore my advice because you shouldn’t need it), and if you choose plenty of easy classes one semester, you may find that your major requirements or the limited number of easy classes will then restrict you to having to choose more difficult classes for the next semester.</p>