How can I achieve marks in mid-eighties in my fourth year at university?

April 7, 2020 9:44 AM

I am starting my fourth year this coming fall and I am eager to achieve grades in the 85 percent range if possible. Most of my grades are high seventies and low eighties, but I would like to somehow achieve marks in the 85 range for graduate school/law in the future. How can I change my study habits and write excellent papers in my fourth year?

I am studying (Honours) Political Science and Sociology -- so there is a lot of emphasis for reading heavily which I sometimes struggle with but would like to improve on to receive better grades as well as improving essay writing in fourth year. Looking for any golden study habits that would lead to higher grades (80s or 85 range.) I am also not passionate about Sociology anymore, and I think this is why my marks for Sociology have not been so great, but I am passionate about Political Science. Thanks in advance!

TL;DR: Looking for better study habits and fourth year essay writing to achieve higher marks in the 80s-85 range.

posted by RearWindow to Education (13 answers total)

Use your calendar effectively to manage your time.
posted by oceanjesse at 9:48 AM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

Does your school have a writing center? Most do, and my suggestion would be to finish any papers assigned to you very early so you can take a draft to the writing center for feedback and revision.

If you don't have a writing center, many professors will look over a draft of your paper to give you suggestions for improvement. Not all will have time or agree to do this, but it's not an unreasonable thing to ask.

Either way, plan to write your papers ahead of time and get outside feedback to make improvements.
posted by gideonfrog at 9:57 AM on April 7, 2020 [7 favorites]

To study: rewrite, in your own words, what you just learned from the sentence you read. This slows you down and forces you to understand what you just read completely.

Writing: reading more and writing more are the only things that will help. Also, what feedback have you gotten so far? Are you getting 70-80's because you just don't do assignments, or do your professors have any consistent notes for you?

Use your college's writing center or tutoring service. They almost certainly have one and if you're struggling with writing, they can often help you.
posted by blnkfrnk at 9:59 AM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

In my experience, the best students (who learn the most/can demonstrate that learning in the expected ways in the classroom --although those two things are not necessarily the same) are those who have sophisticated metacognitive strategies. In other words, they are able to understand and point to what they DO know, what they DON'T know, and brainstorm ways to move from the latter to the former.

It sounds like you need to learn to read "better"--but what does that mean in your field and for your classes? I recommend asking your professors about that, but I tend to emphasize to my students that the more advanced they get, the more that "critical reading" means to be able to highlight the author's argument and understand their evidential chain. What conversation are they joining in making this argument and how does this argument sit within the field? Oftentimes the validity or not of this argument would depend on whether the methods and theory used "make sense" within the field and for the particular question the author is engaging.

It also sounds like you want to write better essays. Again, ask your professors what they expect, but for my upper-level students, I would want to see original engagement with the arguments that you are reading. In other words, you can't just repeat others' arguments at this stage, you need to make a case for your own research questions and answers.

To get back to metacognition - you'll want to start examining your reading and writing practices and seeing what you're good at but also what you can improve on. And the best way to begin with metacognition is to take seriously the feedback you've gotten in previous classes and previous papers.

I hope this is helpful.

(on preview, I also agree with gideonfrog about the value of the writing center. Drafting an essay early helps you figure out if what you think you accomplished in an essay is actually visible/legible to a reader. I.e. they can point to gaps between what you think you did and what you actually managed to do. Take these gaps as useful self-knowledge - a pathway to figure out what you need to work on.
posted by correcaminos at 10:00 AM on April 7, 2020 [7 favorites]

As for improving your essay writing, things that might help are making use of your university's writing centre (they're probably still providing consultations virtually) as well as simply reading more. When I say reading more, I mean both reading in your field, as well as reading about writing.

When it comes to reading about writing, I have a handful of book suggestions along the lines of what your writing centre or professors might suggest. They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing is kind of a classic by now, and even if you've used it in a first-year course, it'll continue to be useful to you as a resource for constructing good arguments. It's a book that's even useful at the graduate level for students who need a refresher on academic writing. Stylish Academic Writing is another good resource, but it's something to come back to once you feel you're a reasonably solid academic writer. If part of your challenge with effective academic writing is actually about how you conduct and translate secondary research, books like The Craft of Research and A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations might be helpful to you in refining your research skills. Choose your resources wisely by diagnosing where you have specific challenges; feedback on your assignments should give you a good idea of what you need to focus on.

I don't know if your honours program is one that offers an undergrad thesis option (or demands it, as a few departments in Canada still do), but if they do, read some of the theses to get a sense of the level of writing that's typically expected of a grad school-bound fourth-year in your discipline. Some universities include these in their digital repositories; at other universities you'll either have to ask your department or library for access.

Another thing that can serve to improve your academic writing is to take a critical thinking course as an elective, often offered through philosophy departments. These courses typically aren't about writing so much as they are about the application of formal logic. Even so, they will teach you how to identify a cogent argument, which is an invaluable tool for writing and proofing your own work.
posted by blerghamot at 10:22 AM on April 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

The short, pithy advice I would give is to always focus on your audience. Your audience is the person giving you the grade. You will get what you want (a good grade) if you give them what they want. Before you write on your subject, list out the things that the grader will want to see. During the writing process, interrogate your writing and remove or restate or reorganize what you don't think the grader wants to see. Solicit the grader or your peers for examples of 'A' papers and figure out what makes them 'A' papers.
posted by Dmenet at 10:57 AM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

When I was in undergrad at the beginning of the century students almost never made use of their professor's office hours. If that is still the case now I would suggest visiting your professors' offices during their hours just to discuss your ideas for your papers and the concepts you might be struggling with as well as the ones that you found interesting. This will give you some insight into what your professor thinks is interesting and they might be able to point you to specific papers or scholars. It also gives your professor another reason to remember you which will come in handy when it is time to mark the assignments as then they might give you the benefit of the doubt in places where your point or writing isn't as clear as it should be. This latter point won't be as useful if they use some anonymizing process to submit papers but even then there's a decent chance they'll figure out it's your paper as they're reading it if you've spoken to them about it.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:14 AM on April 7, 2020 [5 favorites]

I am very tired now and will get back tomorrow, but I really want to underline the point any portmanteau in a storm is making: talk with your professor! If classes are online now, send them a mail. I'm complaining every week on the check in thread that my online teaching days are stressing me out, and the thing that is stressing me out the most is that we have so little contact with the students. I really don't want them to fail, or even to get bad marks. I can help them. But they don't communicate, so I can't help.
posted by mumimor at 1:39 PM on April 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

mumimor, this is the main strategy I'm trying to convince my kids of (one of whom is starting university in Sept). It's a harder sell than it should be, because they claim they're "shy" & could be exposed to adult opinions. But I feel like I went through univ missing a bunch of opportunities to engage with intelligent people who clearly valued my work. Plus, like you say, it's part of the job that teachers actually enjoy.
posted by sneebler at 2:21 PM on April 7, 2020

The most helpful thing I found when writing essays was to make sure I had them written a few days before the due date. Then I would put the essay away for a day before re-reading. The day break would let me forget the precise wording I had used to express my point, but the point would still be fresh in my mind. When I read it again after a day, any flaws or errors in the wording would be very apparent and were really easy to fix. I got consistently better marks when I followed that system.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 2:51 PM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

Reading and writing without distraction. I.e. put your phone away.
posted by fso at 4:58 PM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

Do them early, use your tutor's office hours to review and they will give you tips to increase the quality of your essays. Honestly, it's so rare to have students who are organised and engaged enough to do this, most educators in my experience are delighted to help, as you are demonstrating you care about the subject, your education, and their time.
posted by smoke at 6:47 PM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

To change your study habits, try reading some books like Make it Stick by Peter C. Brown and A Mind for Numbers by Barbara A. Oakley. (It says it's about math learning, but I found it to be her most readable book about how to study well and effectively.) I read both of these last summer before going back to college and have found them immensely helpful. I use a lot of strategies from the books and some were new to me, though I've done plenty of schooling before.

I also highly recommend using something like Anki flashcards for any information you want to remember -- the spaced repetition has been really helpful and I have rarely needed to reread any texts (maybe twice when I realized I missed something important the first time and then only a targeted section).
posted by Margalo Epps at 10:18 AM on April 9, 2020