Scholarship

Find out from other students how many hours per week you will have to commit to each course to make an “A” in that course, then, balance (adjust) your course load accordingly. The number of college credit hours awarded for a particular course does not necessarily correlate with the degree of difficulty of the course or the amount of time and hard work you will have to devote to gain an A. For example, a 2-hour lab course can take many more hours of preparation than a 3 or 4-hour course.

• Choose the MOST effective Professor in the subject. Students are many times the best judge of who the most effective teachers are, so ask the students.
• For courses with large lectures combined with small sections taught by teaching assistants, seek to be in the most effective teaching assistant’s small section. Never stay in a small section group where the TA appears ineffective (trust your instinct). Be proactive and seek to transfer to a better TA. You will be taking the same exams as the students who are being taught by the best TAs. If your TA is not doing a good job, then your grade will likely suffer as a result of the TA’s ineffectiveness.
• Consider taking no more than 12 hours in your first quarter at EWU. You need to become acclimated to your college course load and see, from your own experience, the actual time you personally will need to commit in order to do well in your particular major.

Take classes that require you to write, to reason logically and to communicate more effectively as soon as possible. It will make you a better communicator throughout college, no matter what your major is.  And, it will pay off with better grades.  Your grades in college will depend on how well you write.

Don’t procrastinate – many a “C” happens when you wait too long to begin a project or a paper.

The other students at Eastern are an invaluable resource. Learn from them. They are great counselors and can provide positive peer influence. Have balance in your life here. Enjoy college through building relationships with the other students. College is a once in a lifetime opportunity to be with many people of the same age who have similar aspirations. The better your relationships with other students, the happier your college life will be. Your friends will motivate you to achieve, both in the classroom and outside of it. They will build you up and make you more confident.

• Write down student responses to a professor’s question and the professor’s reply.
• Many times the exams will reflect questions/issues raised by students in the class.
• Get the Professor’s old exams that are available. Do this at the beginning of the quarter (if you can) then review them upfront, it will help you focus on points important to the professor when they come up throughout the semester.

In Engineering and the Sciences, especially, you may need to consider re-taking a course such as Calculus I or Physics I at a college level even if you took an AP-level version of the same course in high school. Realistically evaluate your grasp of the subject matter to make this decision. These courses are building blocks. Therefore, if you did not fully master the subject in your high school class, you may be disadvantaging yourself moving forward in your major by not taking the course at a college level. Talk to other students about their experience in your particular plan of study. Consider also the fact that grades are, in many ways, the key to getting internships and permanent jobs.  Some companies have definite (and high) GPA requirements that you must meet or exceed in order even to secure an interview with them. Therefore, re-taking a course that you are already familiar with may have the added benefit of boosting your overall GPA. Overall, you may progress in your major with a stronger mastery of the subject throughout college, which will improve your performance in subsequent courses for which the entry-level course is “foundational”.

In some (not all) courses, you can significantly improve your ability to complete assignments in a timely manner and master the material by working in a study group. Students master complex problems and issues at different speeds and at different levels of understanding. By working with other students, you will improve the depth of your knowledge by gaining their insights. If taken seriously, the group dynamic will push you to think more critically and to study actively.  Consider the fact that by learning how to explain your reasoning and logic to other students, you will improve how you communicate your thought process on the exams and other assignments. The competitive nature of a study group provides a forum wherein you will be required to: (1) become more proficient in knowing and recalling relevant facts; (2) comprehend facts and ideas and be able to state them in your own words in a concise and persuasive manner; (3) apply the information you have learned to problems/issues; (4) distinguish between facts and inferences/conclusions; (5) synthesize the information learned, that is, construct a coherent understanding of the entire topic from disparate sometimes incongruent parts; and (6) evaluate the relative importance of each concept/idea.

Go to office hours. Make sure your professor knows your name. Make a good impression. Ask good questions. Demonstrate good judgment. If your performance in the professor’s class is at a high level and the professor knows you and likes you, the professor may help you secure internships/jobs/graduate admissions.

In college, you have to put in a lot more time to get an A over a B, especially in technical courses. Realize this and do it. Recognize also, that no matter how challenging your high school/prep school was, this is college. You will have to put in more study time in college to do as well as you did in high school. As well as working hard, work smart. Actively study with other students. Use your peers to motivate you. Use your own peer pressure to get your fellow students to focus and study too. (It is part of being a good friend).