Sick of getting bad grades

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IWTBAD

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I've really been trying to improve my studying skills which involves seeing advisers, talking to professors, and mostly just staying on top of my work. However, no one seems to sympathize with a person who manages to do B+ work in C curved classes at my university. So I'm looking to SDN, how do I break the A barrier? How do I go above and behind?

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Start with analyzing how you're studying. What do you do to prepare for a test? How much do you study? Are you distracted as you study?
 
It's important to not only understand how something works, but why it works. Understand the big picture, and be able to apply the knowledge you learn from a specific example to other scenarios. People who understand the material and can think critically with the knowledge they have are the ones who destroy exams and get A's.

So for example, say you're in biology learning about cells. You just learned that the phospholipid bilayer makes up the membrane of the cell. A student likely to get a B to an A- on the exam would know this. A student likely to get an A would not only know this, but also which parts are polar and non-polar, why the membrane is oriented that way, and what molecules are able to passively diffuse through the membrane.
 
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Two recommendations:

1.) Try to get excited about what you are learning. Even if you have to fake it.

2.) Attempt to teach it to someone else. If you aren't able to explain it to your parents in a letter then you are missing information.
 
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People here aren't going to agree with this, but you need to memorize. Just straight up memorize. When you do practice exams or problem sets and you aren't 100% comfortable with any concept or fact, write a short note on a word document. Read through it a dozen times until you can spout off everything. Basic understanding is important, but B+/A- versus high A is knowing facts without thinking for a second about them, and being able to recall things without being prompted.
 
Memorizing, yes, will get you through a course (intro courses I've noticed). But all the upper level things I've taken (with the exception of anatomy, obviously) memorization would have killed me. Sure, learning certain terms and concepts does indeed help, but you have to know how to apply this. My upper level courses were not by any means regurgitation of the notes. The mcat isn't either. There are other effective ways to study.

The point is to learn it.
 
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