

Ask HN: How did you get avg 95% in University? - tootlol

In every year there are always a certain percentage of students who manage to achieve really high marks on CS midterms and exams. How do you study for CS or math exams? I am sure there are many overachievers on HN. Could you please share how you did it? Do you need to have a really solid background before tackling a course or am I doing it wrong?<p>P.S. I know marks are not everything but I am still curious on how some students manage to do it in a top CS school.
======
mtinkerhess
In my experience, it's surprisingly easy to get through most classes without
doing the recommended / assigned reading for a course. Often, the professor
will basically go over the same material in class as was covered by the
reading, so if you didn't do the reading you'll get the material in
lecture—alternatively, if you do the reading you can get away with not going
to class.

If you simply do all the reading for a class (a couple of days before the
class session, so it has time to sink in), you'll be much more likely to
absorb all the details the professor mentions in the lecture, or that you
missed the first time around in the reading. You'll also be ready to ask more
informative questions, that will get help you get ahead instead of catching
you up.

Other tips (some might seem obvious): keep a notebook where you take notes on
the readings and the lectures; review the reading with your notes shortly
after the corresponding lecture; go to office hours if you don't understand
something or are having trouble with a homework or programming assignment;
start homework assignments as soon as they're assigned (especially for larger
projects); plan on spending twice as much time as you expect on homework /
projects.

If you keep up (or keep ahead) during the course of the semester, you
shouldn't have to work too hard to study for the exams. Use whatever study
guides (or hints about the contents of the exam) the professor gives you as a
guide, and make sure you understand all of it. If you don't understand
something, take advantage of office hours to get help.

There is also strategy to taking tests well. Some tips: skip a question if you
don't know how to answer it right away and answer it later; show you work or
explain your reasoning so that you might get partial credit even if you get
the wrong answer; if a question is unclear, go ask the professor for
clarification; often times questions later in an exam will give hints as to
the right way to approach questions earlier in the exam; get plenty of sleep
the night before, and a good breakfast and coffee the morning of; don't worry
too much, because worrying won't help you to perform better.

~~~
andre3k1
This about covers it.

\- Read and highlight the textbook before class.

\- Go to class, pay attention, take notes and ask questions.

\- Go to TA sections and office hours. Come with questions.

\- Do the homework with time (ie not an hour before it's due).

\- Start studying for exams 2-3 weeks before the exam date.

But most importantly, you really have to want to get A's. Motivation is key.
While your friends are out partying and getting drunk you need to be in the
library. Sounds terrible, but that's the point. There is a tradeoff. I just
graduated with a B+ average. I know I could have done better, but having a
social life was important to me. (Also working for Techmeme took up a
considerable amount of my time).

~~~
ruby_on_rails
lol. You sound like a professor. Sadly, that is the way to (hopefully) get
high marks and waste a great deal of time. There are lots of ways, many of
which are completely legitimate and many which are questionable.

Case and point freshman year when you are joining fraternities. Pick one that
has a few A+ students in your degree path. All (well most) fraternities keep
old notes, quizes, papers, and tests on hand for new brothers. That and if
there are brothers who are good students in your degree path, you'll have help
at almost any time of day. Sure other people do it too, but frats are a sure
bet.

That's just one method. There are plenty of others that work as well.

------
Brewer
I've just read through the replies here and I thought that maybe I'd throw in
my two cents. First off, I do not have a 95% average. In fact, I failed 3 out
of 5 courses last semester. I had piled Calculus I, Linear Algebra I, and
Microeconomics into the same semester and apparently I wasn't ready to take
all of those at one time.

Realizing that my GPA was so bad (1.63 as of now) got me pretty depressed. I
started Googling how I could fix my GPA and how I could become a better
student. I came across a site called StudyHacks
(<http://calnewport.com/blog/>) that had a lot of great articles that were
enjoyable to read. I'm going to go to the library in the next week or so and
get Cal's book "How to Become a Straight-A Student" (I'd do it now, but I'm
reading The Pragmatic Programmer) and I hope that the book will make things
more clear.

In the coming year there are a few changes I want to make. The biggest once,
contrary to what others on here have said, is that I want to become organized.
I've always been the type of person to enjoy what I'll call "organized chaos".
There is a place for everything, and that place is wherever it happens to be.
That has to change.

The next thing I want to change is that I'm actually going to work on my
problem sets. It's been mentioned that problem sets are usually only worth 10
or 15 percent of your final mark. What I find is that while they aren't worth
much, not doing your problem sets will affect your test grades in a negative
way. Not only are problem sets a grade, they are the best practice that you
can get.

The last thing that I want to do is to get involved around my university. We
have a CS society that, I'm sad to say, doesn't do much more than drink (not
that drinking is a bad thing). I want to get involved with the society,
generate new members, and help get the society more active. I have a few ideas
that I'm going to bring up with some of the society "executives" that I hope
they will like as much as I do.

Obviously I don't have a 95% average, so take everything I say with a grain of
salt. I hope it will work for me though. And I think that is the biggest thing
there is to consider. Just because something worked for someone else, doesn't
mean that it will work for you. Try out different things and see what you
like.

------
curt
Greatest day of college was the day I stopped giving a crap about grades.
Remember you're there to learn not get good grades. It opens everything up,
you don't worry about taking difficult classes that will challenge you or
overloading on credits. Took classes in every engineering field, economics,
business, history, whatever I "wanted" to learn. Seriously it was the greatest
realization I had up to that point in my life, never even opened a report card
during my senior year or grad school. If you have a solid foundation to build
off of learning new things becomes really easy later in life.

Still don't flunk, a B is fine, usually you can get 80% of the results with
20% the effort. Focus on what's valuable to you and forget about the rest.

~~~
tootlol
I have stated that marks are not everything. I am just curious on how a (high)
moderately intelligent student could do it, because some exams are impossible
to get 100%; it seems like hack to me.

~~~
curt
Step back from the problem, focus on developing your analytical/problem
solving abilities. Any engineering, math, or science problem is just logical
reasoning. Don't focus on the subject matter so much, focus on the process.
Then you can solve anything

------
cperciva
I handed in 50% of the homework and got 100% on the exams. Most courses I took
had 10% of the final grade based on homework.

And no, I didn't study; but I did read the textbooks cover-to-cover before the
first day of lectures, so I already had a firm grasp on the material before it
was presented to the class.

~~~
tootlol
could you be a little more specific about how you read entire textbooks cover-
to-cover in the first day? Edit: Googling you up shows that you were a
prodigy. Perhaps you knew everything already but just needed to review a
little? Is that what you mean?

~~~
nostrademons
He said "before the first day", not "on the first day". Oftentimes the
textbooks are announced and available for purchase about 2 weeks before the
class actually begins, to give the students that order them online time to
receive them.

It's not actually that hard. If you have 14 days and your textbook is 700
pages long, that's 50 pages a day, which is eminently possible, particularly
if you don't have classes to go to.

Occasionally, I pulled a trick where I went to the first class, grabbed the
syllabus, bought the textbook, read the textbook cover-to-cover during the
"shopping period" where we could change our classes, dropped the class, and
then returned the textbook for a full refund. All the material, 1/6th the
time, and none of the money.

Actually, now that I'm employed and have an income, I do basically the same
thing: buy the textbook online, read it, and don't bother taking the course.
1/6th the time, 1/50th the money (~$100 instead of ~$5000), and I learn just
as much.

~~~
shadowpwner
Why bother signing up for the class in the beginning? A quick Google search
would result in good textbook recommendations.

~~~
cperciva
Despite having a firm grasp on course material before it was presented in
class, I found most of my lectures very useful, because they provided me with
a different perspective on things.

~~~
shadowpwner
He (original poster) dropped the class before attending any of the lectures.

------
shriphani
My current GPA is 3.95 (Purdue CS - not sure if it is top-ranked or not) and I
try hard to maintain it. I focus a lot on grades because back in high-school,
an accident in grade 10 destroyed my grades and closed a lot of education
opportunities (I was restricted to the bed, couldn't go to participate in
contests, exams, classmates attended top quality after-school sessions for
math and science and I could do none of that - I had very shitty internet - a
session would never last long enough to download Vim let alone Linux) When it
was time to apply for college, my high school GPA was enough to deny me entry
into schools I had dreamed of attending. That humiliation has stuck with me
forever. This is one thing in my control, I try my best not to screw things
up.

~~~
tootlol
So how did you do it?

~~~
shriphani
The same way everyone else does it:

1\. Attend class irrespective of the time. 2\. Turn in all assignments. 3\.
Start ahead of time on projects 4\. Regularly go to office hours.

~~~
tootlol
What happens when you feel bogged down by assignments? Do you just hand in an
incomplete or completely skip it? Could you break down your typical schedule
for a week?

------
tootlol
Its seem the comments here are all along the lines of pay attention, do
assignments, take notes etc. But how do you keep up with the intensity of
doing all this? Is it like weight lifting where at first it feels really
uncomfortable, but once you get use to it, it's easy? Also, how do you avoid
being bogged down by hard CS assignments (40 hours)? What would a 95% person
do in this situation? For example, my cs friend who got 96 told me that he
just doesn't sleep and he gets help when he needs it and also he tried to
leverage off power of programming language or reusable code. Are there any
other hacks?

~~~
Brewer
I've actually come to find that all-nights never help. I do terrible work when
I'm tired compared to when I'm not and I'm a zombie the next day. The biggest
thing you could do I suppose is just start something the day it's assigned.
When you have more assignments, rank them based on difficulty, value (grade
wise, projects should be important), and the time you expect the assignment to
take.

------
nwhitehead
Top hacks: 1) Buy books, learn material before class starts. Then review each
section before each class, with notes and questions. You know you are doing it
right when everything is boringly obvious by the time you officially get to
it. 2) Practice doing problems as fast as possible. During exams, do all
problems quickly, keep doing passes through all the questions to fix mistakes
until time is up. 3) Explain what you learn to others. This is where you
actually start understanding.

~~~
tootlol
Did you find success with this approach? Is it enough to get 95%?

~~~
nwhitehead
Every time I did these I got 98% or higher. I only got worse grades when I
didn't have time to do all these things because of how many classes I was
taking simultaneously.

~~~
tootlol
How do you manage your assignments? Do you ever feel bogged down by them?

~~~
nwhitehead
Start doing them as soon as you get them. Never spend too long on any one
assignment or question. If one question is taking too long, ask for help as
soon as you can. Practice getting and giving help, these are crucial skills.
If necessary, cut your losses (but always turn in your best current attempt
for every problem, never miss anything).

------
veyron
At the end of the day, if you have a strong understanding of fundamentals
(basic calculus, number theory, C), the rest is just creative applications (eg
algorithms, where the motivations for most of the introductory algorithms are
easily deduced)

And if you organize your knowledge as such, you can power through 10 CS
classes in a semester on top of 4 other required classes

~~~
tootlol
Here you done it? If you have could you be more detailed?

~~~
veyron
Yeah, and we probably should take this discussion to email. What's your
address?

~~~
tootlol
jovekq(at)hotmail.com please reply to this comment when you want to
communicate through email.

------
jivejones
I went to college, but was able to get 89% average with about 20 hours a week
of homework/studying etc. The girl who beat me, as far as average goes got 99%
but spent 60 hours a week on homework/studying.

I was able to tutor 10 students and build two serious web apps in that extra
40 hours a week, who do you think came out on top?

~~~
tootlol
which school did you go to and what were the web apps?

------
atomicdog
You sacrifice a social life.

