Speaker 1: Hello everyone, welcome back to my channel Conquer College Admissions. My name is Julie Kim and I'm a graduate of USC and Harvard, now mentoring and guiding high school students to get accepted into their dream Ivy League and top tier using their passion and strength. Today I'm going to be talking about how you can raise your GPA in 30 days. And if you are here for the very first time, make sure to click on the subscribe button so that you'll be notified when I release videos every week. When I was in high school I struggled a lot in between my middle school to high school transition because when I was in middle school we didn't really get a lot of quizzes and tests and they were fairly easy and when I got to high school the English essays became harder, the AP U.S. History, DBQs and essays and tests became harder. And so I really had to figure out a way to study and I feel like one of the things that we're not taught in school is how to study effectively, how to manage our time effectively, and that is the reason why I became obsessed with how can I study efficiently and how can I study to the best of my ability so that I can raise my GPA. So I have compiled all the skills and strategies that I've used over the years and I'm proud to say that during my college years I've received straight A's and even at Harvard I had mostly A's. I had one B but I had mostly A's graduating from the school. So I have different strategies for each subject so we'll go ahead and start off with math. So with math, it's very important that you practice. So you know how you get homework questions from your high school teachers? So they'll say okay for chapter 4.1 unit 1 I want you to solve questions from number 3 to 37 odd numbers. And so what I did was I solved the questions for my homework assignments obviously and what I would do four days before the test day is to re-solve all of those questions in my practice notebook. So if you've watched a couple of my videos on study techniques, I always talk about how you need to practice your math questions using a separate notebook. Practicing doesn't mean that you're just looking at the question and just looking at the solutions and saying okay, I get it. So what I tell my students inside my Ivy League formula program is I tell my students okay, you're gonna practice your homework questions three times and the questions that you miss or questions you don't know how to solve, you're gonna go ahead and circle them in red and you're gonna take that question to your tutor or to your teacher and figure out how to solve that question. And once you figure that out, you still want to practice that same question three times. What this does is number one, you can figure out what you know and we don't know and number two, you will avoid any silly mistakes. The number one thing that I hear from students after a math test is oh, like I knew how to solve it. They'll say I made a silly calculation mistake. So it's very important that you practice three times and you study and practice those questions four days before the actual testing. And for quizzes, I encourage my students to study two days in advance and resolve all the math questions. Alright, with English, this one is a little bit tricky because English teachers are very different. Some are very chill and you just have to do some homework and quizzes and you're pretty good to go and you have a big project at the end and I had that kind of an English teacher when I was a freshman. But when I got to my 10th grade year and 11th grade year and my AP English class, it started to get really hard. So what I would recommend you to do with your English classes is for the essays, you want to write out a couple of rough drafts of the prompts that you might get. So, you know after you are finished reading a novel, your teacher is gonna either give you an in-class essay or a take-home essay. Whatever it is, you want to practice and take that rough draft to either your English tutor or your English teacher. Actually, I would recommend your English teacher more than your English tutor because your English teacher is the greater. So you want to take the rough draft and take it to your English teacher and give feedback. How can I improve my thesis statement? How can I improve my evidence? How can I improve my reasoning skills? How can I improve my analytical skills? And so that is a way that you can get feedback and it also lets your English teacher know that you're trying really hard, that you're practicing in advance and that could also be, you know, a good thing to see in a student who is trying instead of just saying, oh, I'm not good at writing essays and all of that stuff. So that's what I would recommend for essays. Now for quizzes and tests, obviously you want to understand what your teacher is looking for. So some English teachers will give you really detailed quizzes, which means that when you're reading, you got to take a lot of notes, you got to take some time to memorize the concepts and details and dates and people and things like that. I had an AP English teacher like that and some English teachers will just give you very like general multiple-choice questions. So you want to figure this out in advance so that you're not like, oh my gosh, the quiz is so detailed than I expected. So do some prior research before actually going into your English class and also you can ask your teacher too. Like, you know, I've been studying for the chapter test that's coming up. What should I be expecting? Is the study good enough? Is it going to be detailed? So ask questions so that you're not making any assumptions. Okay, so the next subject is not really a subject, but I wanted to talk about AP classes. And I know AP classes could take up a lot of time because you might have a lot of reading quizzes, essays, and assignments. And one thing that I never see students do is to print out the AP objectives on the College Board website. So they have objectives for each subject. It's about like 70 to 100 pages. It depends on the subject. But what you want to do is you want to figure out, okay, for example, for APUSH Period 1, I'm going to figure out what is the objective, what is it that I need to know and understand so that I'm not going to be surprised by the type of questions that I get. So using the objectives guide is very, very helpful because that's how AP questions are made, right? So that's what you want to do. And then you also want to memorize a lot of details, practice the essays, the DBQs, all of that, and give feedback before actually submitting your essays. So AP objectives is very important. Also do a lot of practice questions. I share with my students, practice questions that they can use for tests. And practice is the only way that you will know whether you are familiar with a topic or not. And if not, you're going to need to study more on that subject. So mastering what's on your textbook is number one key. Using your objective guide from the College Board website is your number two check-in. And number three is for you to really figure out what are the details that I don't know yet? What are some of the things that I can practice in advance so that I know what I'm doing correctly and what I'm doing incorrectly and getting feedback on it. So that's my suggestion for AP classes. And just keep in mind that AP classes will take up a lot of time. But again, that depends on the teacher. When I was in high school, we had two APush teachers. One was really chill. The other one was really intense. So you also want to figure that out as well. But again, for APush tests, you need to study in advance. If you have a test, four days in advance. If you have a quiz, two days in advance. If you have essays, you've got to practice. So are you seeing sort of like the pattern here that you've got to prepare in advance, you've got to use objectives, you've got to use practice questions and just always be in the preparation mode instead of trying to pull all-nighters last minute. We all know that that doesn't work. A general thing that I would recommend to raising your GPA is using a planner and knowing when you're going to have what test or what quiz and making sure that you are always planning ahead. I teach inside my program how to prioritize your day. And so that's also very important. And what that essentially means is that you're not just doing things in a reactive way, but instead you are listing out all the things you need to do and setting priorities for which one needs to get done earlier. So you're using most of your powerful energy in the beginning instead of doing like a crazy intense study session starting at 1am. So prioritization is very important and planning using a planner is so crucial as well. Another thing is procrastination will only work sometimes and of course you shouldn't try to procrastinate, but it's always about planning in advance and studying in advance. So make sure that you keep that in mind and using these skills my students raise their GPA so much. My brother actually raised his GPA from 3.0 to 4.8 just using these principles and strategies. I hope that you found this video helpful and as you know we have a wonderful Facebook group community Conquer College Admissions and there we have resources. I host Facebook live sessions teaching some concepts and strategies for Ivy League and top tier admissions. We also have a great community where students and parents are supporting each other. So if you're feeling lonely about this college admissions journey make sure to join the Facebook group. I'll leave the link down below and we also have our podcast Demystifying College Admissions Podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, everywhere where you can listen and download podcast episodes. Also check that out we do a lot of interviews talking about financial aid, scholarships, mindset, meditation, planning, all that good stuff. So check that out as well. I will also link a free workbook and that is something that I'm going to share with you as a gift and it's five ways that you can strengthen your Ivy League and top tier application. So make sure to check all of those resources out in the comment section below and I hope that you found this video helpful. I'll talk to you very soon. Bye.