Speaker 1: Hello. So glad for you to join me on this beautiful day to learn about how to raise your GPA. My short but important intro is this. Why should you listen to me when there are tons of other YouTubers out there telling you what to do? Well my credentials are here as follows. Quick disclaimer is that I am actually a quite lazy person and I do things that other people tell you you shouldn't do to get a high GPA like have your phone next to you when you're working or blank out in class. And so the point is that these are easy actionable tips to improve your grades. And what's actually most important is that I'm not super smart. Like I'm not a genius. I know geniuses and I'm not one of them. So anyone can use these tips. You guys are all really smart. I want to help you guys get good grades that reflect your high potential. So let's just jump right in. Number one is to prepare and set the foundation. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Essentially this means using reminders. I use Google Calendar, basically this or any other reminder system where you can go through your PC and to your phone will literally save you. Set a reminder for an hour before the due date time and the day before at a time when you know that you'll be able to see the reminder. I don't know how many times this has saved me. So I don't turn in my homework right after finishing it. That's just like not how it works most of the time. And basically if you miss turning in one homework assignment, that's 20 points. That's 20 points that you could have saved on an exam that you would have missed by just not knowing the answer. So when you have to take an L, then saving those points from simply turning in your homework is a great lifesaver. The point of this is that we all make mistakes. And like me, if you want to do things like hang out with friends and go to the gym, you can't rely on your brain to remember everything. Key is to prepare for mistakes. And there's another tip related to this later in the video. Number two is exciting because it's cut your losses. Your time newsflash is not infinite. So you need to find the most efficient route to get to where you want to be for a high GPA. One of my tips for this is that you probe your friends to figure out what resources are actually worth your time. For example, if they never use the textbook, then save your time and your money by not buying it either. I don't know how many times when on the syllabus, there's like a textbook listed and I never opened the book once. And even if I did, it wasn't stuff that was ever covered on the test. So figure out with friends beforehand. Caveat to this is that it may be still wise to obtain an electronic version and double check to see if the current year has changed. Also, along the same line, if they didn't have to know something for the test, figure out as soon as possible and just don't study it. Unless you're interested, of course, because school is not only about grades. Second thing you can cut your losses on is don't go to lecture. Like not all lectures are important and you need to do things that are important to you. In the end of the day, grades are a reflection of what you learn. And so learn what's important and have your grades reflect that you learned it. The following explanation refers to the strategy that I took for the classes that weren't mandatory at Caltech. I attended the first few classes for each one. And afterwards, I either decided that I was going to attend and be engaged to the best of my ability, even when I was tired. The second option, option B, would be to go but not listen and work on other things. Or option C would be to not go at all. If you're an overachiever and you take lots of hard classes and you want to learn the best that you can, then do things that are effective. And this will save you a lot of time in the end. So you can actually work on your sets, witness lecture, or be studying or even be going to the gym. So you don't take that time to go to the gym either. It's all about allocating your time. OK, number three is to review your homework right after it's passed back. Something you just do out of habit. Basically, prioritize fixing what you missed and reviewing the questions that you're unsure about. At the very least, look at all the red marks and address them. What's really important here is that you know what you got wrong and why. So you don't make the same mistake. This is so valuable because you don't improve by knowing what you're good at. You must know where you can tackle to dramatically raise your score. Also, pro tip is that you might get points back because sometimes I realize that they made a mistake in grading or they took way too many points off of something when it's like less significant portion of the whole problem set. And so that adds up in the end. You can't get back what you asked for. So definitely take advantage of that by reviewing. And my fourth tip is to ask for old exams and basically examples of previous problems. You want to review these or better yet, try to solve these problems yourself. If you sucked at them, then that's also great because it's better to suck now than to suck on the actual test when it matters. Why do I say ask for tests is that many people don't know that these are available to them. So oftentimes teachers do provide these example exams or they'll be nice enough to write up some similar problems. These sample exams are like a cheat sheet, but it's ethical. My fifth tip, don't only count on yourself. This is another buffer to prepare for those mistakes that inevitably happen. And the key is to reduce those because we're all human. So if your homework is due every week, then set times in your calendar to work together or check with other people. This is what I call a buffer deadline to again, like prepare for errors, check with your friends and discuss the methods, ask whether something was easy or difficult. And what's cool about this is that you can also learn an easier way just by discussing the methods. Or if your method was better than you can explain it to your friend and then you'll understand it better yourself. Either way, it's very beneficial and a win-win. Okay, number six is to check your work in a different way. And the key here is different. If you go through and check your work and the exact same way, the same method that you use the first time, you're probably going to make the same mistakes. I have a few examples. In math, if you're solving a quadratic equation, the first time you probably did it factoring, right? And then to check this, you plug the numbers you got from factoring into the original equation to make sure it equals zero or whatever was on the right side. As far as things like essays, read the paper out loud because it's likely that you can figure out what things just sound kind of awkward and kind of look at it from an outsider's point of view. You can also find grammar mistakes and stuff like that because if you spent a lot of time on your essay already and skimmed it, then you're likely not going to catch it if you read it the same way. But if you don't have time to read it out loud and you find it kind of weird, what I do is to have the final version done the night before it's due or a couple days and then read it with fresh eyes the next day after a night of sleep. The other option is to have a peer review and you can tell them to just check for errors if they don't have time. But basically just having another pair of eyes really helps to see that readability. This can also be reciprocated where you help read their essays as well and you learn from that too, which is really awesome. You can set up a system and basically learn from each other. These tips are all super helpful, not just basic things like study because you obviously do need to study. If you don't have a photographic memory, you probably need to study. My challenge is for you to pick any of the six tips that I've listed and watch that part again. Really understand why that's a tip and what you're going to get out of it and implement it to do it consistently for your next term, quarter, semester, whatever it may be. And then eventually add on so that you can build up that habit. My mouth is so dry. You would think that taking seven meetings a day would make you not want to spend any more time speaking to a screen. But this is what I'm doing, so I hope this is helpful to you guys. Let me know if you found anything interesting. As always, I love to continue the conversation, so make sure to comment below and like and subscribe. Bye. You.