The First Semester Grade Drop

Unfortunately, holiday cheer can be dampened when first semester grades arrive. If you are unpleasantly surprised by what you see on your student’s first grade report from college, you’re not alone. Many students see a drop of a letter grade or more between the grades they saw in high school and what they earned in their first semester of college. There are a few common reasons for this:

A 4.0, or “perfect”, GPA in high school is fairly common these days.  When our generation attended high school there may have been one or two students who were able to maintain a perfect GPA and each high school probably only had one valedictorian.  This is no longer the case, and many students from a variety of high schools have never made anything below an A in any class.  This is simply a result of grade inflation* in high school and unfortunately it can do a lot of harm to a student’s psyche when they arrive at college and realize they are one of many “perfect” students vying for top grades.

There’s more to the first semester of college than a GPA. In addition to attending 15-18 credit hours worth of class each week, your child has also had to learn how to navigate an entirely new world.  Everything from how and where they live, shower, eat, and socialize is completely new and learning the ins and outs of college life is emotionally and intellectually draining. Even students who earned a 2.0 GPA have actually learned a great deal from college in their first semester.

College is harder than high school. When I relay this fact to students most of them give me the “Duh, no kidding” look, but some are surprised. They think that they can employ the same strategies they used in high school and earn the same grades, but that usually doesn’t work. Students are in college classrooms less than half of the time they were in high school classrooms and they have to do much of their reading, writing, and learning on their own or in student groups. In addition, college classes require that students think through problems critically and develop their own solutions based on research, their own or someone else’s. In other words, in addition to simply answering questions, they have to explain why they answered in that way and how they came to their conclusions. This is the mental equivalent of heavy lifting and it takes time for students to get used to flexing their intellectual muscles.

If your child is disappointed by his grades in the first semester, don’t worry. Most students’ grades rebound during the next semester after they adjust their study and time management habits. If your child needs help with these issues, a visit to a study skills center, academic counselor, or attending a workshop on these topics can give him the information, skills, and motivation he needs to improve his grades in future semesters.

* http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/issues.pdf

http://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012/7/researchreport-2011-2-investigating-grade-inflation-non-equivalence.pdf

 

Blue Books and Scantrons: Final Exam Essentials

If your child is taking final exams soon he’ll probably be studying a lot, but there’s one way he can prepare for exams that doesn’t involve studying at all. It involves purchasing the correct Blue Book or Scantron forms. No matter how techno savvy college students are these days some things never seem to change, and most students will still take exams using pencil, or pen, and paper.

Blue Books – Are exactly what the name implies.  These slim paper booklets with the traditional blue covers, approved at most colleges and universities for essay and short answer exams, range in size from 8.5 x 7 inches to 8.5 x 11 inches and usually contain 4-12 sheet of wide ruled paper. Some professors will allow students to choose their size and number of pages while others specify a certain size.

You may think it’s easy for students to cheat using Blue Books since they can hide notes within the pages of the book, but usually students will pass in their blank books at the beginning of the exam and the professor will shuffle and redistribute them randomly to all members of the class.

* A Green Book also exists and is just a recycled, earth friendly version of the Blue Book.
 

 

Scantrons – Remember all those “fill-in-the-bubble” exams and standardized tests you took in K-12? Well, if you remember what those test’s answer sheets looked like you have a good idea of what a Scantron form looks like. There are dozens of varieties of these forms from narrow, 3.5 x 8.5 inch, 30 answer forms, to 8.5 x 11 inch double-sided, 240 answer forms. Whatever size they are, they all can be electronically scanned and scored in the same way and are used for multiple choice and true false question exams.

Whatever your student needs for his exams, it’s always a good idea for him to buy in advance and buy extras as well. These forms can always be purchased at campus books stores, as well as some big box stores in college towns, and they are also often distributed for free by academic advising offices, tutoring centers or the campus library.

How Much Time Should My Child Spend Studying?

The general rule espoused by most colleges is that students should expect to spend two to three hours outside of class to prepare for each hour spent in class. Therefore, a student enrolled in 15 credit hours should expect to spend 30 to 45 additional hours completing assignments, reading, studying and working on papers outside of class. Of course this isn’t always the case for every class and students may spend only one or two hours outside of class for one course and four hours for another. In fact, the most recent report published by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) found that most students actually spent much less time preparing for class.

“Results from 2013 show that in a typical week, first-year students averaged 14 hours and seniors averaged 15 hours preparing for class (studying, reading, writing, doing homework or lab work, etc.).”

http://nsse.iub.edu/NSSE_2013_Results/index.cfm

Any way they slice it though, students should consider college to be their full time job and expect to spend between 45-60 hours each week in class, and preparing for class. My experience with students indicates that those who spend this amount of time and effort will thrive instead of struggle.