Academic Success 101: Strategies to Ace Your College Courses

Posted on by Fevet Ibrahim
college students in lecture halls for college courses

If you are a student looking to achieve academic success in your college courses, this blog post is for you!

Academics at the post-secondary level are challenging. The content is nuanced, courses are fast-paced, and the volume of work is absurd.

Academic success often comes at extreme costs for most students, ranging from overwork and burnout to personal dissatisfaction with the entire educational experience.

This does not have to be the case for you. There are effective, practical strategies that can simplify your learning approach and help you obtain academic success in all of your college courses without any of the negative side effects. Buckle down and get ready to have your mind completely reprogrammed with my very own, first-time-to-share LEARNING SANDWICH technique.

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The Learning Sandwich Technique

When I entered university, the intensity of the courses and the rigor of the exams took me by complete surprise. I had been a good high school student alright, but university was a different beast. Throughout my time as an undergraduate student at the University of Washington, I came across a few learning techniques by a handful of my professors that I believe transformed my educational experience from an initial overwhelm to an eventual mastery.

The Learning Sandwich technique, which I’m bringing to you today, was formed from my reflection on the methods that certain professors exposed me to and which continued working for me beyond those courses. I realized that many of the techniques that were so effective across different subjects and classes could be boiled down to three key concepts that will revolutionize your learning.

Later, I discovered that these concepts were already scientifically proven methods of effective learning. However, they were presented to me independently and in different contexts. I believe that if you apply them systematically and cohesively as I will demonstrate to you, the benefits will be exponential.

1. Prime Before Learning

Most university learning occurs via an initial exposure to the content in the form of lectures, where a professor or qualified individual presents the topic, and eager-to-learn students receive the information as the audience.

Often, before I applied this technique, I would find myself utterly confused throughout lectures. I would miss key points, flounder about searching for information online, and stare blankly while professors posed relevant questions.

This is because lectures should NOT be your initial exposure to the content. Hear me out!

Professors are busy people. They have a specific agenda to run through in the allotted period and cannot afford to waste precious class time covering the pre-basics. This means that you must take the initiative to cover this ground on your own time before class.

Before going to class, spend 5-10 minutes previewing the topic. This can come in many forms. If your professor posts the slideshow presentation before classes, glance through them. If there are assigned readings, do them actively. If there are pre-lecture assignments, do them to get a broad lay of the land before delving deeper in class.

In sociology, there’s a theory called “world-building” which refers to people creating structures of meaning and developing cognitive references for new phenomena and experiences. I believe students need to adopt this idea in every subject and every topic. You need to build a mental map of the topic you’re about to learn: what intellectual lands does it lay claim to and where does it fit amid other territories?

This will help you immensely during lectures, as you will have context for the topic and a grasp of the fundamentals, which will allow the details to fit neatly.

Academic Success 101: How to Ace Your College Courses

2. Practice During Learning

The biggest pitfall I used to succumb to as a freshman undergrad was sitting in lectures too passively. I would sit, staring unblinkingly at professors and presentations, pausing for the occasional note and that was it. I think I expected to absorb all of the information like a sponge.

Unfortunately, that is not how learning happens. We do not magically consume information like we consume food and have it integrated into our pre-existing understandings. Instead, true learning is active and methodical. It is hard work.

Most students go through lecture after lecture in a course, doing assignments and homework half-heartedly, just to get it out of the way. They do not pause to do deep studying (as in practice problems or applications) until it is time for the exam! By then, there’s simply too much ground to cover and very little time to do so.

If you have found yourself in this conundrum, I implore you to consider practicing AS you are learning. Practically, this means actively engaging in the presentation of the material and asking questions about implications and applications that come to mind.

Better yet, if your instructor offers practice resources (problem sets, question prompts, previous papers or exams, etc.) capitalize on those resources as you are learning the material. If professors provide you a chance to practice concepts during lectures, take advantage of that opportunity. It is not a time to send emails, put in your Starbucks order so it’s ready after class, or chat aimlessly with neighbors. Take advantage of that time to think about the material actively. It will pay off by saving you time later when you need to study.

This technique will strengthen your grasp of the information one little bit at a time. It will give you a chance to correct misunderstandings and adjust approaches to problems early. Additionally, it will ensure that you move on to the next topic or go into an exam with the appropriate tools under your belt.

Academic Success 101: How to Ace Your College Courses

3. Review Content After Learning

The last of the three pillars of efficient learning is to review the topics after your official initial exposure. It is so easy to put a lecture or class behind you to focus on another class or an upcoming exam. I plead with you to not do that.

The statement “if you don’t use it, you lose it” is so true when it comes to learning. Not taking the time to intentionally dwell on the concepts you were exposed to will be detrimental to your long-term gains.

You need to entertain the ideas you were presented in the short term. Preferably, consider adopting a daily review session, where you pull out your notes from the lectures and go through them.

As you do, imagine yourself back in the lecture hall or the classroom. Ask yourself: what did I find interesting about this point, what do I understand about it, what do I not understand? Challenge yourself to rephrase and paraphrase key ideas. Add more insights that came to you right then.

This will help you internalize the material and solidify the information you obtained at the initial exposure. It will also make it immensely easier for later studying, as key insights and notes from the daily review sessions can serve as a template for exam study guides or essay ideas. Studying will be more of a revision and less of a reconstruction.

Conclusion

The learning Sandwich Technique is a helpful tool for incorporating effective learning strategies in your day-to-day as a college student with many courses. Before an initial exposure to a topic, you must prime your learning by investigating context. During the exposure, you must practice and apply the information. After the exposure, you must review and consolidate the information.

For long-term information retention to occur, your participation in the learning must be active. These are practical steps you can take before, during, and after the learning experience to ensure comprehension, long-term retention, and proficiency.

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