Strategies I used to boost my GPA, what worked what did not:

My high school career has been filled with plenty of sleepless nights, watching as the clock ticks on 12:00 AM, 1:00 AM, and before I even know it, the clock displays 4:00 AM in bright red numbers, matching the bright red fury that I feel knowing I still have so much to do. The next morning, I walked into AP Calculus feeling unprepared and lo and behold, I scored much lower than what I wanted. 

This experience isn’t unique to me alone. Countless high schoolers deal with lack of sleep, being overworked, and still not receiving their desired scores. I soon realized that the problem wasn’t how much I studied, but how I studied. Hours of repetition and revision, blankly staring at my history notes or physics equations weren’t going to help me get an A. If I really wanted to excel in my classes, I had to work on active recall and understanding the fundamental questions of how and why. 

Prior to this epiphany of realization, I used to create study guides for AP US History and hope for the best. I would spend time looking at the information and trying to remember it, but what really changed the game was the process of active recall. Rather than looking at the jumble of names and dates, I would write mock quiz questions for myself and analyze cause-and-effect situations of bills that were passed or wars that were initiated. By challenging myself to think outside the box, I ended up getting an A in history and a 5 on the AP exam. 

This strategy worked for more than history. I applied it to my problem-solving classes such as AP Physics and AP Calculus. Physics formulas mean nothing until you understand why they work and how to apply them in any given scenario. Something that helped me was searching up videos to see these concepts being applied in the real world and then relating them back to the equation. Watching the work done by gravity on a rocket ship made it easier to understand the work done by the gravity of a ball falling off a cliff. 

It is not enough to learn something and accept it. What truly took my education to the next level was the process of understanding why. Why does something work? How can it be applied in the real world? Questions like these broadened my horizons and improved my learning capabilities. 

Now instead of spending countless hours reviewing and still scoring in the seventy percent range, I did some practice problems and scored nineties and upwards. These critical questions changed my school experience and made me genuinely interested in the content I was learning.