we can talk all day about getting enough sleep eating healthily studying x number of hours a
day using study techniques like active recall and the feynman technique but these are all long-term
study strategies but none of these come close to how powerful some of the techniques that i'm
going to discuss in this video come to directly boosting your grades in the short term because
that's what you need short term solutions what if you have an assignment that's due in the next few
hours or you have an exam tomorrow morning then you need something that will help you boost your
grades within the next few hours and there are a few very simple ways to almost immediately improve
your grades and it surprises me how seldom these study techniques are utilized it's not necessarily
about studying harder you need to study incredibly smart too and in this video i'm going to go
through a few ways you can significantly boost your grades in just a few hours but i go into
more detail and give you step-by-step coaching to level up your studying and your grades in
the transform your grades in 30 days course you can check it out and find more information on
it by clicking on the link in the description understand the grading system now understanding
the grading system or marking criteria that your teacher or lecturer has given you is one of the
most powerful and time efficient things you can do to significantly boost your grades you see
the person marking your assignment or exam wants you to hit specific targets and so it's your job
to make it easy for them to award you the marks by hitting those targets i wish i had known this at
high school because it wasn't until i studied at university that i realized how imperative it was
to use the marking criteria that the lecturer gave us they were so important that when i was writing
an assignment i'd have the marking criteria printed out and i'd be referring to it every
20 or 30 minutes or so to make sure that every single thing that i wrote was directly addressing
a part of the marking criteria i'd also aim for the top grade boundary and make sure 100
that i'd hit every single point in the highest grade boundary and i wouldn't stop writing until
i had achieved it so this is an example of a very basic marking criteria i'm sure you've seen them
before and this one grades the students on how well they state a position support hypothesis
organization and overall impression and then it goes on to show exactly how to hit those criteria
so there really is no excuse to not be aiming for the very top grades because the marking criteria
shows you exactly what you need to achieve to get there practice writing answers once you have your
grading system from your teacher or lecturer it's equally important to practice writing
answers that hit those grading expectations after i started using the marking criteria
to write assignments and to answer exam questions my grades improved significantly and it didn't
take any more work it didn't take up any more time or require any more effort it was just a way of
studying smarter and more efficiently because i learned how to write in a style that clearly
showed the examiner that i understood the topic and i was writing answers exactly how he or she
wanted me to and going through past papers and answering past paper questions is also a massive
time saver it's an example of the pareto principle where roughly eighty percent of your results come
from twenty percent of your actions so eighty percent of your final grade will be as a result
of twenty percent of your studying in the time when you're practicing exam past papers is the 20
of your studying that will make up 80 of your grade and i made a video relatively recently on
the six step system i use for every exam that i took and using past papers was the last step but
also the most important step of the system it's a really important video and judging from the views
it got in the comments you guys seem to love it you can click on the pop-up banner above to watch
it utilize office hours if you're struggling with your studying and you have literally
just a few hours before your deadline then you need to consider visiting your lecturer
during office hours so office hours if you're unfamiliar with the term because
different universities call it different things is the time during the day when a teacher or lecturer
is available to meet with students in his or her office so talking directly with your teacher or
professor and asking them specifically the most effective ways of approaching your studying for
your course can be hugely beneficial and some lecturers they might even tell you or
even give you hints on which questions or which topics are more likely to come up in the exam
and utilizing office hours can also make sure that you're on the right track when it comes to writing
assignments there's nothing worse than putting in hours and hours of work into an assignment only
to get your grade back and realize that you've answered the assignment question completely wrong
use your network so this video is about how to boost your grades almost immediately or at least
within 24 hours and this step takes a little while to set up but once you have set it up it can be a
lifesaver i talk quite a lot on this channel about building up a strong network around you
so if we consider the 33 rule which states that 33 of the people in your social network should be
what you might consider below you where you can help pull them up 33 of people in your network
should be on the same level as you and 33 of the people in your network should be people above you
so in this context this would be the people getting better grades than you networking is an
incredibly important part of school in particular university but also life in general but you won't
hear much about the importance of networking in your university classes because networking it just
doesn't really fit into the syllabus of chemistry class or a biology class or a microeconomics class
and networking will help you form relationships with people where you can help them get them where
they want to go but also they can help you and in situations where you have a deadline approaching
fast and you're just not going to be able to make it asking for advice or support from your network
can be invaluable learn to study with urgency so studying with urgency is something that takes a
lot of practice and it's particularly difficult when there are no deadlines to put pressure on
you to study but sometimes studying for 45 minutes is just as effective if not more effective than
studying for three hours the length of time that you study is not that important it's the material
that you cover and how much information you're able to process and retain that really matters
so when we're in class we have a teacher that is watching over us to make sure that we
continue to study or in the workplace we usually have a manager to keep us on track but what about
when you're in your bedroom studying alone or in the library or the coffee shop studying alone
there are two things that you need to manage and the first thing is that you do actually study and
you're not getting distracted with other stuff and the second thing that you need to monitor is the
speed at which you're studying you see studying with urgency is something that is quite difficult
to regulate if your performance slows down at work your supervisor or manager will put pressure
on you to speed up but when you're studying by yourself it's up to you to make sure that
you're studying at a decent pace but the more you practice to study fast the easier it will become
and you can use things like setting a timer to see how many words you can write before the timer runs
out or set goals like you need to get x number of tasks done within 30 minutes it's all about
compacting as much memory retention into a short space of time in fact i recently made a video on
how i study smarter not harder you can click on the pop-out banner above to watch it always
keep improving now if you do find yourself in a situation where you have a deadline approaching
fast maybe you have an assignment due in the next few hours or an exam in the next few hours and
you're really not prepared then after the deadline has passed after the exam on the assignment
has passed is so incredibly important that you understand why you struggle to hit the deadline
and you need to be 100 honest with yourself and once you know the reason or reasons you then put
in place concrete steps so that it doesn't happen again so maybe you forgot about your assignment
deadline so then to make sure it doesn't happen again you might put all your future assignment
deadlines on your phone calendar with a reminder for each one or maybe you prioritize your studying
and socializing over your studies in which case you make sure that doesn't happen again because
your educational journey shouldn't be stressful if you organize your time well if you study
hard if you live a healthy life then you're studying shouldn't be a stressful experience
studying for my degree was one of the best periods of my life it was so fun it was so
rewarding and for the first time in my life i was able to manage and control my self-discipline
so even when i wanted to procrastinate i ignored that feeling and i studied anyway
and the more i did that the easier it became and i made a video on it recently 13 ways to
be more self-disciplined as a student you can click on the card on the screen where i go
through exactly how i managed to become far more self-disciplined as a student and fight off the
constant feeling of wanting to procrastinate so i'll see you over there on that video