How to succeed in college? The best way to do that is to have a plan for each and every college semester. More specifically, a plan for each class and a plan for how to manage yourself.
I learned how to do this from a peer academic advisor and have edited the plan a bit for my own purposes. I give this plan huge amounts of credit for my grades, as well as my peace of mind throughout college.
Without further ado, here’s a 5 step plan on how to succeed in college with an academic success plan.
How to Succeed in College Using an Academic Success Plan
Step 1: Set Goals for Your Classes
Setting goals is the cornerstone for any plan as it guides everything else that follows. The plan in support of a goal to pass your classes is very different from a plan in support of the goal of getting straight a’s. No matter who you are, the strategies for one are NOT the same strategies for the other.
As a result, I recommend being as specific as possible when creating your goals. Ask yourself: What do I want this class to do for me and what do I want to get out of this class?
For example, I may say that I not only want to get an A in physiology, but I also want to learn the material. This would be because I want to have the highest GPA possible to get into med school, but also because I want to have a strong base in physiology when I go to study for the MCATs so I can get the highest MCAT score possible.
I recommend having a list of overarching academic goals (e.g. get all a’s, get into med school) as well as your class specific goals. This is helpful for putting the semester into the context of your greater ambitions. Having your focus be only one class can sometimes make you feel like you’re going nowhere.
Step 1.1: Set Goals for Your General Existence in Relation to Classes
Sometimes focusing too much on succeeding in your classes can get in the way of taking care of yourself. And some people may think this is fine, but the only way to succeed in the long term (and also not get terribly depressed and feel like life is miserable) is to take care of yourself. Or, as Greg McKeown says in Essentialism, “protect the asset” (hint: you’re the asset! You, your mind, your body, your eyesight, your energy levels, your sanity – that is the asset!).
This step is for setting boundaries. So, for example, if you decide that you will exercise everyday or sleep a certain amount of hours most nights, organize your life around meeting these goals and don’t bend for anything but predetermined, pre-reasoned or emergency occasions.
You can alway change these standards later, but try not to let momentary feelings drive you away from your goals.
This doesn’t just apply to your health, however. This can also apply to your other commitments, like clubs or working in labs.
For example, if you want to fully read and annotate all the stories being judged at your creative writing club before the meeting, you will have to schedule that into your days. This will either mean one day of the week is not as academically focused as the rest or that you have a set end time for schoolwork so you can make time for this activity.
Step 2: Create Class Specific Study Rules and Guideline for How to Execute these Rules
Each class or subject area requires different strategies. You wouldn’t study for a history class like you would study for a math class. And you probably wouldn’t study for a chemistry class like you would study for a physics class.
To get the most out of your study sessions, as well as to increase the likelihood of reaching your class specific goals, you need to use the most effective study strategies for the class, as well as the most relevant resources for the class.
For example, some strategies for doing well in organic chemistry could include doing as many practice problems as possible per lesson, but more specifically, doing them before office hours, actually going to office hours, and getting help. Maybe you would have to do the reading, maybe not, depending on how thorough the lectures are.
In sociology, by contrast, the most effective strategies may simply include doing high concept QEC studying (or my own modified QCE – just reorder the steps) and not require much office hours, especially if you are understanding the concepts as they’re being taught. You would probably have to do the readings in this class.
After this, you need to figure out how to actually get yourself to do these things.
In the case of the practice problems, these are often not assigned, so you would have to figure out time in your schedule to do them and probably set goals for how many you would like to get done per day/ per week.
In the case of office hours, you may have to decide to treat it like a class and not go back to your dorm or apartment until office hours (especially in the case where office hours occur after your last class), so you make sure you actually go. OR, in the case you are doing online school, you make sure you stay in full school mode until after office hours. Don’t decompress or mentally shift to a break until you have gotten through it.
Study Strategies in General Could Include:
- How you will take notes in classHow often you will review the material
- Whether you will go to office hours
- How you will prepare for office hours
- Whether you will do the reading/ what readings you will do
- If you do the reading, will you read before lecture to better understand lecture, or after lecture to supplement your notes?
- Whether or not to do practice problems (ones provided or ones found from reliable sources)
- How you will review the material (self-quizzing, highlighting, flashcards, office hours, etc.)
Guidelines for Making Yourself Use These Study Strategies Could Include:
- Determining that you only end your class day AFTER office hours
- A reward system
- Making a very specific plan that doesn’t require of the moment brainstorming (at the very least start your day by planning what you are going to do, if not your week)
- e.g deciding what section you will be studying that day
- Deciding when you will stop (10 questions, at noon, when you’re finished, etc.)
- Deciding on your workflow (how long your will work for, how long your breaks will be if you take any, what your background noise will be)
- etc..
- Making sure you are fully prepared for office hours, as in…
- Understanding how specific your questions need to be for office hours and preparing accordingly (whether that is simply going to class beforehand and needing a refresher, or having specific questions from
- Have a place to keep your questions as they come up (whether that is true self studying or during class
- Have your practice problems done beforehand
- And more…
Step 3: Create General Study Rules
General study rules generally apply to every class (or more than one, at least) or are logistical, for example, stating which type of assignment takes priority when short on time.
HOWEVER, very granular general study rules can be put in two places, especially if it only applies to the majority of your classes OR when you apply them to your classes
Honestly, this section is very useful for simply brainstorming general rules, that you can rewrite to target a specific class in the specific study rules section.
You can find a lot of these strategies (general and class specific) on Cal Newport’s Blog in the Study Hacks Archive or in his book How to Become a Straight A Student.
Here are some (only place in this category if these tactics apply to all of your classes):
General Study Rules can include:
- Learning in lecture
- (basically, creating strategies that help you learn and understand material as it is being taught, so that all you study time can be spent on reviewing the information and learning how to use it in the complex and interesting ways required for exams or essays. You can learn more about how to do that from How to Become a Straight A Student by Cal Newport
- Joining university sponsored study groups for your courses
- Do only necessary readings (but make a note on the specific section of which readings specifically you will and will not do)
- Clean up your notes for studying during lecture, as much as possible
- Whether you should so practice problems and where to find them
- Workflow rules, such as:
- Pomodoro or 50/10
- What music to listen to in the background
- Preferred study spots
- When to study particular things
- Ways to be actively engaged in learning (many tips on this can be found in Deep Work)
Step 4: Create Rules for Managing Mental Health Problems Relevant to Your Academic (and Life) Success
Disclaimer: I’m not any kind of mental health counselor, nor do I pretend to be one on TV. My only experience concerns my own mental health experience, and limited experience as a Crisis Counselor with Crisis Text Line (it’s literally just 6 weeks of training).
Whether you have clinical anxiety or trouble managing stress, your mind has a tendency to get in the way of studying.
This is an incredibly important component of your success: your mental (and physical) health is the cornerstone of your success and you have to take it seriously. Neglecting it in the short term will leave you a lot of work in the long term.
The best way to do this is to have a self management routine as well as tips for de-escalating a particularly hard moment (or, let’s be honest, getting through a particularly hard day or week, or even year – life can be ridiculously tough sometimes).
I have found that having a list of what tends to send you off course, as well as an accompanying list of coping mechanisms, can be helpful.
Creating a system like this requires a lot of introspection and exploration. A place I recommend starting with is asking yourself, “What actions make me feel settled and strong?” I learned this question as a crisis counselor, and I found that taking the answer to this question and trying to not only remember to do these things when you’re in a moment that feels like a crisis, but during the day when things get hard, can be incredibly helpful.
In regards to the schedule, you can create it by taking some deeper self care activities (exercise, reading hopeful things, drinking water, etc.) as well as things you can some moment to moment things that could as helpful if not more as daily habits, and try to find time for them in your day
If you want more structured help, I recommend seeing a counselor. (Crisis Text Line has a lot of affordable resources that they should be able to connect you with). Until you can get access to that, I recommend reading Retrain Your Brain: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 7 Weeks. It’s a book that helps you work through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on your own, one of the most effective therapies for anxiety and depression.
This book can help you work through many things on your own, but you shouldn’t expect it to solve all your problems. If it does, that’s fantastic. But, if it doesn’t, there’s nothing wrong with you. For one, this is a therapy that is most commonly and most effectively done in concert with a trained professional, as most therapies and treatments are.
Further, seven weeks is not enough time to completely have a handle on any long standing mental issue. You may begin to learn some skills, but it will take awhile to fully learn these skills and even longer to perfectly integrate them into your life.
If you’re in crisis and want to reach Crisis Text Line, text HOME to 741741
Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-8255
H2 Step 5: Constantly Edit Your Plan and Create a Schedule to Review Your Plan
This plan has to be treated like a living document. This plan is structured on your current, static understanding of your classes that is based on (if you haven’t taken the class before) your experience in similar classes, some study tips books you’ve read, and some hearsay from peers.
You will not know for sure what works until you actually take the class. The peer guided study group could be useless or MIT’s practice problems could be more effective then those in your textbook. Flashcards may be terrible for studying, or they may be great, but you don’t have to make your own. Maybe you can get all of them from Quizlet.
You won’t for sure know until you’ve been in the class and tested out your theories.
Regularly reflect after class or after exams, during or after self-testing (the best method to determine how well you’ve learned the material, over what was effective and what is efficient and what is not.
Address what questions you were prepared for and which ones weren’t prepared for and try to track it back to specific study strategies.
Consider which strategies fit in your schedule and which absolutely don’t. Don’t be afraid to cull things that are redundant and unnecessary.
The initial planning period is a starting point. The editing is where this plan really becomes a tool for success.
Bonus: Academic Success Plan Template
I’ve created a couple templates and examples for creating a success plan so you can have a more concrete guide for making your academic success plans
Copy and paste the following into your writing program:
[Title of Doc:][Fall Semester Success Plan]
Overarching Goals
General Study Tips
General Mental Health Plan
Class name
Thanks for reading and have a successful semester!