Graduate With Minimal Effort and Honors

Unfortunately, attending college has become a necessary evil. Without a college degree, your career options are limited. It is hard enough to find a job with a college degree. It is even harder if you do not have one. But many people have a hard time managing the coarse work and more importantly, their time. Since we only have a limited amount of time to live, it is important to spend as much of it doing what you want. Thus, here are some tried and true tips from a graduate student on how to graduate college with minimal effort and most honors through managing your time and using your professor’s tricks against them.

Your Time is Important

When you have a variety of due dates, it is important that you manage your time well. For example, you have an assignment due two days from now. You are not sure of the concepts to be applied. This is where you have to weigh your options.

The first option is that you spend a night and try and pound out the assignment. The problem is that if you don’t understand the content, you are going to spend more time than needed trying to do the assignment. Your second option is to try and reach out to some of your other classmates to see if they have any insights that could help. This can be problematic though, especially if your classmates are as clueless as you are. There is nothing worse than the blind leading the blind. It is also possible that they try and sabotage you. Thus, you have to be careful who you trust.

Your last option is to put it off and accept you are not going to have a good night the next day. The next day you can try and go in for your teacher’s office hours or make new contacts that can help you. It is up to you to try and figure out the best plan of action, but time is everything.

At the same time, you can’t do bad work. If your aim is to graduate college with honors, you need to make sure that you do it right the first time. This will save you time later as well. There are few things worse than spending hours on an assignment to find out you did it wrong and need to spend hours redoing it again.

Take Stock of Your Position

There are few things as powerful when it comes to surviving college than an updated digital calendar and an Excel spreadsheet. The digital calendar is important since it will allow you to know what you need to do and when you need to do it. My personal preference is a Google Calendar for this purpose. It will sync to every device and can be accessed from a web browser if needed. Using a calendar to know when everything is due will pay dividends to your free time.

Leverage Your Position

When trying to graduate college, especially with honors, you have to take the time to plan your battles. The professors will give you a syllabus with the breakdown of the grades for the semester. You need to look at this! Most colleges will provide you a free subscription to the Microsoft Office Suite. I highly advise that you seek this out. We are going to use Microsoft Excel and the information in the syllabus to calculate what I like to call the survival threshold.

The survival threshold refers to the minimum grades necessary in each section specified in the syllabus to guarantee that you will pass the course. This information will allow you to gauge your status and figure out where you can afford to lose points. At the same time, it will allow you to calculate what you need to get to get your desired grade.

Let us look at the table above. For this example, the class is giving you 10% for participation. These points will at max need you to attend a class and sign in. You should be able to get all these points. The rest of the points are distributed amongst the tests, homework, and final. To pass a normal college course, you will need at least 73%. Thus, as long as you get a 73% on all the parts of the breakdown, you will pass the coarse. But as I mentioned before, you should get all the 10% for the participation grade. So, you only need another 63% of the final grade to pass the class. Let us redo the calculations presuming a maximum score of 100% for participation.

By recalculating the grades to presume you will get all the points for participation, that shows that you only need to get 70% in each of the remaining criteria to pass the class. This may seem small, but it is more significant than you may believe. Let us say that you are terrible at the homework for the coarse and get a 60% average. If this happens, you will need to regain the points elsewhere.

As you can see, losing the points from the homework will lead to a small but noticeable increase in what you need to get in the rest of the categories. But, what if you want to get the points back at one point instead of spreading the need over all the rest of the categories?

As you can see in the figure above, instead of distributing the need across all the remaining categories, we instead need to score 10% higher on one of the two tests. Due to how the tests have the same weight as the homework grade, you can aim to get back the points in one of the other categories without much need for conversion. Yet, there are some grades that become more important than the others.

In the figure above, you can see that the student failed the final with a score of 50%. The points lost requires that the student scores 10% more on the homework and the two tests. Depending on the course this could be unmanageable. Thus, this demonstrates how finals should not be underestimated, especially since they can make or break your grade.

Yet, let us say you actually enter the final and have the 80% average for the other categories. You find yourself only needing 50% on the final to pass the class. This is an ideal situation to be in for a final because most of the time they are cumulative tests. At the same time, you are likely going to have other cumulative tests at the same time. Thus, you will have to focus on the classes which are the problem.

Looking at the figure above, you will notice that each represents a breakdown of what you would need to achieve to get a B through A in the course. As you can see, the difficulty to achieve the desired grade increases as you go from Case 1 to Case 4. Thus, if you want to have any chance to graduate college with honors, you need to maintain a breakdown like Case 2 through Case 4. Yet, many courses will put in place curves at the last minute. Maintaining the above breakdowns though will guarantee you that grade or higher. You should never expect a curve!

Choose Your Battles

A full load of college courses is around 15 credits a semester. This accounts for roughly 4-5 courses a semester minimum. With this load, you have to consider where your time is best kept. Let’s look at an example.

In the figure above, you will notice that there are now 4 different classes to manage at once. Each class has a different set of weights. The real question is which will be the problematic one. There are two classes of thought when it comes to determining which course will be the problem. Both use the data provided. The first is dependent upon the highest weight. For example, if you look at Class 3, you will see that it has a final worth 40% of the final grade. At the same time, you notice that Class 4 has a final worth 32% of the final grade. Following this line of reasoning, Class 3 is more of a problem than Class 4 since if you screw up the final in Class 3, it will be more of a problem.

The second thought process looks at what you would have to get on the finals. If you look at the score distributions, you will notice that Class 2 has the lowest threshold for failure. This is demonstrated if you compare the breakdown of that class to the other classes. This is due to the free 10% provided by the participation grade for that class. At the same time, Class 3 is the riskiest of the classes. The high probability of failure provided by the many tests and lack of free participation points makes every test point count.

It is important to realize that not every criterion is difficult. Homework can be easier or harder than a test. But, unlike a test, you can phone a friend. Furthermore, one test may cover more difficult content than another. Thus you need to gauge your probability of success against the statistics. How do you feel about the content? Do I understand it? You will need to keep asking yourself these questions and address any problems you come across. Remember your teacher needs to only give the work, you need to do it. This is what makes graduating college with honors more difficult.

If you want to graduate college in 3 years instead of 4, you will find yourself with a larger course load. Instead of the 4-5 coarse semesters, you will be taking around 5-6 courses a semester. The extra load increases the difficulty of managing your time. At the same time, if you plan your battles, you could also avoid student loan debt. By graduating early you will save semesters worth of money. Yet, if you burden yourself too much and have to retake a class, it is all for naught.

By laying out the information as above, you can get a feel about which classes you can have an off day and be fine. Also, those where one misstep will make the rest of the semester miserable. But, this doesn’t take into account the estimated difficulty of the class and your own aptitude. Everyone is good at something. Thus, you have to take into account your abilities when making a game plan.

Understand Your Strengths… And Weaknesses

Let us be realistic, we all suck at something. The goal is to not suck enough that we have to retake a class which we did not have the right aptitude for. Thus, you have to be well aware of what your strengths are. For example, you can be good at Biology but could be dreadful at American Literature. Thus, you may be able to spend less time on Biology, but need to spend more time on American Literature. If you want to graduate college with minimal effort, you should choose a major that requires the least amount of courses about subjects you are not good at.

You also have to be aware of your ability to study. Many people who graduate college with honors are either geniuses in their own right or study a lot. Contrary to popular belief, because you read something does not mean you have learned it. Everyone works a little differently. For example, I could study Calculus while watching videos on YouTube and day trading Bitcoin on the side. Yet, I spend longer to do full runs through all the necessary content. There are also those who need to spend hours making note cards and hand-drawn diagrams to get concepts down.

Everyone learns at a different pace and style. Not everyone can sit down for fifteen hours reading about photosynthesis. Thus, you have to understand your own limits and take them into account when planning ahead. When you know yourself, you can apply yourself the least and get the maximal effect with minimal effort.

Let’s Play Some Mind Games

Teachers have a vested interest in the class passing. If a majority of the class fails, then they have to explain to their supervisor why that happened. Usually, that means that they will make some questions easy and others difficult. This is to try and create the standard bell shape grade distribution. I have found that teachers design tests with about 50% straight forward questions followed by 25% moderate difficulty and 25% hard questions. Knowing this, if you walk into a test needing only 50%, your likely hood of survival is quite high.

Now let us look a bit at how tests are made. Teachers either follow one of two design philosophies. Either they will take questions from premade test banks or they will make their own questions. This should become rather clear after you have the first test for the teacher. If they are homemade, look for spelling and grammar issues. These are usually a good indicator that they made the questions. If the questions sound cold and mechanical or are in a nonstandard font, they are likely premade. For questions that appear premade, your options are limited so you are better off getting ready to study hard. If they are homemade this is where the fun starts.

If a teacher goes out of the way to make homemade problems, it means they have to think it is important. This means that they likely emphasized the content. At the same time, it will also sound like them. People write as they talk. Thus, if you know how they speak, you can gain a better idea of what answers are wrong since they do not sound right. This is not a perfect science though and should not be relied upon implicitly.

Do I Need to Take Notes?

Ultimately it depends on the teacher. I have had many instructors that provide their lectures as PDFs or PowerPoint files. If they do this, you likely need to study the PowerPoints. Since teachers will usually lecture using the same files they provide to you, there should not be much of a difference. There are some teachers that will include some other slides in their presentations which they do not provide to you. If they do this, they will test on that content.

Even if they include information in their presentations that they won’t give you, do you need to take notes? Not really. If you ask around, more likely than not your going to find people who have taken the same class with the same teacher before. With any luck, they can give you their old notes and some information about what to expect. Remember information is power.

Unorthodox Information Warfare

Information warfare is the concept of using information and communication technology to gain a competitive advantage. When you sign up for a class, there are some questions that you should ask. First, what is the teacher’s reputation? Are they known to be hard? Do they give lots of work? Are they reasonable? Simple questions like these can help you manage expectations and help you develop your plan of action. If the teacher has a history of causing problems for students, such as having a high failure rate, they may not be the best choice. There is no reason to make your life harder for no reason. At the same time, you have to take what you hear with a grain of salt. h a grain of salt.

Nobody will complain about the class they did well in. If you are looking at sites online that rate teachers, only two types of people will go through the time and the effort to write a post. The first, are those that for some reason loved the teacher. Maybe the teacher helped them out or curved the class so that they would pass. Regardless, they held a high enough opinion of them to spare the time. The second type of poster is those who did not like the teacher. Perhaps they had a bad experience with the teacher. It is inadvisable to take these comments at face value though. It is possible that the poster was a bad student and was looking for someone to blame. Thus, because a teacher has many negative reviews, it may not mean they are a bad teacher.

If you want to get a better idea of what you are dealing with, try and find someone who has had the class before. Old notes, assignments, and other documents will give you an idea of what to expect. Ask about the type of questions to expect. Are there more free-response or multiple choice? What’s the weighting of the different types of questions on the tests? In no way am I suggesting that you violate any of the school’s academic policies. What I am suggesting is that you do your due diligence. Again, there is no reason to make your life more difficult than it has to be.

Sometimes information is best gotten from the source. Teachers will not want to discuss the details of their tests, but you can sometimes get more than you think. There are some questions they will likely answer. How many questions on the test? Are there free-response problems? How many multiple answer multiple-choice problems? Are there fill in the blanks? Simple questions like those will get easy answers.

The teacher will not want to answer questions about the exact content of an exam. Yet, if you ask them some specific questions then you can glean an idea of the level of specificity. For example, if you have a document provided to you with many large tables of information or graphs, you can likely get them to answer if you need to study those specific items. The goal is not to pose any general questions, the more specific the more likely you will get an answer. You need to keep in mind though, that many teachers will not create the test until the night before. So, your mileage may vary.

Good use of information will make your life simpler. If you want to graduate college with minimal effort, you need to know what challenges you are going to facing ahead of time. By doing so you can graduate in 3 years or less, avoiding some student loan debt.

So Can I Party?

Yes, and No, it depends on what you mean by a party. First of all, remember that you do not want to get kicked out of the school you spent so long trying to get into. There is no easier way to get into trouble than being in the wrong place at the right time. Being in a place where something bad is happening could incriminate you in the eyes of the college. Thus, it is always wise to air on the side of caution.

It is also wise to remember that not everyone may share your same priorities. Many people go to college to learn and then try and move into graduate programs. Others want to graduate with anything so that employers will be more likely to hire them. Then there is the group that is looking to get into a relationship. This third group is the most dangerous of all. Because their primary goal is the get into a relationship, they may not have the best of intentions. From condoms with small holes pierced in them to make them more likely to break to drugging and other malicious activities, these people can ruin someone’s life.

Alcohol ruins lives. Twitter also ruins lives. Let us not mix them. The internet is eternal, everything posted will exist in many locations within minutes. It is important to not let yourself do stupid things if you choose to party. Especially digitally. With all the accusations of sexual misconduct going around, it is dangerous to even touch the opposite sex on the shoulder without getting accused of assault. Thus, you need to be careful who you hang out with, especially when inebriated.

So What Can I Do?

Many things. Find a good group of responsible friends. Go to the beach or go skiing. If you want to live on the edge play some video games. Your room is your castle, except if you have roommates. It is up to you to make good decisions. Since you are going to college to graduate, it is advisable that you do not partake in activities that will interfere with that act.

The longer you are in school the more debt you are going to gain as well. If you want to live debt-free in the future, you will want to be as frugal as possible. This means instead of going to the movies buy a video game. Instead of two hours of entertainment, you will get 20 hours depending on the game. Also instead of going out for food, invest in instant ramen. Need entertainment? Consider getting a VPN subscription and making a homemade server. There are many ways to save money, you just need to get a little creative.

On the over side of the coin, making some money while in school will help in the long run. If you are good at academics, do some private tutoring. You could walk dogs for some money. If you are good at arts and crafts, there is always a demand for unique jewelry and the like. The best ways to make money are the ones where you are doing something you like to do anyway.

In Conclusion

There are many methods you can use to graduate college with minimal effort and the most honors. It all comes down to understanding your own limitations and scheduling your tasks. Understanding your situation will allow you to make sound future plans. Thus limiting the needed effort while also allowing you to graduate in 3 years instead of 4 years. All the while, limiting you overhead when doing nonacademic tasks and taking on side hustles will allow you to avoid student loan debt. Ultimately, the best way to spend the least amount of effort is to be smart about how you apply your effort.