With anything that we try to accomplish in life, it’s important to set goals. When it pertains to college, it’s important for students to be setting and monitoring goals as they progress through a semester. Goal helps students strive towards high levels and they help students make connections between the small details and the big picture. To understand what goals it’s helpful to set in college, I think we must first look at the high school system and some of the interesting habits it can embed in students.
High School
- Weird grade allocations: High schools can have pretty weird grade allocations that often disincentivize students completing homework and weight tests entirely too high. Students are able to get good grades without the consistency learning, work completion, and academic habits it takes to be successful in college.
- Too much leniency: Especially since COVID, high schools have been giving students A TON of flexibility on homework deadlines and test retakes. This, again, can result in students pulling in pretty good grades with a somewhat poor work ethic….it usually just takes a “clean up effort” at the end of a semester that consists of getting a lot of assignments in.
- Easy Grading: teachers grade fairly easily in high school. Grades can end up being inflated and A’s are easy to obtain.
When students get to college, the opposite is true. It’s quite difficult to get A’s. It takes diligence, consistency, and hard work for students. When setting goals in college, we encourage students to really dig into their syllabus and set specific grade goals that will help draw connections between each type of graded work and their overall grade.
College
- GPA Goal: Students need to start by setting a GPA goal. This is obvious. They also should make sure that their individual course goals actually add up to this course goal. In other words, don’t say you want a 3.75 and then set goals of getting a B in each class. The math needs to math with the individual course goals and overall GPA goal.
- Individual Grading Category Goal: We find these are often the most important. For each class, the students should dissect the syllabus and set goals in each specific grading category. For instance, in a given class, a students grade break down might be: Attendance/participation 10%, Quizzes 15%, Midterm One 15%, Midterm Two 15%, Paper One 10%, Paper 2 10%, and a Final Exam worth 25%.Students need to set goals for each of these categories. And again, the math needs to math. If the student’s goal is to get an A- in the class, then these numbers need to add up to an A-. In some of these areas, it’s easy. For attendance/participation, the goal should be 100%. In others (maybe the Final Exam), a student may set a goal of 88%. All this depends course to course, but it will help the students understand the connection between each thing they do and their overall grade.
The other purpose of these goals is to help students prioritize and allocate their time. As the semester goes on, students should be tracking these goals and planning in ways that help them reach these goals. When a student sees that their goal is to score a 92 on an upcoming test, they can then backwards plan and break down the steps, time, and study strategies that will go into working towards that grade.