Page 255 - Keys to College Success

student PROFILE

Aidan Coyle

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN,
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN

About me: guesses at the questions that I couldn’t be sure on. My basic
After attending a college prepara- technique is to trust my instincts—generally I pick the answer
tory high school I decided to that sounds best when I first read it. I found that my scores
study engineering at University of improved quite a bit once I was willing to guess confidently on
Michigan. After a semester of general engineering I opted to major questions where I wasn’t certain. Not only that but I had a lot
in Computer Science since I found the field to be quite interesting. more time to work on the questions that that required more
rd
I’ll be entering my 3 semester of engineering in the fall. effort to figure out.
How I faced a challenge: What will help me in the workplace:

In high school I had grown accustomed to being confident in my A lot of the projects that I’ve worked on for Computer Science
answers, but some of the testing in my college-level courses are rather open ended, and sometimes it can seem difficult just
rattled my confidence. In one course we generally had 40–50 to get started with the complexity of the issues involved. It
question tests that were multiple-choice, but the choices were would take far too long to mentally analyze all of the possible
usually quite similar and at times it was difficult to feel certain methods that could be used to solve the problem, but a great way
about picking one. Given the time limit imposed, spending too to start is by trying out your best guess. While it won’t always
much time on a particular question could mean missing points on work perfectly, its better to be able to fix a small mistake later
other, potentially easier questions, so I learned to take educated than to never have started.

Adjust Your Priorities

Finals are a temporary but top-priority item in your schedule. Giving them the time
and attention they need usually means that something else will have to give, and
busy students will need to temporarily reduce their commitments. Look ahead to
study days and finals week and see if you can postpone social activities, reduce
your work schedule or take days off, and bow out of less-important meetings and
gatherings. Downgrade any nonessential activity to lower priority until final
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exams are over.
Make sure that high-priority assignments due near the end of the term are turned
in on time so that they do not interfere with your studying for finals. Also, if you have
courses for which the final is a project rather than a timed test, getting such proj-
ects finished up before reading period is a great way to open up study time in your
schedule. 12
A final word: Tests reflect your ability to show what you know. They do not neces-
sarily indicate what you know, and certainly they do not define who you are. Under-
stand the limitations of tests. Learn from them and take from them what reward you
can as you move into the greater test of life in the 21st century.

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