5-Powerful tips guaranteed to improve your academic performance

powerful tips guuranteed to boost your academic performance

Academic performance remains one of the gauges of success for students and universities around the world. Since there is no commonly agreed metric to judge the achievement of individuals or institutions.

However, due to parenting styles, background issues, study environment, peer pressure, study habits, time management, social media, sleeping patterns, and other factors, most students in the world have a sour relationship with their academic achievement.

In this article, I will show you the 5 powerful tips you can use to improve your academic performance as a student.

how to escape extra-year and graduate with your set

First, what affects your academic performance?

list of actions that may be causing your academic failures
actions that are making your academic performance go down the hill

Before we discuss how to boost your academic performance, it is imperative we highlight the causes of low academic performance, be it for high-school students or undergraduates

The top five factors are;

  1. Excessive online gaming
  2. Addictive use of social media
  3. Sleep deprivation 
  4. Poor time management skill
  5. Poor study habits

Excessive online gaming

Many research projects report that video games have a terrible effect on students’ attention span, concentration, and study ability, resulting in poor academic performance.

An article published on academia.edu in 2019 talked about the effects of online games on the academic performance of senior high school students, and it showed that students who spend more than 4hrs playing video games tend to have abysmal academic performance.

This is a pandemic already! But if you’re in this situation, don’t worry. Later, we’ll discuss how you can curb this habit.

Addictive use of social media

Social media undoubtedly has some benefits, but when students spend 5-7 hours on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram chatting and looking up irrelevant pictures and videos, it tends to lower their retention and concentration rates and, in turn, increase their sleep deprivation.

An article published on Science Direct talked about the effect of social media use on learning, social interactions, and sleep duration among university students and reported that 59% of students agreed that social media had affected their social interaction.

Addictive use of social media has been the primary cause of sleep deprivation, making more than 50% of students score poorly in their exams, tests, and overall course assessments.

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Sleep deprivation

Sleep is an important aspect of human lives as it has a huge physical and psychological effect on us.

A sound sleep keeps the mind and soul healthy, increasing productivity and protecting your mental health. 

A study conducted among Pakistan medical students showed that poor sleep quality affects students’ academic performance because sleep helps refresh the brain and enhance the retention rate.

Poor time management skills

Finding a balance between day-to-day activities, social interaction, domestic duties, the internet, and academics is a major dilemma for students worldwide. And you can’t manage your time well if you can’t manage your curriculum and extra-curricular activities.

An article published on Sage Pub identified the positive impact of time management on engineering students and provided some helpful tips.

How can you manage your time as a student in this world full of distractions? This will be discussed later in the article.  

Poor study habits

Subconsciously, most human activities are controlled by habits. Charles Duhigg, in his book Power of habits, defines habits as what we do without consciously thinking about them.

Academics is not an exemption as academic success is largely dependent on students’ habits like procrastination and listening to loud music while reading.

A study conducted among 380 students on the relationship between study habits and academic performance showed that students on probation have poor study habits compared to their counterparts that are not on probation. 

Now, let’s delve right into how to solve these problems.

5 powerful tips to improve student’s academic success

list of 5 actions that will improve your level of academic performance
5-tips that will boost your academic performance

Many tips can help improve your academic performance, but we believe the five tips listed below stand out.  If taken seriously, your academics will thank you for it. 

  1. Attend lectures
  2. Extensive reading
  3. Time management skills
  4. Good sleeping habits
  5. Good association

Attend lectures

The most important tip is to attend lectures. This is because every other tip discussed in this article is highly dependent on what you’re being taught in the lecture halls.

While the majority of students say they prefer reading as the best method of learning, it has been proved that listening makes understanding and assimilation easier when you read.

“Another version of my commitment was completing tests, and assignments, attending lectures and reading the abstract. One of the few things we students joke with is test and assignment, which differentiates A and B in Nigeria’s grading system.”  – said Usman Idowu, a first-class graduate. FUTA

This is why it is important to attend classes: students miss classes for ridiculous reasons like bad haircuts, and some do not attend class with purpose.

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This is the beginning of low academic performance for such students because when you miss a class, you not only miss the opportunity to learn from experts in your field but also the chance to create relationships and bond with your lecturers and fellow students, which always comes in handy when you are doing the extensive reading.

If you’re going to miss a lecture for an important reason, it is expected of a reasonable student to call the professor in charge to apologize and seek any opportunity to cover up for what you’ve missed.

He might decide to give you tips on making the most of each class.

Extensive reading

deep work is necessary to writing every last drop of value out of current intellectual capacity – James clear.

Extensive reading, which means gathering knowledge beyond what you are taught in the classroom,  is inevitable for students that want academic success.

There’s a huge difference between gaining knowledge and reading to pass, which is widely called cramming, a popular activity among students in West African countries because of poor study environments and socioeconomic factors. 

When reading extensively, find a quiet environment.  Do away with phones and other things that could distract you.

This is the only way you can maximise what’s been taught in class. Using tip 1 without following up with extensive reading will lead to an academic disaster. But to attend classes and do extensive reading regularly, you need good time management skills.

Time management skills

Good time management is about allocating time to do the activities fighting for your attention. A well-planned day always turns out to be productive.

As many things call for your time, the onus is on you to prioritise, set goals, have a To-Do list and evaluate your productivity.

To increase your academic performance, set achievable goals according to your academic calendar and timetable.

Follow up by prioritising them based on urgency or importance, which forms your To-Do list for that day/month/ semester.

Finally, you evaluate after each day how productive you were.  Repeat this task until it becomes a habit.

Most of what we do daily turns into habits that we do unconsciously. This takes us to the last tip, good sleeping habits.

Healthy sleeping habits

Earlier, we discussed the dangers of sleep deprivation and how it impedes academic growth.

Students are notoriously known for not sleeping well not because of their academic work but for irrelevant things like stalking people on social media and playing video games.

This obstructs your brain from being refreshed and alert to understand and assimilate the following day. 

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If you follow the tips from attending lectures to good time management skills religiously,  you won’t have to lose sleep during exams or crash-reading in night classes some days exams because you need to catch up.

If you want to improve your academic performance, sleep up to 8hrs every day.

Stop wasting time on social media trying to catch up with thrills and trends that mean nothing to your future. 

Good association

show me your friend, and I’ll tell you who you are. Your association, groups, cliques, or gang plays a significant but often unnoticed role in your academic success or failure. 

The easiest way to make it in life, not just in school, is to be associated with great people. This might be different because it won’t be a story of dedication, hard work or being prayerful. My achievement is simply the end product of a great clique….I’d rather have my friends teach me something for an hour than spend hours trying to get it on my own; I can then use the spare time to learn something else (watch movies mostly and sleep).  – Mikail Abideen first-class graduate.

show me your friend: Take a look at your friends; are they a consortium of unserious lots with no future ambition or serious people who are ready to give their academics all it takes?

In fact, your association will influence how diligently you execute the 4 tips discussed earlier.

Conclusion

“…know what works for you and follow through. If night class works for you, go with it without being intimidated by what others say. It’s not about staying glued to reading that note; in the process of reading, evaluate yourself. Ask yourself what you’ve learnt so far!”- Omotayo Oluwafunmibi. First-class graduate. 

While these tips are guaranteed to boost your academic performance, you are not expected to swallow them hook, line and sinker. 

The most important thing is to pick what works for you and stick to it religiously.

Some students read at night because they work a few jobs during the day to make ends meet, while some are better alert at night. But whichever category you fall into, there is something that can help you in this article. We hope you caught it!

For more academic tips, listen to our podcast here.

Also, join our waitlist to get instant out-of-classroom support.

If this is helpful, kindly drop a comment and share it with your friends on social media

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