Tips to Get High Grades in Virtual University

Getting high grades is a desire of almost every student. High grades not only give students a solid profile and status in the institute but also can be an attractive point to highlight in resumes. 

Another benefits of getting high GPA includes scholarships, I am practically studying for free as I am topper of my class, which is a huge bonus of course. And getting top positions and high percentage in graduation, will also help in getting scholarship for advance studies, both in Pakistan and abroad. 

Alhamdulillah! I have got 4.0/4.0 GPA in all my major subjects of Software Engineering so far, hence I face this question of "How to Get 4 GPA?" from a lot from my fellow mates as well as new students. 

In this article, I'm going to share useful tips on How to get high Grades in Virtual University of Pakistan. Although this guide is for VU students, it is broad enough to be applied for other universities and institute too. 

So if you're interested in scoring high marks, getting all A's or obtaining high CGPA, then the following tips will definitely help you as they have helped me in my couple of years of BSSE at VU so far. 

• Select the Right Program

The number one step to getting high grades is selecting the right program to study. I am telling you by experience, I would have not gotten such high GPA for all my subjects if I had not chosen the right subjects to study. I was always into Computer Science and hence chose Software Engineering, a field that interests me and I want to learn. 


Select a program that you are interested in, whether its Computer Science, Biology, Math, Commerce or English, whatever interests you. By this you'll enjoy studying and learning new things. Not saying this will be the case with all the subjects you'll study in your program, but at least with your major subjects, you'll be studying new things about a field you're passionate about. Which will not only be easy for you to learn and comprehend, but also will stay in your mind for longer period of time and you'll not have do much of "ratta"(blind memorization). 

• Find Motivation

This is another very important step, you'd have to find some motivation. Find your 'WHY', the reason for getting high grades. It has to be something that you want or desire and which will only be obtained by you getting high GPA. Whether its a scholarship in an international institute, your dream job or that gold medal you'll get for topping your university.  

You have to set a goal, a destination, an aim that you'd need to work for, this will keep you on track and help you getting through tough times. 

• Plan

This is probably the most abused term in tips, and also one of the things that we only think about and never actually do it. Even those who actually do plan, have hard time sticking to it. 

But this is an important exercise, especially for us VU students. We usually have a semester calendar already set up for us by University in our Learning Management System(a.k.a. LMS). We are given notifications of upcoming graded activities, e.g. assignments, quizzes or graded discussion boards(GDB).

So we must plan accordingly, always note the upcoming graded activity dates, and set up a plan on how and when to prepare for those. Quizzes usually require you to study the certain handouts' syllabus, so plan a proper time to study. And for assignments, we usually have to do a lot of research online, so keep all these things in mind when you plan for your week and assign time for certain tasks. 

• Establish Contact With Professor/Instructor

This is probably more suitable to Non-VU students but establishing a contact with your instructor or professor who is going to give you grade activities as well as grades, is always handy. Even in VU, I've experienced contacting the instructor, via email or skype is quite beneficial.

You can ask questions (about graded activities too), and they do try to help most of the times. So for us VU students, its good to periodically email the instructors, ask for guidance and or help on certain topics and how to prepare them. Also attending the scheduled skype and team viewer sessions can you establishing good bong with your professor which will help you in your studies as well as preparation and hence grades. 

• Know the Game Plan (Grading Scheme)

This is very important for Virtual University students. To know about Grading Scheme of each subject and try to score high percentage in accordance. It is fairly easy to do and no student shall miss it. In VU LMS, when you open a subject, by clicking on course website, you can see the Grading Scheme menu towards the right end of menu bar. For example, take a look at the following screenshot:

This grading scheme of "Numerical Analysis" subject just illustrated my point of how important it is to know the grading scheme. As you can see 35% of the over all grade depends on Assignments and GDB, and 5% on quiz. That makes it 40% of total grade depends upon graded activities only. And only remaining 60% counts from both midterm and final term exams. What this means is that you can get high GPA, even a perfect 4 and A+ grade in this subject by doing your graded activities right, which again is easy to do as you are given a time frame to solve these. This is just one example of this, it is very important to learn about the grading scheme of every subject and prepare accordingly. Sometimes the graded activities of a subject only contribute to 5-10 percent of the final grade and hence you should not be down if you score low on those activities, because you can make up for them in other portions which contribute bigger percentage in the total grade. 

• Befriend Seniors

This is another important step and I actually started this before getting the admission in VU. I tried to contact senior VU students, especially those who were enrolled in my concerning programs i.e BS Computer Science, BS Software Engineering, BS IT and even students who were doing MCS and MIT. I have found from my experience that senior in VU do help a lot and most of the times provide useful guidance and help to juniors. 

Especially when it comes to preparing for exams, the guidance and tips from seniors can prove to be very useful.

• Befriend Smarties

Society moulds a man. 

Or in our own words: "Kharboozay ko dekh kar kharbooza rang pakarta".

Surround yourself with people who get good grades, especially those who have common subjects with you or are your batch mates. You can do group studies with them, try to work on assignments together, ask for help on topics that you don't understand well. 
I remember after the first semester, when I topped with 3.99 Cumulative GPA, and when the merit list was announced on notice board, I contacted everyone of my other 4 batch mates who were in top 5 positions. 
The intention was to get in contacts with all the studious people so we can all help one another. 
This has helped me so far, as sometimes I have scored full marks on assignments only because of the help provided by other smart students who understood the problem better than me. 

So, search your fellow students who get good grades, and get in touch with them. Even if you don't make them your buddies, it will be good to keep in touch with them. 

A good platform to meet and seek guidance from VU seniors as well as smart students is Virtual University Help Forum. Its a help forum for students by VU seniors who try to help new and fellow students on all VU graded and non graded activities. 

• eMail Your Instructors

This one is very important especially when you get lower marks in your assignment or GDB and you feel you deserve better or more. Unfortunately, sometimes our instructors, the ones who grade our assignments and GDBs, make mistakes in grading or scoring assignments. And most of the times, it is unintentional of course. 
So always when something like this happens with you, email your instructor about it, and most probably they will regrade your activity and give you higher marks. 

This has happened a lot with me, believe me I got 0 in a GDB this semester and after an email, it was raised to 75%. And many students do not know about this, and hence suffer from unintentional grading malfunctions. 
Always email your instructors and ask for explanations, even if they don't remark your assignment, they will give you useful information on why did you get low grades and how could you get better marks next time. 

• Study and Learn (Not just Read or Watch)

This one probably the most important point for anyone who want to get an A+ or a perfect 4.0 GPA. Don't just read your books or watch the video lectures, try to actually learn. 
Instead of just reading, study the material, the concepts being talked about, and to learn it all. 

This helped me immensely, especially in my Computer Science subjects. As I was interested in the field, I tried to learn it as much as I could, and hence I always got good percentage in all of my CS subjects. 

• Understand and Comprehend

This is an extension of the above point. When you study and try to learn the core concepts, make sure that you understand them fully and comprehend the knowledge. 
Comprehension is very important, because once you have understood a topic fully, it will remain in your memory a lot longer and can stay there for an infinite time. 
This helps you in your exams, even when you forget the memorized answer, you can write from your understanding of the subject. 
So always test your comprehension by asking questions, challenging yourself in different scenarios depending upon the given topic or subject. 

• Cramming

Cramming is when you try to read and cover a lot of your syllabus just before the exam. Although I myself do it from time to time, but it can go either way. Sometimes it can help too, but most of the times, it is just an extra pressure on your mind and you get nothing out of it. So I'd suggest to avoid cramming. 
As on a point earlier, I suggested to plan for your activities, so if you plan right, you'll never have to face cramming issue. 

• Know Your Limits

There is a law in Economics known as the Diminishing Marginal Return, translating it into our study situation: it means that there is a limit to your productivity period in time, whether its one hour, two hours or even more for some, after that time is over, no matter how longer you further study, you will no longer be gaining anything out of your spent time. 
So know your limits, if you can study in focus for a couple of hours only, do not force yourself to study longer than that. Study for two hours, take a break and refresh yourself, and then you can have another go at it. 

Most people have Short Intention Span, so they tend to lose interest or required focus after 15-30 minutes, its always best to take breaks and only study when you're fully focused. 

Avoid Distractions

And last but definitely not the least is avoiding distractions while studying. Facebook, Whatsapp, twitter, chatting, of course we're gotta do what we're gotta do, but when you have your study time, turn off all of them so you can study without disturbance, even for a short period of time. Believe me, it will be worth to check all the notifications later than to give response to each one during study. 

Final Words:

So these were my tips for all Virtual University and other Students in general as well to get A+ grades and 4.0/4.0 grade point average in all your subjects. I hope you find these tips useful, and if applied, get the results that you're after. 

If you have some tips of your own, please share them in the comments.