How to become a topper in academics..!!

What is the Difference between Toppers and other students?

Well, just a day before my exams are over (shukar) and went awesome as usual (Alhamdullilah). I have always been in top 3 students throughout my academics from primary to university level and I never hesitate to share this.  So my juniors always ask me this question, how do toppers study during exams? And how do they get positions in the class?

People have range of explanations about the toppers, some people say that the top students get the top results because they have gotten the higher IQs i.e they are just smarter than anyone else. Some people say that the top students get the top results because the work harder and the explanations go on and on.

Based on my personal experience and research I would explain here the reality.  

A research carried out by an Australian based educational research organization “Elevate Education” in Australia, United States, United Kingdom and South Africa exposed some of the facts from the fictions and found out the realities.

It was exposed that the IQ isn’t the number 1 factor for toppers to get highest marks.

In fact the different variables were found that proved to be the efficient way of getting top position. The practice exams were seemed to the most effective predictor of the academic results of a student. Top students do more practice in exams than anyone else. You don’t need to be genius to have the practice exams its completely within your control.

For the normal students to improve their academics results, they should follow the following 3 points throughout the year.

  1. The student needs to self-motivated, they have to sit down and have to work consistently across the year.
  2. They also need to be self-disciplined, they will have to cut the distractions like FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE and other social networking sites. They must not sit long hours watching videos on YouTube and chatting with friends on Facebook.
  3. They also got to be resilient.

And furthermore, it was also seen that the only working hard is also not essential to be a topper, because most of the students in a class work even harder than the toppers but don’t get the results expected or even sometime they fail to pass the exams. I don’t say that hard work is not important, but only the hard work isn’t.

In fact the way of preparing for the exams is almost same across the world. 52% of the students in countries named above do revise their course before exams, 35% make notes, 15 % try to cram the notes, 7% of the students re-write their notes and only 10% of the students try practice exams.

Now what topper students do? The topper students do not remember the information, they remember how to use the information by creating arguments and logics. They know what the examiner is asking and how to answer it.

But all the detail discussed above was about the students from the developed nations. If we talk about Pakistan, those students get the top results who possesses very good memory. Because the exams here are the memory, if you write what the teacher has taught you in the class work and write as it was, you get the highest marks.!

But I would suggest to create logics of everything, ask yourself questions and try to answer them. Most of the students read from the slides provided by the teacher but I use the slides to see the topics only and read from the books referred. The advantage of reading from the book is you get more information and concepts. Try to read the topics twice or thrice to get the main idea and then write it in your own words you will never forget this way. Never skip a topic from the course  because sometimes what you think is not important , exactly the same topic is given in exam and you are stuck . :p 

Comments are welcome !


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