Looking Beyond Grades And Marks: 8 Tips To Remember

Marks Ain’t Everything

Scoring low or not securing enough marks happens to everyone once in a while. Why it has become so important to secure high marks is due to the increased difficulty of finding admission into a course and educational institute of one’s choice. But, what needs to be remembered is that grades and marks are only one way of predicting academic success in the future. Marks only describe the capacity of a student to learn large amounts of text. Grades do matter but they are not everything. In fact, increased focus on academic prowess may lead to decreased creativity and efficiency of the student.

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Shift Focus To Skillset

The success that Apple has achieved was only possible when Steve Jobs left college mid-way to pursue his passion. What is important is ‘learning’, and acquiring values and skills. Hence, parents and teachers need to be focused on honing these characteristics in a student. In fact, employers today hire individuals with effective communication skills, aptitude, willingness to learn, and other characteristics apart from theoretical knowledge. So, securing high grades does not guarantee the student a job if they do not possess the right skill set, despite their excellent academic record.

Modifying Teaching Pedagogy

Educators should equip students with the necessary skills and abilities to excel in their future endeavours. This is only possible if the teaching pedagogy includes experiential learning, i.e. students should experience the process of learning, that leads to fulfillment of learning outcomes, and skill-based learning i.e. the focus of learning should be on enhancing and developing soft skills of the students. Skill-based education should include proactive and interactive engagement of students that prepares them to thrive by overcoming challenges.

Modifying Teaching Style Can Help In Developing Skill-Based Learning

Developing Knowledge And Skills

Students, parents, and teachers should remember that both knowledge and skills will help the student reach their desired goals. Therefore, one should always focus on balancing these two crucial parameters. Some strategies to ensure you strike the right balance are discussed below.

Understand, Don’t Just Score

When you score high marks in exams, you ensure that you meet the criteria of excellence. As a good scorer you may know what happens if you are mugging up textual reading. However, just performing well in exams does not mean that knowledge and understanding the subject in-depth has been achieved. As a student with sound knowledge, you should develop an understanding of how things happen. Therefore, students should strive for an overall performance.

Work To Gain Mastery

In case your target is to become popular by consistently securing high grades, then you are only focusing on developing common attributes among toppers. This may fulfil only your short-term goal of getting through your exams. Rather, your aim should be to gain expertise in an area or subject of your interest by acquiring knowledge and practical training in that specific area. This will ensure that you are future-ready and its benefits will be seen in long-term goals when you implement this knowledge.

Implement Knowledge From Books

Scoring high marks in your exams would make your teachers and parents proud and, maybe your peers envious. However, remember that your grades don’t define you. Every student has a different set of abilities, capacities, strengths that makes them unique and different from others. Think about how you would apply your knowledge in real life and focus on adding to your experiences rather than just worrying about the marksheet. That is what will make you stand out from the crowd to your future educators and employers.

Take Skill-Identification Assessment

Just like you take a careers assessment test, similarly, take a character strengths- identification or a skill-identification test to identify the strengths and skills that you have. These tests do not result in a pass or fail but in fact, provide you with a relative order of your strengths. A skill identification test may help you identify skills that you are good at and should work upon in real-life-oriented tasks to enhance your ability, productivity, and creativity.

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Learn From Your Failures

You might want to look at your behavior not just when you have succeeded but also when you may have failed. You may have been successful in securing grades as per your expectations and to achieve that you would have followed a certain routine, imbibed healthy habits, paid attention to detail. However, understanding your failures also helps one to know what action did we do that resulted in that failure so that you don’t make the same mistake. These behaviours could range from a lack of focus and motivation, to procrastination, skipping study hours, absenteeism, and so on.

Your Hobbies Add Value

Studying for exams and completing them successfully is important. But what is also important is that you do not stop yourself from doing activities that you love to do such as reading books, talking to your friends, watching your favourite show, or catching up on sleep. Don’t give up your favourite dance, music, sports, or drama class. Every additional skill you learn during these foundation years of your life will enhance your development so that you lead a meaningful life.

Pursuing A Hobby Adds Immense Value To Your Overall Personality

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Compete With Yourself

Always strive to do better than the last time. Don’t compare your performance to that of others, instead compare your recent achievements with your previous ones to know your progress. Choose to walk on the rough road of challenges to know your potential and yourself better.

Work On Your Attitude

Working with the right attitude is of utmost importance than any of your successes, failures or expectations. Regardless of what grades you achieved in the past, whether you failed an exam or excelled in another, choose the right attitude with which you are going to live your life. Start thinking about what matters to you most? How bad do you want it? What decisions do you need to take to focus on your present? You will have to stop making excuses and go after what you really want, whether that be by studying hard or by developing an effective skill set. Remember that nobody can stop you from getting what you want.

Over the years, India has seen a large population of students securing high marks in their board examinations. This is only because students are taught to write direct answers to questions that ensure a great score. To overcome this phenomenon, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has removed the criteria of admission in colleges and universities from merit basis and replaced it with a common entrance test. For the same reason, employers prioritise the candidate’s skills and abilities rather than their marks and have therefore, adopted aptitude-based entrance tests, general awareness, and soft skills to understand the candidate holistically. Therefore, prioritise knowledge and skill development so that you can plan your time effectively to make time for pursuing your other hobbies.

Remember that the shelf-life of your marks is short-term and that may limit your opportunities in the real world. It is your knowledge and skills that will take you up the ladder of success than any good mark sheet. Focus on building a skill set that is not based on your memorising power or writing in exams but that which enhances your creativity, analytical, and critical thinking by ways of applying the knowledge you acquire.

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Dr. Swati Jain is a Psychometrician, Creative Arts Therapist, and Rehabilitation Therapist. She has been teaching Psychology to UG students for close to a decade, and is currently Assistant Professor of Psychology at Indraprastha College for Women, Delhi University.