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I am 20 and in my 3rd year of undergraduate study. Today I wrote an exam (Measure and integration theory) and well, it was not easy for me, although I was prepared well.

My motivation for this question is, that I want to improve my grades in general, that means exam results, because I really have some trouble getting good ones.

I am certainly not one of these smart people who can pull off easily good grades, I have to work hard for my improvement in maths.

Until now, my average grades are below 50% (British scale) which I find quite frustrating, since it's actually fun to me doing maths and I would not know what I should study instead. But I just don't see that I earn enough for my efforts.

Of course one can say now that in maths not everything is about grades in exams. That's true, but my dream is to get a PhD in the future (not for an academic career but for a nice job with high salary, which doesn't mean that I'm not interested in maths), and if one wants to get a place for that one just needs to have good grades.

Maybe you have some advices or strategies in particular for taking exams.

For example, I am always able to reproduce and understand the proofs we had in the lectures, that is bookwork in the exam, but whenever there are unseen exercises I get trouble on the most ones. It's like a lack of ability to produce good maths on the spot. And the worst thing is that 10-15 minutes after the exam I get the ideas for those unseen ones which leads to more frustation.

Best wishes.

PS: Sorry for my English, this is not my native language.

numerion
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    Probably one of the more common mistakes people make is that reproducing a proof for a theorem and being able to understand the proof well enough to apply to problems are not the same thing. My suggestion to you: do as many unseen exercises as you can. (Make sure they are at an appropriate level; as an undergraduate, doing graduate-level work might not suit you, but advanced undergraduate might be perfect.) Work on them for several hours before asking for help, but don't just stare at the problem. Look in books for possible theorems that might help you. Best of luck to you! – Clayton Jan 22 '14 at 15:54

2 Answers2

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I would like to provide you with an answer that's more specific to mathematics. If you want to improve your grade in mathematics, you'll definitely have to solve sums (including the example problems) BY HAND. Stop reading/skimming math sums. This isn't a subject that can be prepared effectively in that manner. Even if you think that you'll be able to solve a sum easily, you should copy down the problem and solve the same sum on a piece of paper by hand. Don;t be overconfident and just skip the sum. I am going to repeat this again: "This is a subject that needs to be practiced by hand for an improved performance in exams".

Source- The Best Ways to Practice Math on a Daily Basis

Sudipto Das
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Solving as much exercises as possible on your own would be very beneficial and for the solutions you would be able to ask your professors. Don't limit your study to what you do during lectures and/or what you read in a specific textbook. You may also request extra exercises from your professors for practice and they will be able to provide you with exercises according to the course level etc.

Also you can always discuss this issue with your professors too.

Kal S.
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