As a student contemplates an upcoming semester of study, one course may stand out as the most difficult. Perhaps it is a required core course for a major. You may learn of the difficulty of a course from a course catalogue or by word of mouth from students who have taken it. Sometimes, as was the case with one student, the reputation of a course as difficult can precede even entrance to the college.
For example, Statistics has the reputation of being one of the toughest courses in the business core. However, if you are fortunate, you may find yourself in the section of the instructor who writes the exam. It may turn out that the exam is based on models presented at the lectures, with only the numbers changed. With diligent study and concentration during the exams, a perfect score becomes attainable in this difficult course. The result is that you may be invited to take the honors section, but you doubt that you can keep up with the competition you will encounter, so you opt to remain in the regular section. Bad choice. Now the section is taught by a different instructor instead of the one who writes the exam, and the result is a lower grade.
Hopefully, not everyone is going to be this stupid in approaching a difficult course. Instead, you can consider your options carefully, including working harder, an option that may not be productive if you don’t understand the key to doing well in a particular course; joining a study group or studying with someone smarter than you are, if that person is willing to study with you; or engaging a private tutor. Another option is to order materials from a company like The Great Courses, and option that can be combined with the engagement of a private tutor.
Of course, another alternative is to take courses with a reputation for not being challenging, but this entails the risk that you can end up with a degree in communications, for example, but without the skills to formulate thoughts worth communicating. From this standpoint, it would make sense for you to spend some money on private tutoring in order to ensure that you get the greatest possible value out of the college experience. This would be especially true if you need to do well in a particular course in order to get to the next level, perhaps graduate school or an MBA program.
