Post: #1

Today I was thinking back to the ways I used to "manage" the bull$hit that is the education system. I'll admit, I cheated in school and it didn't hurt me at all contrary to what my teachers would claim.

Here are some easy tricks that helped me through school:

TI84: these are the calculators that most high schools in the US allow during the SAT and in class tests. Why they allow students to use these is beyond me because they're essentially mini BASIC computers.

I used to put all sorts of programs onto my calculator. No one knew that there was a website called ti-calc.org which hosted all sorts of amazing programs. My favorite one was a program that would factor polynomials. I gave this to a lot of people in my Algebra 2 and Calc classes.

For my AP Physics class, I had a suite of programs that would essentially give me the formula and then let me plug and chug. This was great because the teacher always required us to "show our work".

During my senior year, a bunch of teachers wised up and would check our calculators before tests to make sure the memory was cleared. Thanks to ti-calc.org, I had a program that would fake memory clears. The newer versions of the TI firmware also had an SAT mode, but this came out when I was in college. I believe there are now hacked firmwares which once again bypass this.

If you have a more advanced calculator, have at it. The newer versions of these calculators are full on monsters that can do all sorts of stuff.

Essays: I always enjoyed writing, but sometimes I would rather play video games or drink. Around 2007, my school wised up and told us we couldn't use Wikipedia as a way to "cite" sources. Fair enough, instead, I went to the bottom of the Wikipedia article where the citations are and instead just directly cited work through that.

You can also use the Wikipedia article as an outline and essentially rewrite the entire page in your own voice. This will always defeat things like Turnitin.com and will fool most teachers. You still have some work to do, but since most of your research and an outline are already done you're about 40-50% of the way through a research paper.

Sharing is Caring: I used to make friends with people who were in multiple classes with me. One of us would do one assignment while the other copied it and vice versa. We then shared the answers between each other. Simple, effective, and allowed me to focus on what really mattered in those days: girls and video games.

Erasers on your desk: One trick I used to do was position myself so the light would hit my desk perfectly. I would then take my eraser and write the answers to questions on my desk. Once done, smear the desk with your hand to destroy the evidence.

Anyone else have any other suggestions on how to make school "easier"?

Post: #2

For calculators I would always carry two, only whose memory was cleared and the other one loaded with programs. Show the empty one to the teacher and use the loaded up one. Also, many people are forgetful as fuck and leave their calculators after class. I seriously walked up to two calculators sitting on a desk, used them and sold them.

Also, I would share answers but came to a mutual agreement that we had to get one different question wrong. That way teachers couldn't accuse Timmy and I of cheating when he got question 10 wrong and I got question 5 wrong. In regards to the eraser thing, I did the same thing but with pencil. Our desks were black so I would write the answer and then rub my hand on it to destroy evidence.

Nowadays you can probably outsource some stuff to Fiverr.

Post: #3

Type shorthand notes into your TI-83 calculator depending on what subject you're dealing with.

For many textbooks, instead of reading the text, go to the end of the chapter and memorize the chapter summaries instead.

Use Chegg to get homework solutions for 15 bucks a month.

My process for taking exams has been this :

1)Cheat on all the homework. Why struggle for three hours and learn the wrong way (or not learn at all) when you can get it done right the first time and learn it correctly for the exam from the get go?

2)Analyse a common homework problem and memorize the process instead of mindlessly plugging away for no reason.

3)Memorize the chapter summaries at the end of the chapter (if there is one). This is usually time better spent than plodding through all the verbal padding they call textbooks these days.

4)Take three common problems from the book, print them off and try to solve them in under half an hour. You shouldn't be able to just do something right, you also want to do it fast.

5)If you know a few different ways to solve a problem, pick the fastest way. This is where a timer comes in handy.

Examples:

• Instead of using algebra to solve a system of equations, use a matrix solution and plug RREF (reduced row echelon form) into your calculator. This can save a lot of time depending on how many equations you have.
• Using a quadratic formula program on the TI-83 instead of doing it manually.
• Creating mnemonic devices to remember lists of shit. Everyone knows this one, but it definitely works.
• Using the pythagorean theorem instead of derping around with that SOH CAH TOA shit.
  

I'd say the number one biggest BS manager in college would be to get up at 5 AM every day to study before class so you know what the hell the teacher is talking about and you're not still waking up during a lecture. If you're tired and you're not paying attention to the professor, you might as well have slept in. This depends on the teacher of course, but I would say a good teacher's lecture is like 3 hours of studying on your own time.

Find a study method that works for you so you're not fucking around. Treat it like a job. I still use the Pomodoro Method to get the majority of my shit done.

Cattle Rustler brought it up, but for stupid busywork shit, outsource it on Fiverr. I'm talking for general classes, like a fifteen page paper on the historical significance of queer Eskimos or something.

Post: #4

Choose the easiest professors and take the easiest classes you can possibly get away with in your major. Ratemyprofessor.com was a godsend...most of the time.

Post: #5

Another one i completely forgot:

Use the index on open book tests to quickly find answers!

Post: #6

(08-09-2016 10:59 AM)Il Bersagliere Wrote:  Choose the easiest professors and take the easiest classes you can possibly get away with in your major.

I used this with subjects I sucked at in college.

My strategy was follow the basketball players on the first day of class.

Because of it, I fulfilled my science requirement by getting an A in Physics.

The history of Physics.

This was our textbook:



p.s. This thread is shameful.

Post: #7

For college courses, take all the CLEP and DANTES/DSST tests that you can. There are good online study guides, I paid $20/month for the one I used. You should be able to knock out 60+ credit hours over a summer. It will take discipline and work, but it is quite doable. Save yourself a couple of years of college.

After that, look into taking subject GRE tests. Some schools will give you quite a bit of credit for those.

Top three (and long established) accredited schools with external degree programs:
Charter Oak State College
Thomas Edison
Excelsior University

Don't be a chump.

Post: #8

The best “BS Management” I employed in university was planning my classes out. Fall of sophomore year, I noticed two problems: I was stressed out taking 18 credit hours, and I saw seniors taking freshman classes, rushing to finish their degrees on time.

At this point in the game, it was easy to determine what classes I needed becuase I was 100% committed to engineering. Colleges will have you think that bouncing from major to major is a fun exploratory exercise, when in reality it’s an excuse for them to suck more time and money out of your pocket. I’d argue that when entering school, you should have 2 or 3 majors chosen, and by the end of the first year, you should know exactly what you’re doing, and how you’re going to do it.

Lining up my schedule was one of the best things I did. I kept the workload balanced semester to semester, with no more crazy 20 credit hour semesters. Senior year? I took the minimum credit hours for full time status, which allowed me to fly to job interviews whenever, wherever (while also partying my ass off). If you can, graduate early, to save money and be able to make money for an additional year.

To organize a perfect schedule -

1. Determine all the classes you need to graduate. This will be on your major’s website, or available from administration. Write them down on a list.

Major Key Alert: find which requirements overlap. I went to a school with a large core curriculum, but was able to minimize my wasted time by overlapping my arts requirements with fun (guitar lessons) and doubling down, so my “English Language” requirement was satisfied by a class that also satisfied my “Western History” class.

2. Map out which classes have pre-reqs and which should be taken one after another. These will be your major requirements. For example math, you know you’re going to have to take Calc 2 after Calc 1, so you should set these up sequentially and get them done ASAP. As soon as you get your maths done, figure which classes required these high level maths and apply.

3. Fill in all of the extra classes, including core cirriculum/fun/liberal arts. Most of these don't have prereqs and can be taken anytime.

4. Make sure each class is offered in the spring/fall so it lines up in your schedule correctly.

You might run into the problem that classes overlap with time slots. The time slots change semester to semester, but there’s nothing you can do about it but be smart and plan ahead.

If you can, get a guidance counselor on the phone or even better sit down with your plan and have them double check it. In today’s safe space culture, schools constantly hire more guidance counselors, but students are reluctant to use them.

Post: #9

Rather than stay up doing all nighters to do your work, go to bed early, like 7 or 8 pm, then wake up at 2 or 3 am and do your work then. It takes getting used to at first, but soon you'll get used to the sleeping pattern and find you do more work and better quality work when you have just woken up and are fresh compared to working the end of the day and through the night.

It gives you an excuse to relax, eat and drink at the end of a hard day, instead of drinking coffee, procrastinating and stressing out all night working. You're going to have to sleep for a few hours at some point during the night, why not do it at the beginning?

Post: #10

I currently attend a good University in the States and have not yet met a person who doesn't eagerly admit to their academically dishonest exploits in high school.

Definitely going to be splitting the cost of a Chegg account for myself and my friends.

Post: #11

My only complaint with this guide is that you didn't write and post it 5 years ago when I was starting college.

G

Post: #12

(08-10-2016 04:41 PM)Switch Wrote:  I currently attend a good University in the States and have not yet met a person who doesn't eagerly admit to their academically dishonest exploits in high school.

Definitely going to be splitting the cost of a Chegg account for myself and my friends.

It's only 15 bucks a month and yeah, they will lock your account if they notice it's being viewed by a few too many computers and IP addresses. They always lock your account during the most inconvenient time, too, like an hour before the assignment is due.

I guess my biggest "tip" with using Chegg is that you can cancel your subscription at any time and then resubscribe. For example, you can spend the sixty bucks for the four months of a semester, cancel it for winter break, then resubscribe for spring semester, then cancel it for summer, you get the idea.

The guy who said go to bed at 7 pm and wake up at 2:30, that shit is gold.

My current exam preparation schedule looks like this. This is generally for an 8 or 9 o clock exam.

1) Study the night before. Go to bed at 8ish.

2) Wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning. Proceed to study all the relevant material.

3) Drink a whole shitload of coffee, diet soda, whatever has caffeine in it. Sometimes I would slam a two liter of diet coke and a pot of coffee in the six or eight hours before an exam. Caffeine is a cheap nootropic, it makes you think faster and more clearly. You should feel pretty saturated with caffeine once the exam rolls around.

4) Show up to the exam and proceed to completely wreck shit and finish fifteen minutes earlier than the next guy. It seems like my morning schedule before an exam makes my exam score swing ten percent in either direction.

This is no substitute for consistent study, of course. You can't expect to ace an exam with only six hours of studying the material the first time before an exam. You should also study not only the exam material, but methods that solve problems faster than other methods.

I am currently going to school for mechanical engineering so my posts in this thread are geared more towards that. You basically get two or three weeks of material and then they throw you an exam with three moderately difficult problems that you're expected to solve in 50 minutes. Sometimes it's four easy problems and two "comprehension" type problems.

I highly recommend talking to and befriending students who are a grade ahead of you to see what the previous year's exam was like. This alone will immensely help you to prepare.

Post: #13

I disagree with waking up at 2 AM. How are you supposed to manage partying and studying with that habit? Some days you go to sleep at 3 AM (partying) and some days you wake up at that time (studying). What if you wake up at 2 AM and are absolutely exhausted?

When I had a big exam, I would study my ass off until 8 PM the night before. After a relaxing dinner (and banging my girlfriend if time permitted), I'd go to sleep around 10 PM then wake at 6 AM to go to a yoga class. While everyone else (nerds, fratstars, and everyone in between) was stressing out and trying to cram material, I was in a supreme state of nirvana. I walked into the test with a smile on my face. No matter how I did on the test, I was in such a good mood that no curveball question could phase me.

As I said I did engineering, and took the tests very seriously. These tests were open note/book and did not test how much you knew but how well you could apply the material. I truly treated tests like a battle or sporting event. I would listen to hype music walking to the exam and do positive affirmations. I would wear my favorite clothes and when I got in, I was a small-scale hype man, high-fiving everyone I knew and exciting my peers with "let's do this!"

Now tell me, who is going to perform better? The person who slept 3 hours the night before trying to memorize formulas, strung out on coffee and adderall, or the enlightened RVF member whose hormones are raging after sex, sleep, and yoga?

Post: #14

My other tip for school is for saving some money.

Google online pdf versions of your textbooks. It is helpful to have the ISBN (the number that's used to identify the book) and to just google "ISBN online pdf".

There are websites with directories of free pdf's but I'm not sure I can list that here.

If you can't find it there, you can try pirating it or you can pay someone on Fiverr to find it for you. I go with this route because then my internet is not at risk if I go on the wrong website and my computer is not at risk of getting a virus.

I did this for my dynamics textbook last semester and I ended up paying $37 for $500 worth of textbooks. You can find it under "find and give any pdf or ebook" if you search for it. I was mighty pleased with the service.

Get a decent used kindle on amazon and save your damn money. Spending a grand on textbooks is not worth it at all.

Post: #15

(08-10-2016 08:22 PM)redbeard Wrote:  I disagree with waking up at 2 AM. How are you supposed to manage partying and studying with that habit? Some days you go to sleep at 3 AM (partying) and some days you wake up at that time (studying). What if you wake up at 2 AM and are absolutely exhausted?

I'm not sure if the other poster said it was a habit, my suggestion was to make it a pre exam ritual, not a lifestyle. Going to bed at 7 and waking up at 2 or 3 every day is a recipe for social isolation.

Also none of my exams are open book or open note. Most of them don't even allow a formula sheet so memorizing formulas is a big deal where I'm at.

Post: #16

All these TI84 comments are irrelevant to engineers, no F-ing way you can use a graphing calculator in any classes. My math classes didn't even let us use calculators on exams. In classes where you could use them, they had to be NCEES approved for the FE exam. So get the TI36X Pro, if you use it in your classes you'll be a master at it for the exam. It can do linear algebra (ie, determinant and inverse matrices, systems of equations), basic stats (normal and binomial distribution, probability etc), and even some quick integration and derivatives.

Speaking of the FE exam, it is not as bad as you think. All you need to do is get the PDF of the formula sheet which is on their website and flip through it so you know the layout. You can then CTRL F in the exam and find what you need. There are some test banks and manuals out there, PM me if you want them for practice questions if any of you engineers plan to take it. I would post here but would give away my alma mater in public. I studied on and off for four days, maybe 15 hours total which turned out to be overkill but I was paranoid about losing 250 bucks by failing. I found the thermodynamics section in the formula book quite lacking and was lucky I remembered a couple critical formulas so make sure you are good at that class naturally. And make sure you review your time value of money, I had 9/110 questions on that and so did everyone else I did it with, really easy questions but if I hadn't reviewed how to use the tables I would have wasted too much time. But everyone has a different exam, you never know what you will get. I actually found it to be sort of fun, trying to figure out how to do physics, math or statics problems that I hadn't thought of in a few years.

Also, don't skip class. Even if the class is useless I would go and read the news on my phone or something and pique up if the topic was interesting. I liked being at school though, good socializing time! Once you hit upper level classes you should know what's going on since that will be your career!

Hannibal that post on textbooks is lethal, I wish I had known about Fiverr in my schooling days because I got a virus from one of those textbook pirate sites. Anyone here should be on that when school starts back up and then print off books in the library. You can even get them bound with a plastic cover sheet at your school post office or Staples if you are like me and tend to go on RVF every 5 mins when you should be studying the Textbook PDF that is open on your computer!

Post: #17

My personal opinion is that the education system is BS but the consequences for getting caught and punished are too big. Something like slightly using Wikipedia can be fine but cheating in a test-taking environment can be really, really bad. I know a kid who was bound for a mid-tier Ivy League school and he was caught, he couldn't go anymore and he's now going to a state school.

Doing stealthily is great but don't overuse it, one day you might tread over the limit and get fucked pretty badly.

Post: #18

If you make friends with the right people you can get answers to all of the HW. This happened SO often in my engineering classes.

If you claim you have a disability, you can often get 1.5 time on tests. My school was fairly lenient on who got it. Fucking killer in engineering classes. Saved my ass so many times and it was borderline cheating, teachers hated it.

However knowing what I know now, I would have blitzed through school in 3 years in business at a decent school and go work @ Oracle in sales.

Post: #19

I am kinda surprised no one brought up taking adderall?

I and many of my friends would pop an adderall pill the night before a big exam and just go wild studying material for 12 plus hours straight. I would be totally focused and energized and in a great state for cramming material. The next morning or afternoon I would be so prepared for the exam it would usually be easy for me. Honestly, it felt like I was cheating because of the significant advantage I had over my classmates.

Post: #20

(08-16-2016 09:37 PM)jake1720 Wrote:  If you claim you have a disability, you can often get 1.5 time on tests. My school was fairly lenient on who got it. Fucking killer in engineering classes. Saved my ass so many times and it was borderline cheating, teachers hated it.

If you are going to do this, you might as well get a service animal so you can take your dog everywhere. It is a commonly known fact that even though teachers hate cheating, they love dogs. And if they don't love dogs, tell them your dog identifies as a cat.

Post: #21

I'm really not sure I can agree with much of this, at least for engineering. For years 1-2, you generally had cheat sheets and sometimes open books allowed. After that, it was kind of accepted you weren't a retard and it was open everything. I'm not even sure how you'd go about cheating short of copying someone's exam long hand.

Writing answers on the desk in eraser? Handy I suppose if you know the exact questions in advance. But again, are you writing paragraphs of notes there? It seems like there are two avenues, short, small things which wouldn't be hard to memorize anyways (like math formulas), or things way too long and detailed to have a reasonable shot of bringing in hidden, while covering all potential bases (like resources for every possible essay question).

With assignments the point is more to learn than anything else. They were worth like a few % each? Hell the profs would even tell us answers sometimes so we could see if we were doing them right. When 1 problem was 2 pages of work, the answer means nothing. No one cares that a few people get together and helped each other solve the homework. And even if you copy outright, you've earned a "free" few %, but are still fucked on exam unless you put in the leg work.

From a cost/benefit perspective I just don't see the draw. A few formulas hidden in a graphing calculator saves memorizing what you could have done in like an hour. Meanwhile putting yourself at risk if caught of expulsion, thousands of dollars/months of time wasted, and the enviable task of explaining to the next school or potential employers that you got kicked out for cheating.

Post: #22

(08-11-2016 12:46 AM)komatiite Wrote:  Hannibal that post on textbooks is lethal, I wish I had known about Fiverr in my schooling days because I got a virus from one of those textbook pirate sites. Anyone here should be on that when school starts back up and then print off books in the library. You can even get them bound with a plastic cover sheet at your school post office or Staples if you are like me and tend to go on RVF every 5 mins when you should be studying the Textbook PDF that is open on your computer!

I'm currently taking 5 classes and thanks to Fiverr and the internet (ISBN lookup on Google for "ISBN pdf online") and I spent a total of $37 on at least a grand worth of textbooks.

My Fiverr guy found the 2016 edition of a textbook I was looking for and charged $30 for a $200 loose leaf textbook.

My biggest recommendation for finding textbooks on the internet is to use a burner laptop with a free operating system like some flavor of Linux. That way if you get any viruses, you just wipe the harddrive and reinstall without destroying anything valuable.

(08-17-2016 05:29 PM)Seadog Wrote:  I'm really not sure I can agree with much of this, at least for engineering. For years 1-2, you generally had cheat sheets and sometimes open books allowed. After that, it was kind of accepted you weren't a retard and it was open everything. I'm not even sure how you'd go about cheating short of copying someone's exam long hand.

In our ME program they don't let us use cheatsheets and everything is closed book / closed notes. We don't even get a graphing calculator.

You're much better off cheating on the homework and learning the right way to do it right away than you are diddling around for six hours on a homework assignment, waiting to get it back from your professor, and then having a week to relearn what you thought you had already learned if you messed anything up.

If I had to guess, I'd say that solution manuals and websites like Chegg shorten the learning curve by at least a third.

Post: #23

I'd add that, at least for business school, try taking accounting, finance, or statistics online through Harvard business review or a community college before starting the actual class.

I took financial accounting through HBR this summer and now I don't even take notes in the actual class in my grad program. I pretty much already know everything that's going on and use my notes from HBR for review. I plan to do the same thing for finance this spring.

I also took statistics through an online community college this same summer. I would take a day or two every week and read through an entire chapter and learn how to use the TI 84, then do the test and quiz. Now in my business stats class me and the Indian kids aced the midterm while everyone else got a D or worse. I told everyone learn to use the fuckig graphing calculator (I even told students to buy one and return it right after just to pass the test). Instead most people were actually trying to do the arithmetic in the long, complex formulas on normal calculators and failed miserably.

And then for the online weekly quizzes in my other two classes, which are non-quantitative, I can literally google the exact questions and they usually come up on course hero with the answers. Biz school has honestly been a fucking breeze so far.

Post: #24

(08-09-2016 01:39 PM)chicane Wrote:  For college courses, take all the CLEP and DANTES/DSST tests that you can. There are good online study guides, I paid $20/month for the one I used. You should be able to knock out 60+ credit hours over a summer. It will take discipline and work, but it is quite doable. Save yourself a couple of years of college.

After that, look into taking subject GRE tests. Some schools will give you quite a bit of credit for those.

Top three (and long established) accredited schools with external degree programs:
Charter Oak State College
Thomas Edison
Excelsior University

Don't be a chump.

Did you use Instacert?

I'm studying for the Principles of Marketing CLEP exam and I want to make sure I pass it. I'll PM you more on it.


My advice:

Notecards: Use this only if you have a large class. Before my Econ final, a friend and I jotted down notes on notecards and we would quickly pass them back and forth.

I passed that class with a B+.

Bathroom: First memorize a few questions on the exam. Then once the teacher excuses you to go to the bathroom, write those questions down on your phone and Google them. You'll often find an answer or something that leads to the right direction.