How To Game Your Classes

Okay, so maybe “game” isn’t quite the right word. A better title might be “How to Be Efficient in Your Classes.” In our time at this school, we at The Crimson have become experts at putting in 20 percent of the effort and achieving 80 percent of the results, and we can help you achieve this too. (80 percent with the Harvard curve is actually a pretty good grade, come to think of it.)

Maybe you’re thinking, “Hey, I was the hardest-working, smartest person at my high school. I’m a legend, man. Why would that change once I get to Harvard? Why would I need to know how to ‘game’ my classes?”

For some of you, this self-characterization might be accurate. Some of you will spend your college years with academics as your only priority. You will become a maestro in schmoozing teaching fellows and professors, you will know exactly what they want to hear in section, and you will argue for those crucial half-points after the midterm like you’re Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men.”

But most of you—even if you don’t know it yet—are not going to be “that guy.” Maybe you’ll have an active social life. Maybe you’re an athlete and don’t yet realize how much time that’s going to consume. Maybe an a cappella group or a literary magazine or a certain oldest continuously-published college daily newspaper will take over your life.

We’re biased, but we think this is a good thing. College is a great place to learn how to live a little outside the classroom. And if you’re going to do so at all, you’re going to need to know at some point how to put in a little less time in class and still achieve desirable results. That’s where we come in.

There are some caveats before we get started. Some classes are un-gameable. Classes with highly regular, mandatory problem sets or papers that are labor-intensive and graded carefully are going to be hard to get through with only 20 percent effort. If the class’ name is whispered in hushed tones by those who have survived it, like “Stat 110” or “English 10a” or “Orgo,” there is probably no easy way out. You’ll just have to suck it up and put in 80 to 100 percent. Also, some classes shouldn’t be gamed—nearly all of our most rewarding academic experiences at Harvard came from classes in which we put in maximum effort.

So, take this guide with a grain of salt. It’s mainly geared towards uninspiring classes with a midterm, final, maybe a paper or two, and some miscellaneous section assignments or lightly graded problem sets (e.g. most Cores/Gen Eds/whatever they call them now). So, without further ado, The Crimson’s guide to gaming your classes:

1. Study for the midterm and final; work hard on your big papers

It may seem odd that we’re leading with advice on what you do need to work on, but the 20 percent of necessary work is more important than the 80 percent of chaff. So, let’s lay some ground rules. The midterm and the final will probably be worth something like 80 percent of your grade. You need to study for them. A lot. You should not underestimate how much they matter.

Big papers (in humanities classes) are similar—and, by the way, you can probably get an extension on these if you try. Anything that’s worth over 25 percent of your grade should be taken very seriously. If you make sure not to mess around with the big stuff, the rest can be done more haphazardly. Slacking on the important, high-value assignments is not efficiency, but stupidity.

2. Reading is optional 90 percent of the time

A general rule of thumb is that unless you need to use the book for problem sets or papers, you will never need to look at it.

Section reading is a borderline case. You might participate better if you’ve done it, but you could spend a bunch of time on this and then find that it never comes up. The latter scenario is slightly more common. That said, it’s generally not a bad idea to figure out what the reading’s about (via the Internet) if you’re going to need to discuss it.

This rule is especially true in higher level courses or cores where you’re assigned whole batches of academic papers or books to read each week. You almost certainly do not need to slog through it all. Narrow your focus to that which is necessary for the final/midterm/paper sweet spot, and you’ll do fine.

A salient example of this piece of advice: when superstar economics professor David I. Laibson ‘88 told the students of “Psychology and Economics” how he treated reading when he was a Harvard undergrad.

“When I was in college, I never did the reading,” he said. “But please, please do the reading.”

Okay, Professor Laibson. Now that we know that the highly academically successful, tenured, and nationally-renowned leader of our course never did the reading in college, we’ll be sure to take that advice seriously. Isn’t this supposed to be a class about effective means of persuasion?

3. Going to class—also frequently optional

This piece of advice may come across as more, ahem, radical for you, young freshman. But the truth of the matter is that in lecture classes with slides and/or videos online, your world-famous professor probably isn’t adding that much to the learning experience. True, they probably wrote the book, but these guys got hired because they are great researchers, not necessarily teachers.

We don’t mean to say that you should be skipping sections that are graded on participation or lectures where you’ll have to take notes. But you will find that many of your classes don’t fall into either of these categories. And in a 9 a.m. class that you’re probably going to doze off a bit in anyway...who’s to say that you wouldn’t be better off getting a few extra hours of shut-eye in your own bed? Not us.

4. Shop for TFs like it’s Wal-Mart

You should definitely shop classes heavily, but once you’ve decided which you like, it’s arguably more important to shop TFs, as they will wholly decide what grade you’ll get in almost any large lecture course with a section. If you waltz into your assigned section after the first small response paper and your TF sighs loudly and says, “the assignments were...uhhh...okay,” get out. Develop some “conflict” and switch until you find a more amenable section leader. You will not regret this.

As an aside, don’t sweat anything that’s due in section and graded on a check/plus/minus scale. It’s probably not worth that much, and the TF is likely giving most people similar grades. You can start these pretty late the night before and be fine.

5. If they say, “Experience in ________ is not required for this course,” RUN

Anything can be used to fill in the blank—Spanish language, calculus, organic chemistry, etc. You should not take the class if you do not have experience in this area. Even if the professor is saying it truthfully, trust us, plenty of your classmates will have that expertise and will use it to their advantage. It’s a no-win scenario.

So if you plop down in your seat on the first day of “First Nights” and the professor says, “Don’t worry, formal musical training is not a prerequisite for this course,” you know what to do. Go shop something that is in your wheelhouse, or risk getting academically mauled by the concert pianists sitting to your left and right.

—The Crimson Superboard is unreachable.

For more information on the ins and outs of Harvard life, visit the My First Year homepage.