Student Tools: Gradefix, The easiest way to get good grades

After reading the section about planning tasks around your time in Jordan’s last post, I instantly thought of one of the best personal time-management/study organizers/productivity tools that I have ever used. I thought I’d share how I organize my study time, and that is with Gradefix.

Students, what is the easiest way to pull your mark up half a letter grade?

Do your homework? Well, you should be doing that already. But the answer is Gradefix!

Gradefix is an innovative yet simple solution for the age-old problem of study time management. Its a waste of time to spend time planning what work you should do when, and planning for nights you will be out, etc. It is easy to accidentally miss an assignment this way.

Gradefix is a web application designed for students, by students. When you sign up, you enter your courses, as well as the number of hours you can study each night. Then, when you get assigned homework, you can input it into your Gradefix account, and it will automatically schedule your study time for you. If you have 1 hour on Monday, it will tell you what needs to be done the most! Gradefix is especially useful for getting rid of work “spikes”. After mid-term exams, or a bunch of large tests, students usually get a small break before more work. Unfortunately, when you are suddenly hit with more work, it is often hard to juggle the huge levels of studying you must do. By inputting all your work for the coming semester, gradefix will schedule your time so you never have a sudden spike in work. You’ll never have to study through the night again!

BLABLA

Try it out now! http://www.gradefix.com

You can sign-up for a free account. The only limit is that you can only have 10 active tasks at a time. If you use more than that, or would like to plan an entire semester, try using the pro account, which costs only $5/month.

At that price, its probably the most effective, AND cheapest thing you have done for your academics lately. Aren’t better grades worth $5?

Tips for using Gradefix:

1. Plan for nights when you won’t be available. If you usually go out to party on Fridays, put 0 hrs, so gradefix knows to change your study schedule so you need not work on Friday night. Or if you frequently help at the food bank every Tuesday, only allot 1 hr of study time instead of 2 hrs.
2. Use odd study time amounts. After using Gradefix for a week, I found that it likes to break my larger study blocks into 1hr chunks. Unfortunately, This doesn’t work well with small 20 or 30 minute tasks. If you allot 1 or 2 hrs of study time, you may get stuck with two large blocks of work, and the small 20 minute assignment may get pushed to another day. Instead, allot 1.5 hours, or 1.3 hours. Using uneven study times allows you to get small tasks done, while still studying a large block when needed.
3. Overestimate your time requirements for tasks. As a personal rule, I usually over-estimate any task by 30%. A 30 minute geography reading is 40 minutes, and 3 hours to study for a quiz becomes 4 hours. The reason? Sometimes you will get stuck and need extra time to do work or study. Leaving a small time-cushion will make sure that your whole schedule doesn’t go up in flames because you lost your textbook, or your battery screen broke. Usually though, you will not need this time. Nonetheless, who doesn’t enjoy being done early?

If you have tried Gradefix and have any comments, tips, or questions please comment below!

Related posts:

1. Productivity in the workplace

One Response to “Student Tools: Gradefix, The easiest way to get good grades”

1. Mark says:

   December 22, 2006 at 7:23 pm

   Just want to thank you for the thorough review of our site. We are working on many improvements we think you will be impressed with.

   Best of luck,
   Mark Polson
   CEO/founder
   Gradefix.com
2. Exam Articles Round-up » GearFire says:

   June 1, 2007 at 7:40 am

   [...] Gradefix: Study Schedules Made Easy – to put it bluntly, if your not using this app, you are missing out on free marks! [...]