Haha, this is very similar to the list I came up with when I was flunking at Caltech:
1. attend all the lectures
2. attend all the recitation sessions
3. do 100% of the homework, and on time
4. make sure to understand every homework question and how to solve it.
5. write legible notes
This was good enough to get a baseline B. To get an A, you had to put in much more work.
I know this stuff seems obvious. But it took me a while to figure out I couldn't just coast and wing it like in high school, and many other students had the same experience.
I'll got a bit further if I may, but its mostly a tip for the instructors:
Start from the basics. This makes such a tremendous difference I think, because we have these pre-conceived ideas about math, numbers, calculus, etc. (due to usually shitty high school education) that must be shattered and rebuilt from the ground up.
Here are the example notes that my undergrad (in fact, first college math class) professor used:
I went to the UofA 20 years ago. The math profs at that time were so bad I got turned off math forever and went into business school for finance. I have many stories, but the worst was when one prof quit half way through the semester because he demanded silence in class but didn't get it. Then the math dean said we could learn the rest of the course by reading the textbook with no lectures and the entire grade would be from the final exam. Seems like they have improved since then.
This is true for more advanced topics as well. One piece of advice I give people is to not be afraid to re-learn topics. Even getting an A in the class doesn't mean you've really "got" it. I don't think I really "got" linear algebra until maybe halfway through the first year of my PhD.
>I know this stuff seems obvious. But it took me a while to figure out I couldn't just coast and wing it like in high school, and many other students had the same experience.
This.. So much this for me. It took a long time for me to realise that I couldn't just wing it, as I did for school, and once I got that I went from failing to near top of the year.
1. attend all the lectures
2. attend all the recitation sessions
3. do 100% of the homework, and on time
4. make sure to understand every homework question and how to solve it.
5. write legible notes
This was good enough to get a baseline B. To get an A, you had to put in much more work.
I know this stuff seems obvious. But it took me a while to figure out I couldn't just coast and wing it like in high school, and many other students had the same experience.