Must-Have Schedule For College Students for a 4.0 GPA

*This post is about the best schedule for college students*

If you want advice on the best schedule for college students, then you’ve come to the right post! 

I am going to tell you EXACTLY how I set my college schedule every semester to make straight A’s in college.

But before we jump in, let me get one thing out of the way…

If you aren’t quite sure how much you should prioritize making a good schedule in college…

It should be your absolute FIRST PRIORITY!! 

Creating the RIGHT schedule is SO SO important if you want to make good grades in college and increase your chances of making a 4.0 GPA. 

Having the right schedule ensures that you have enough time to: 

• study and do homework
• balance school with campus life fun and events, clubs, sports (if you’re into that), work, and free time with friends.
• and prepare for exams. 

PLUS, your entire life will revolve around that schedule you create for at least 3 MONTHS. 

It will dictate: 

• when you wake up
• when you go to sleep
• what time you eat, when you go to class
• when you can hang out with friends
• when you study
• HOW MUCH you get to study
• when you take your tests…

You get the picture. 

And if you create a crappy schedule, you’ll create a pretty crappy semester too. 

So let’s get this thing right! 

Here is 5 ingredients that makes up the best schedule for college students that has helped me make straight A’s in college: 

(An Example of the Best Schedule for College Students Will Follow After that)

1. Take Most (If Not All) Your Classes In the Morning…Even If You’re Not A Morning Person

This is so crucial!! 

(Anyone who tells you otherwise is fooling you.) 

Even if you’re not a morning person, I highly recommend that you take most if not all your classes in the morning for the following several reasons: 

Number 1: Your brain is the sharpest first thing in the morning.

You’ll have a lot more willpower to listen, FOCUS, and learn from your professor. 

It’s SO much harder when you spend a full day exerting energy into chores, studying, working, or running around making errands… 

And THEN sitting down to learn.

Pure exhaustion from the day will easily cause anyone to mentally check out and get distracted (or fall asleep). 

Related Post: The Ultimate College Dorm Packing List for College Students

Number 2: Most clubs and events happen in the evening…You will not want to be in class when that’s going on. 

In college, most extracurricular activities and campus events happen in the afternoon and evening.

As such, if most of your classes are scheduled in the late afternoon and evenings, you’ll constantly be tempted (not to mention, pressured by friends) to skip class and go to the events. 

For example, imagine being presented with these choices hours before your evening class:

• (Nelly’s Concert v. Class?) 
• (Obama’s Visit v. Class?)
• (Mike Epps Comedian Show v. Class?) 

(These were actual events that were hosted at my school when I was a college student)

These are not REAL choices!!

Even a straight-A student like me would EASILY ditch class and forgo studying to attend these events, so why set myself up?! 

Why set yourself up?!

My advice, don’t make the mistake my friend and roommate made her freshman year of college.

She was a pre-med major who got herself in huge trouble (grades wise) because most of her classes were scheduled in the evenings and she was presented with Hobson choices like these. 

She was always skipping class to attend these events and similar ones on campus, and her grades plummetted. 

She had to drop out of chemistry and eventually drop pre-med as a major altogether because she scored too poorly to move on. 

Number 3: Even if you’re not the event hopping type, student organizations are ALMOST ALWAYS scheduled in the afternoon/evenings and are super important for resume building. 

Unless you are already employed/interning for a company within your field of interest, not having anything on your resume because you were in class ALL day will not impress future employers or graduate school.

You’ll easily fall to the bottom of the pile of applications they weed through. 

As such, it’s super important that you create a schedule that frees up some of your time in the evenings (i.e. by scheduling your classes in the morning) so you have time to participate in student organizations and other events that will boost your resume.

Number 4: Your day will be WAY more productive if you start with class first.

Unless you’re studying for an important exam, which emotionally compels you to dig in and focus on your work first thing in the morning, it’s so easy to wake up thinking and hoping you’ll have a productive day but then…

• you check your phone and find a super interesting Youtube video notification
• watch the video 
• get distracted by more YouTube videos
• eat a meal for breakfast that makes you super drowsy
• start dozing off when you should be studying for class
• get a call from your dad or your mom which takes 30 minutes that you should have been reading for class
• then get an invite from a friend to meet up for lunch at one of the restaurants on campus

Before you know it, it’s time for class and you’ve gotten very little done.

You weren’t nearly as productive as you thought you’d be and you barely got the reading done. 

Unfortunately, I’m talking from experience on this one.

I struggled to keep my 4.0 GPA one semester because my demanding classes were in the evenings and I kept screwing up my mornings. 

By the grace of God, I made “As” in those classes but they were “A–” (yes, I know…give you a break, right??)

But I know I could have aced them had I had a more optimized schedule. 

Commercial Break: Not only was it by the grace of God, but it was also these last-minute study hacks that I used to ace my exams. 

Number 5: You can always schedule your morning classes a little later in the day even if you’re not a morning person. 

Trust me! I hate being woken up out of my bed early to go anywhere. 

That’s why unless there is ABSOLUTELY no way I can do otherwise, I schedule all my classes no earlier than 10 am. 

I always feel well-rested that way. 

Plus, if I need to get a quick study session in before class, I have just enough time to wake up early and get it done without sacrificing too much sleep. 

Furthermore, on days when I need to stay up until midnight to get homework done or study for an exam, I still have roughly 8 hours to sleep before I have to go to class.

So I highly recommend that you do the same!!

2. Schedule No More Than 3 Classes Per day

The next ingredient that makes up the best schedule for college students is making sure your schedule includes no more than three classes per day. 

For three reasons…

#1: It is super exhausting taking 3+ classes in one day. I know from personal experience. By my third class, my brain was fried and turned to mush. 

#2: Because your brain will be mush by the end of the 3rd class, it’s will be super hard to retain anything from the fourth class. 

#3: Your exams as well as your finals could easily fall on the same day (so 3 or 4 in a row).

That’s NOT okay as you won’t have adequate time to study for each of them with them scheduled back to back like that. 

That’s why I recommend that you DON’T do this and instead DO THIS: 

Schedule your first two classes between 10 and 1 pm, take a break for lunch, and at 2pm, take your third and last class for the day. 

That way you have the rest of the day to study and get stuff done.

This next one is much harder to do and I would prefer you follow the former, but you can also schedule your first three classes and take them back to back together, thereby giving you the rest of the day off. 

I sometimes did this if I had two 50-minute classes and one 1 hour and 30-minute class. 

Related Post: The Ultimate College Dorm Packing List for College Students

3. If You Have To Take An Evening Class(es), Make It An Easy Class or a Class That Isn’t Weighted As Much (GPA wise)  

The next ingredient to the best schedule for college students is reserving your easier classes for the evening if you have to take an evening class. 

That way if you have to or want to skip class to attend an event, it’s of little consequence. 

Second, your grades won’t suffer as much if you’re not as focused in your easy class as in your harder classes since it is your EASY CLASS! 

You’ll know what to do to bounce back and recover. 

Finally, its best to reserve lower credit classes for the evening.

If you take up a difficult class and you wind up not doing as great as you hoped, at least it won’t weigh too heavily on your GPA since you took a low credit class. 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the credit system in the States:

Each class gets a credit and a full-time college student takes 12 to 15 credits to maintain full-time status.

Low credit classes are classes worth 1-2 credit credits

High credit classes are classes worth 3-4 credits. 

Classes like organic chemistry may get as high as 4 credits. And classes like intro to communications may get 2 credits. 

4. Try to Schedule At Least One Day Off During the Week

Not only is it super cool to have one day during the week off, it also gives you the time you need to catch up on your studies, study for exams, or focus on a huge assignment or project uninterrupted. 

Scheduling a day off during the week can be tough to secure sometimes, especially in your first year when you and all the other freshmen are given the last window slot to schedule your classes. 

As such, if you aren’t able to take one day completely off, then I recommend you schedule only one class early in the morning of one of days of the week, so the rest of the day is yours to catch up on homework and study. 

For example: 

• In the first semester of my freshman year, I took one 10 am class on Friday and had the rest of the day free 
• Second semester, freshman year, I took a 9 am class on Friday. 

Unfortunately, due to upperclassmen priority, I could never get a full day off during my first year. 

So you can do the above if you find yourself in a similar situation. 

Related Post: The Ultimate College Dorm Packing List for College Students

5. Avoid Taking Classes That Ends Later than 8 PM 

The last and final ingredient in the best schedule for college students is to avoid scheduling classes that end later than 8 pm. 

For a few reasons…

Number 1: 

You should have SOME time to study (and apply what you learned) or have at least an hour or two to get some last-minute homework done before you go to bed. 

You don’t want to learn something really important in class but because it is so late, you sleep on it and try to recall it later the next day. 

No Bueno. 

You run the risk of forgetting more material than you want. 

Number 2: 

You will also feel tempted to skip this class if you have a major exam in another class first thing in the morning or first thing after work (if you are a working student). 

Number 3: 

It’s so easy to become distracted, drowsy, or just completely fall asleep because it’s so late. 

I never made the mistake of taking classes late at night during undergrad, but in law school I did. My real estate law class ended at 10:15 pm. 

(Note: I had no choice when I picked that class because that was the only time the professor taught). 

To say that I struggled in that class is an understatement. I barely survived because I could not focus due to exhaustion from a long day and boredom.  

As a result, I barely scraped by with a C.  

Here’s what this best schedule for college students looks like in practice:

So now that you know what makes up the best schedule for college students, here is an example of what it looks like all tied together based on a full-time schedule of 15 credits (5 classes): 

Note: This was actually my schedule for the first semester of my FIRST YEAR: 

Monday – 

• Intro to Logic (10:00 am – 10:50 am) 
• Break (for a little bit) 
• Approaches to Lit (11:30 a.m. – 12:50 p.m) 
• History of Life (1:00pm – 1:50 pm)

Rest of the day yours  

Tuesday – 

• History of Life Lab (11:00 am -12:15pm) 
• Break for Lunch
• Evolution of Jazz (2:00 pm -3:15pm) 

Rest of the day is yours

Wednesday – 

• Intro to Logic (10:00 am – 10:50 am) 
• Break (for a little bit) 
• Approaches to Lit (11:30 a.m. – 12:50 p.m) 
• History of Life (1:00pm – 1:50 pm)

Rest of the day is yours

Thursday – 

• History of Life Lab (11:00 am -12:15pm) 
• Break for Lunch
• Evolution of Jazz (2:00 pm -3:15pm) 

Rest of the day is yours

Friday – 

• Intro to Logic (10:00 am – 10:50 am) 

Rest of the day is yours 

This schedule allowed me to stay up as late as midnight studying and still get plenty of rest before my first class.

This schedule also gave me PLENTY of time afterward to study, prepare for exams, and attend events when a REALLY good one came up. 

More importantly, creating my schedule this way helped me in a MAJOR way to achieve a 4.0 GPA. 

Just see below for proof!

 

*Disregard Trigonometry and College Algebra.*

Those were Dual enrollment courses that I took during my senior year of HIGH SCHOOL that were transferred and added to my transcript.

These grades were not weighed into my GPA. I ended the semester with a perfect 4.0. 🙂 

Now that you know what the best schedule for college students looks like, it’s time to create your own!

Remember the ingredients:  

1. Take Most (If Not All) Your Classes In the Morning…Even if You’re Not a Morning Person
2. Schedule No More Than 3 Classes Per day
3. If You Have To Take An Evening Class(es), Make it an Easy Class or a Class That Isn’t Weighted (GPA wise) as much  
4. Try to Schedule At Least One Day Off During the Week
5. Avoid Taking Classes That Ends Later than 8 PM 

Finally, each of us live very DIFFERENT lives so you may have less flexibility to create a schedule like this one.

That’s okay. 

Just implement the “ingredients” that you can and figure out how to make it work outside of those ingredients. 

(I am not sure why I went with this term throughout this post but whatever haha lol)

That will always be the RIGHT schedule for you. 

Good luck with your next semester. You got this!!!

*This post was about the best schedule for college students*

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Learn more about Jessica, you’re go-to-girlfriend for college advice. Feel free to email her if you have a question or just want to say hello.