How to Set Personal Academic Goals

In order to achieve your goals, you have to know what they are. That may seem like a logical no-brainer, but it’s a worthwhile piece of advice for students.

Setting academic goals has twofold benefits: firstly, it helps you clarify what you want to accomplish, that way you can focus more easily on the end goal; secondly, setting goals can help provide you road map for how to actually achieve the goals. In other words, setting goals provides you both focus and guidance.

In this post, let’s discuss a few tips for setting academic goals. For students who learn online, at private e-learning institutions like Ontario eSecondary School – these tips will allow you to create clear, useful and motivational goals to revisit throughout the online semester.  

Be Specific

The more specific you are with your goals, the better. Instead of saying you want to “get better at math”, for instance, pinpoint the areas of mathematics upon which you want to improve. If you know you’re struggling in trigonometry, for instance, make a goal specifically geared toward learning trig. If you want to advance to learn a new concept, resolve yourself to – for instance – learn how to construct clearly written proofs.

Pinpoint a Motivator

What motivates you to achieve your goals? Is it the prospect of career success? Is it an abiding passion for the subject matter you’re learning? Or is it in service of some future goal (getting into your dream college, for instance)? Whatever motivates you (and it’s perfectly normal to possess multiple motivators) write that down and keep it close. It’s helpful to remind yourself occasionally of why you’ve set your academic goals.

Be Realistic

“Get an A+ in English class”, “Publish a short story in The New Yorker”, or “Win the local essay contest”. If you set yourself a difficult-to-attain goal, you’re liable to end up disappointed and potentially disillusioned with your academic future.

It’s better to be realistic. In what ways can you become the best possible you within the given time frame? Instead of the above goals, set yourself a semester goal to improve your essay writing ability and complete a short story you’re proud of with the help of your online teacher.

Create Small, Achievable Goals Within the Larger Goal

Structuring your goals so that small achievements lead to larger achievement is an effective way to create an academic roadmap. If you prefer, think of it as the “video game-ification” of academic goals setting. Certain “unlocked achievements” allow you to “level up” and pursue larger goals. For instance, your main goal may be to get into the university of your choice, but you can break that up into ancillary goals such as improving in history class, etc.

Share Your Goals With Your Teacher

There are a couple reasons you should share your goals with your online teacher. For one, according to scientific research, sharing goals with a person whose opinion you value reinforces your commitment to the goal. Another, more practical reason to share your goal with a teacher is that they can help you work toward achieving it.

If your science teacher knows that you want to learn more atomic and molecular structures, for instance, they will know when and how to help you.