Students who focus on mastery, not grades, actually earn better marks

There's a quiet irony hiding in how most students approach exams: the ones chasing the highest grades often don't get them. The ones who do are usually thinking about something else entirely.

Researchers at the University of Georgia surveyed nearly 300 undergraduates about how they study, what they're trying to achieve, and what grades they actually earned. The pattern was clear. Students who dig into material—testing themselves on what they've learned, connecting concepts to their own lives, wrestling with ideas rather than just memorizing them—tend to earn better grades. But here's the thing that sets them apart: they're not focused on the grade itself. They're focused on understanding.

"When students are more focused on mastering the task or improving themselves, the use of deep learning strategies increases," says Nathaniel Hunsu, an associate professor at the University of Georgia's College of Engineering. "By the same token, we also see that was correlated with higher performance."

There are basically two ways to study. One is surface-level: skim the reading, memorize enough facts to pass the test, move on. This strategy works fine if your only goal is to get the credit and leave. Many students use it, especially in classes they don't think matter to their major.

The other way takes more effort. You ask yourself questions about what you've learned. You find connections between new material and things you already know. You challenge yourself. You reflect. It's slower. It feels harder at first. And according to this research, it leads to better grades.

Interestingly, students who are mainly focused on outperforming their peers—on winning—don't necessarily do better academically. Competition can motivate engagement with the material, but it doesn't seem to translate into stronger performance. The researchers suggest the difference comes down to what you're competing against. If you're competing against other people, you're playing a zero-sum game. If you're competing against your own understanding from yesterday, you're building something.

Hunsu's advice to students is straightforward: "Come into the learning opportunity understanding what your goals are and what you hope to achieve from that experience. Look for ways to not just superficially learn the material but to make connections between what you already know, what the material has to say and how it applies to something relevant."

Teachers have a role here too. Instructors can nudge students toward deeper learning by creating space for reflection, building problem-solving tasks into assignments, and giving feedback that lets students revise their work. The goal isn't to eliminate grades—they matter as signals of progress. But grades work better as a measure of learning than as the thing being chased.

The study appears in the European Journal of Engineering Education.