This video is unlike any other straight A video you've ever seen before and if by the end you don't think that's true, then I'll personally do your homework for you.

Hey, it's Amy. I got a 4.0 from Caltech and I was valedictorian in my high school.

I got straight A pluses except for I think two A's and that was when taking 11 AP classes.

I did three sports and I slept eight hours a day.

A lot of you guys ask me, how do you get good grades even while doing so many activities, so many other things and sometimes I'm like, bro, I don't know.

I've been thinking long and hard about it from watching other YouTube videos for inspiration and yeah, I mean, I do agree with most of the things in those generic videos.

We do need to understand the material as we go.

Maybe we should put our phone away.

Like that generic advice is only helpful to some extent.

We know deep down inside what we need to do to get straight A's.

I've already made several YouTube videos like how to max your GPA, blah blah blah, right?

So if you follow the tips I give you, you will get A's, but that's a big if.

The problem is that mindset and converting the tips.

I'm actually no different from you guys.

I've had terrible teachers and teachers who I felt like they had a personal vendetta against me, so it gave me bad grades.

And I even had a physical disadvantage that I'll reveal at the end of the video in my last story.

So what made me get straight A's over the other people who have the same information from the internet?

So the thing I'm going to do differently in this video is make the tips and stories come to life.

A little bit of tough love here, but nowadays people are always like,

Oh, I don't have resources to do this. Maybe I didn't go to a good school.

Well, my school wasn't that good either.

And for the ACT SAT, I used purely free resources.

With that attitude of I didn't have good resources,

I should have failed the AP Environmental Science exam because my teacher sucked.

And with that, story one is APES, AP Environmental Science.

So this was supposed to be a throwaway AP class.

Basically just one that I would take to say I have another AP, but it was supposed to be so easy that it wouldn't really add to my workload.

That's what all the upperclassmen told me.

They were like, you need another AP? Just take APES.

And I was like, okay, cool. I like that.

Another weighted GPA, not much work, another five on the exam.

Brilliant idea for my junior year.

Unfortunately, the first day of class, I felt something was wrong.

And you know that first class when they're supposed to talk about the syllabus and how they're planning to help you get that five on the AP exam?

Well, he didn't cover any of that.

And then when the students asked him, hey, like, how are we preparing?

He's like, oh, you know, learn what we can throughout the year, do a few projects.

And yeah, that's exactly what he did.

In the first month, we were doing this project where I had to film a rock in different nature settings.

How does that help me get better or understand environmental science at all?

My classmates were chatting with me one day.

They're all like, man, we're not taking the AP exam. We're going to fail.

We were getting closer and closer to the exam date.

And on top of that, we were doing these very meaningless projects, which I was also scoring badly in because the scoring is so objective.

So I felt like I wasn't going to get an A, let alone a five on the AP exam.

But then one day after coming back from school, I was like, no, what do I want?

I want an A. I want a five on the exam.

That's what I signed up for.

And even though I didn't sign up for the teacher, I signed up for a result.

I can still make that result happen.

It's not like getting an unexpected teacher forces me to get a different result.

If I really wanted to get a five, there are ways to do that.

So I went on to Amazon.

I did some quick research, found, I think, the Princeton Review AP Environmental Science textbook.

And I asked my mom to buy it.

Easy to convince the Asian parents to buy something for academics, you know.

Once I got the book, the next problem was how am I going to study this when I already have other schoolwork?

I already had my regular classes plus homework.

And I still had homework for AP Environmental Science class.

Basically, every night before going to bed, I took that book from my bedside table.

I sat under my covers and I read that for 20 minutes.

It felt so strange, you know, starting from page one, reading the intro, doing those practice problems.

But I did it.

And keep in mind that this wasn't every night.

I think something that students struggle with is that they think consistency means 100% of the time.

But consistency just means most of the time.

And for this, maybe it means six out of seven days a week.

You need to realize what consistency means to you.

Because if you set your goal too high, you're not going to do it at all.

And that's worse than if you set a more attainable goal and you at least were able to do something better.

I continued to do the projects, but I stopped putting as much effort into them just good enough.

Because the grades the teacher gave us were going to be that kind of grade anyway.

So why put more effort there?

That's something I learned as well to get A's.

You want to figure out where you want to put your effort that provides the most value for you.

If the textbook isn't helpful and it's not going to be on the test, don't force yourself to read it.

If a project isn't a big percentage of your grade, then don't spend a huge chunk of time making everything very pretty.

The prettiness often is not what gets you the grade anyway.

With being a straight A student and trying to be a straight A student, sometimes, you know, you feel a little different.

I mean, I was the only one in that class who was going to take the AP Environmental Science exam.

And when I was chatting with my classmates again, they were like,

Amy, you're insane. How are you going to take the exam?

I was like, oh, I just bought the book and I'm reading it.

And they were like, wow, that's commitment.

But they didn't change and that didn't really inspire them to do anything, which I thought was interesting.

It's human nature for me to be like, why am I doing this extra work every night before I go to sleep?

At the end of the day, after homework, like, yeah, I just want to collapse into my pillow.

But it's the knowledge of every single day counts that kept me going.

So, yeah, it was insane.

I read that thick book, thick with two C's from cover to cover.

I tested myself with the practice problems.

I supplemented with YouTube videos when I didn't understand something.

My story is inspiration that in your case, especially if you're able to watch this YouTube video, you have a wealth of knowledge right at your fingertips that you've got to tap into.

There are no excuses.

If you don't have access to a book like I did, it costs money, then you can borrow from a library.

There are so many ways to get the results you want.

If you want an A, ask, how am I going to get that A?

That's also a tip that I learned from this book and this book.

It's called an implementation question.

You need to ask yourself, how are you going to get to what you want?

And then when there's a habit that you want to do, like for me reading the book, it's filling in the blanks here.

At this time, at this location, I will do this.

So for me, every night before I go to bed, I'm going to read for 20 minutes.

And guess what?

Exam time rolled around.

I ended up with a five.

Yay, that was so exciting.

And I think it felt even better than the other fives I'd gotten on my other AP exams.

That five was self-made.

I showed to myself that there's no one standing in the way of a certain goal, of a five on a test.

As far as the actual letter grade, because I started focusing on the more high value things like assignments and even proactively asking for extra credit, I also ended up with an A+.

So in this whole story, the biggest thing was I didn't take no for an answer.

I didn't accept that maybe I was going to end up with a B.

No, I asked, is there a possibility for extra credit?

And I pushed for it.

And for the AP test too, I was like, no, I'm not going to accept that.

Everyone else is not going to take it.

I'm still going to take it because that's what I came here for.

And I'm going to make me be able to get a five.

All right, at Caltech, there were many hard classes.

But I don't think I ever struggled as much and felt so distraught and bad about myself and had my ego crushed so hard as this French cinema class.

It was also supposed to be a relatively fun class because we could watch movies in class and then write essays about them.

So I was like, whoa, why not?

You know, we have these humanities requirements.

I have all these chemical engineering classes.

Let's take this one.

When I got my first essay back, I still remember that pit in my stomach, like my stomach and heart had just dropped to the floor.

It was probably one of the worst grades I've ever gotten on an essay, probably the worst grade I've ever gotten an essay.

It was a C+.

Man, I was like, what did I do wrong?

In all my classes before, I thought I was a good writer and like I got decent grades in them.

I asked the teacher like, like, what can I do?

She gave us a rewrite, but she said that that could only bump it up one letter grade.

So it would go to a B minus.

And I was like, OK, I'll take it.

I'll rewrite it because I need to do everything I can write.

That tip there is even if you think is an insignificant improvement or bump in points or anything like you got to take anything you can get because all those little points will add up.

Plus the practice of redoing an essay that was bad or redoing a problem that you did wrong.

That's just going to make you more able to get it right in the first place next time.

So to do that first rewrite, I set up a meeting with the French cinema professor.

She talked to me about what was bad about my essay and I like chatted back asking questions.

So I thought I had a good understanding once I sent in that rewrite and I got that bump, that B minus.

Essay number two, we have three essays total in this class.

Once I got the second essay back, it was just like, bro, I suck.

This one I got a B minus or a B.

I had already put in so much effort and met with a professor and I thought I understood what she wanted.

But here she gives me another bad grade.

What was I doing wrong?

Like, what more could I do?

I know I'm talking very passionately about A's, but if you want A's, gotta be passionate about it.

You gotta care.

I met with her again and I did another rewrite.

So bumped it up from, you know, if it was a B minus to a B, B to a B plus.

Either way, going into that third essay, I was like, man, I am not ending up with an A and I will just have to accept that.

So for the third essay, the final essay, the final countdown.

So I asked my friend to show me her essay.

In a sudden spark of realization, I was like, bro, you got a good grade.

How did you write it?

My friend was amazing.

You know, that's another good tip.

Surround yourself with good friends who are generous, who are not competitive with you.

And that's the good thing about Caltech.

Everyone was really nice.

We're all in this together.

You know, we're all in this together.

And she emailed me the exact essay.

I read it and I was like, dang, this is what the professor wanted.

Why didn't she tell me that?

Sometimes the professor gives obscure answers or the teacher tells you things that in theory is what she wants.

But then when put into practice, it's just so much easier to see an example of what they really want.

This essay was just written in a different style, different structure, different approach than I did.

I've never written an essay that way, but I was like, OK, I'm going to try this.

Wrote an essay similar to my friend's.

Well, not like plagiarizing, of course.

It's just like following the, you know, approach.

I ended up with an A minus overall, but an A plus on that essay.

If I didn't get those little points from the rewrites, I would not have gotten an A.

The email that said what grade I got, professor was like, this is an outstanding piece of work and the best essay you've ever written.

Well, obviously, because I got a better grade.

The lesson there is if something doesn't work out like you talking to the teacher, try a different way.

If you try and go down one path and it shuts down, don't keep trying to jam yourself into that wall.