Academic Difficulty and Probation

At LUMS, students are placed on academic probation when their CGPA falls below 2.0 on a 4.0 Scale. Probation is a serious academic condition, and if the student fails to show improvement in their academic performance in the semester after being placed on probation, they are in danger to being separated from the undergraduate program.

If you are in Academic trouble or Academic Probation, seek the support of your faculty advisor or advising staff at the LUMS OSA as soon as possible. The sooner you alert others that you need help, the more chances you'll have to getting the support you need in time for you to recover academically.

What factors contribute to a student's slump to academic probation?

"Embarrassment, disappointment and desolation can be felt by a student who has failed to meet the academic requirements of his or her institution. Imagine experiencing all of these emotions and not knowing how to get back on track....probationary students desperately need help and support"

Dealing with Emotional Distress

Introduction

One of our goals at the LUMS Office of Student Affairs is to promote a sense of community and belonging among students at LUMS. In building this sense of community, the most powerful message that we convey to our students is that they are not alone in times of distress. Emotional distress is often triggered and intensified by a feeling of isolation. When students feel that their emotional well being is of no concern to their peers or their faculty, distress can turn into desperation, leading the student to act in ways that cause harm to their own selves or those around them.


Students at college everywhere are faced with many challenges that university life throws at them. In addition to surviving academically and preparing for further graduate study or professional careers, students are also involved in a process of becoming unique and independent adults, deciding on career alternatives, creating personal value systems and developing significant relationships. Most of these challenges are essential for students 9 develop and grow. It provides students with the opportunity to develop character, perseverance the ability to handle stress and pressure and to manage time. However, students handle the challenges with varying degrees of success. The problems they face at LUMS may overwhelm them emotionally, causing a decline in mood, performance and quality of life.

If you are facing problems coping with life at LUMS, you should confide in faculty members you respect and who you may consider a mentor.

Strategies for Academic Success at LUMS

                      

Time Management

Learning how to manage your time effectively is crucial to academic success and to experiencing a fulfilling university life. Surprise quizzes, assignments, and multiple deadlines on a single day are routine in the schedule of any LUMS undergraduate student. The key to effectively juggling all these demands is to develop good time management skills, from the very start of your undergraduate career. Consider these strategies:

Planning your Semester Activities

It is always helpful to get a feel for what lies ahead in the semester at the very start of a term. To this end, it is useful to maintain a semester planner on which you can jot down the important dates and deadlines (like the mid-term and the final exam schedule). Planning can also be done for different university events as well as for participation in extracurricular activities. As the semester progresses, fresh additions can be made to this schedule as new assignment, project and paper deadlines are communicated. Laying a framework for your weekly activities. 

Your Freshman Year at LUMS

                      Understanding Your Transition to University

"Young women and men arriving at college immediately confront a set of decisions. Which courses to choose? What subject to specialize in? What activities to join? How much to study? How to study? Such decisions are intensely personal. Often they are made with little information. Yet their consequences can be enormous. A subject that is bypassed, or study habits that are mismatched for certain classes, can result in limited options, reduced opportunities, or closed doors. Advisors play a critical role. They can ask a broad array of questions, and make a few suggestions, that can affect students in a profound and continuing way."

(p. 84, Making the Most of College, Richard J. Light, Harvard University)

Your transition to university involves significant changes on all dimensions of your life: academic, personal and social, and it must be understood that adjusting to these changes might take time. If you are facing difficultly adjusting academically or socially to LUMS, you must be patient and allow yourself time to grow into your new life at LUMS

The Importance of Time Management

Our Experience at LUMS 

    Require students to keep time logs. I ask each student to record exactly how his or her time is spent, half_hour-by-half_hour, for several weeks. Then I sit and debrief each student, one-to-one, about what his or her time log shows. A crucial focus in the debriefing should be on how time in between scheduled obligations is used. For example, a student with a class from 9 to 10 a.m., and then another class from noon to 1 p.m., has two hours of in-between time. How should the student use this time? He or she may choose to chat with friends or go back to the room to study. He or she may want to do a few errands or do some physical exercise. There is no single correct thing to do. Rather, whatever he or she chooses, the key point is that it should be done with some thought.

The Critical Difference: Time Management

Following is an excerpt from Dr. Richard Light's book, Making the Most of College (Harvard University Press, 2002)

"Things that worked for me in high school, I discovered, don't work for me in college. I really was unprepared for the amount of material that is presented here and the speed at which it is presented. I: was a bit of a shock. Things I picked up quickly in high school I couldn't pick up so easily any more.

Here at college I wasn't being checked every day. I did not get off to a great start because I had never really learned to study this enormous amount of material in a systematic way. I tended to do one subject for a big span of time and then neglect it for a week. Then I moved on to another subject, ad forgot about that for a week. So there was no continuity within each course. That had a lot to do with it. Finally I figured it out. This year, I'm pushing myself to spend a little bit of time every day on each subject.

Effective Listening arid Note-taking in Lecture

            Regularity and punctuality with attending lectures is a highly enshrined value at LUMS. Students are expected to maximize their understanding and knowledge of material from what is discussed in class. This can be done by active listening, rather than passive hearing out in lecture, and by taking down notes and asking questions at important junctures. These notes can come in handy for exam preparation and quizzes as well, sine, it is possible that material that students are tested on in the exam is not available in the course text book. As an example some of the questions discussed in class may show up in the course exams, and these questions may not be available in the text book.

We can learn to be good listeners with some work and practice. The rewards can be great.

PLAGIARISM

WHAT IS PLAGIARISM? 

Plagiarism is the use, without acknowledgement, of the  intellectual work of other people, and the act or representing the  ideas or discoveries of another as one’s own in written work  submitted for assessment. To copy sentences, phrases or even striking expressions without acknowledgement of the source  (either by inadequate citation or failure to indicate verbatim  quotations) is plagiarism; to paraphrase without acknowledgement is likewise plagiarism. Where such copying or paraphrasing has occurred, the mere mention of the source in the bibliography shall not be deemed sufficient acknowledgement;  each such instance must be referred specifically to its source. Verbatim quotations must be in inverted commas, or indented, and directly acknowledged.