Straight-A study guide: study in the usa for international students

Students who decide to study in the USA going through a long process to obtain the F-1 or J-1 student visa (Click this link to learn more about F-1 visa regulations). Once you receive the visa and land in the United States, now it is time to study smartly for your academic and career success.

From a direct way to connect with a professor, services provided by your colleges, to online/mobile services that you can get quick feedback 24/7, this post will share three essential services that all international students be aware of to perform well academically.

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Contents

• Office hours
• Tutoring services
• Online/mobile services

Office hours

Proactive students who have questions might try to get hold of professors at the end of the lecture to ask some questions. However, students who just started to study in the USA might feel uncomfortable asking questions when there are classmates or because their English is not perfect.

If this is the case, students can visit professors’ offices during their office hours or send out emails. Most professors or instructors have weekly office hours throughout the semester and there are several ways to check out their office hours. First, you can directly ask the professor or check out the department website or professor’s email signature. Second, you can also check out the course syllabus. When you look at the course syllabus or course description, you will notice that professors or instructors noted their weekly office hours.

In most cases, lecturers are available to meet students without appointments during their office hours. Please note that it’s possible that TAs (Teaching Assistants), instead of professors, would have office hours to answer your questions for some big classes.

Going to office hours is recommended as you can be taught by professors and build a relationship with them. However, it has its downsides like students cannot get instant responses as they have to wait for the next office hour, and that the student might not be able to get a chance to ask if there are many other peers.

Tutoring services

Besides professor’s office hours, there is an institutional service that students can take advantage of from your college or university in regards to the study; Tutoring services. Most colleges or universities have tutoring centers where students can have learning sessions with tutors. In most cases, tutors are students who received certain grades on that course.

This means international students can also work on campus as a tutor if they meet the requirements. As employment authorization is not required for on-campus employment, unlike off-campus employment, working for tutoring services is one of the great ways to deepen your knowledge and earn some money. To learn more about off-campus employment authorization, refer to this CPT/OPT page.

Going back to the topic, how can students make appointments for tutoring sessions? It depends on your school, but usually at the beginning of the semester, tutoring services announce available subjects for tutoring along with available meeting times. Students can find available slots and subjects and make appointments to meet with a tutor.

Seeking assistance from tutoring services is a great way to clear your confusion and ask questions for free. Well, technically, the fee is included in your tuition, so why not take advantage of the services? However, some drawbacks of the tutoring services include that it can be too competitive to make appointments for some subjects especially during the mid-term and final weeks and not all of the courses are offered.

Online/mobile services

Now if you would like to save time and energy to hassle around the campus to visit your professor or make appointments for tutoring sessions, you might want to check out online services.

One of the most popular online learning services among students who study in the USA including domestic students is Chegg Study. Chegg Study is known for two services: Textbook Solutions and Expert Q&A. Each service is a great substitute for office hours and tutoring services respectively in a way that students can get access to the assistance easily and get faster responses.

Textbook Solutions

With Chegg Study, you have a step-by-step guide for your textbook. This means that students can deepen their understandings of why the answer is “the answer.” Depending on the textbook, guided video walkthroughs and practice sets are provided which are especially helpful for foreign students who study in their second languages.

Due to its convenience, some students are tempted to just copy and paste the answer. However, students who miss the opportunity to understand the concept or the process would not perform well in the long term. Therefore, it is important to remember that all the homework, coursework, projects, and these online services are opportunities for students to learn and grow.

Expert Q&A

Besides assistance on the textbook, Chegg Study users can be benefitted from the Expert Q&A service which allows them to ask tough problems to Chegg experts at any time. Students will be able to hear back from experts in as early as 30 minutes. According to Chegg Study, the average response time is 46 minutes. Therefore, students who are near the exam or due date to turn in the homework can get relatively instant help from this service.

Can’t wait for 30 minutes? Explore the Chegg library or archives! From previous users, Chegg Study has over 21 million homework solutions and an archive of 6 million+ solved questions. Thus, students can look through the library and archives to find similar problems and answers that can inspire them to solve their problems.

What if it is hard to ask questions in written sentences? You can simply take photos of questions instead of writing them out. What makes it even more fascinating is that students will be able to find similar homework problems and solutions by just taking photos. The mobile app will be introduced in the following paragraph

Chegg Study mobile app

Asking questions gets even easier with the Chegg Study mobile app, as students can take a photo of the question instead of drawing or writing it. Rated by more than 107K users, another great advantage of signing up for the Chegg Study service is that you can ask questions and get answers at your fingertip through the app.

As you can see in the screenshot below, you can take a photo of the problem that you have been struggling with and Chegg experts will get back to you with step-by-step answers.

All of these services are available for $14.95 per month. Students can cancel the subscription at any time, thus, you can deactivate it during summer/winter breaks. If you are not sure if the service meets your needs, you can take 4 weeks of a free trial by renting a textbook from Chegg.com.

If you would like to try Chegg Study out, read the scenario below and click the link that meets your case:

• I have a textbook to buy or rent anyway and I would like to take advantage of 4 weeks of free trial of Chegg Study: Chegg Books
• I already bought all the textbook that I need but I would like to try the Chegg Study as it seems to meet my academic needs: Chegg Study

This post had a look at three different kinds of academic services for international students. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but essential services that most colleges and universities provide and one of the most popular services among students who study in the USA. Hope this helps you to achieve your academic goals!

Are you are a current international student and would like to share how you achieve your academic goals? Please share your study tips in the comment down below for other international students!