Oct 22, 2025 08:00:00

Stanford University graduate OpenAI co-founder explains how to get good grades on school tests

Andrei Karpathy , co-founder of OpenAI, earned a bachelor's degree in computer science and physics from the University of Toronto, a master's degree in computer vision from the University of British Columbia, and a doctorate in deep learning and computer vision from Stanford University. Karpathy has published an advice article for students on the Stanford University website summarizing 'What I wish someone had told me when I was an undergraduate.'

Andrej's advice for success
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/advice.html

Karpathy begins by saying that, in general, 'sleep is a great thing,' recommending at least four hours, and ideally 7.5 hours, and asserting that staying up all night is 'completely pointless.' He also says that you should attend tutorials and review sessions, even if the content is boring.

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Karpathy then provides specific advice on how to do well on school tests, divided into three sections: 'Before the test,' 'On the day of the test,' and 'During the test.'

Before the test
According to Karpathy, when tackling a task, it's important to understand the big picture and create a study schedule, even if you don't follow it. For example, Karpathy wrote out all the knowledge he needed to pass the test in bullet points, so he could consider all the points and decide how much time he could spend on each, taking into account his schedule.

Also, as a study method, it is important not only to read books, but also to check past tests to understand the question trends and actually solve the problems. Even if the exam does not allow students to bring in their own materials, the act of summarizing the important points in your own words and creating a 'cheat sheet' is said to be useful for solidifying memory, not just as understanding but also as 'training the ability to reproduce.' Especially in the case of mathematics, it is preferable to spend more time solving practice problems than reading.

Karpathy also says it's important to understand the limitations of studying alone. While you should study alone in the early stages, towards the end of your studies, it's important to exchange opinions with others, get advice from students who are doing better than you, and tutor students who are doing worse than you. By interacting with a variety of people, you can deepen your understanding in many ways. Studying in a place where other people are studying, such as a university library, can also be stimulating. Furthermore, Karpathy says that contacting your professor before an exam may give you some ideas about the test and is a good opportunity for the professor to get to know you.

・On the day of the test
Karpathy also says that you should pay attention to what you eat and drink on the day of the test. While it's not good to avoid coffee altogether, he says it's best to avoid drinking it right before the test and to consume a meal and caffeine two hours before the test begins. While coffee is purely Karpathy's subjective opinion, it's worth considering what you should consume right before a psychologically stressful test. He also says that the 30 to 45 minutes before the test is when 'short-term memory is most active,' so it's effective to do some light review.

・Testing
When the test begins, don't jump right into the questions. Instead, take a few minutes to quickly go through the whole thing, understand the point allocation and difficulty of each question, and then develop a strategy. Once you have a sense of the scale of the test as a whole, start by answering the easy questions and then go back and re-solve them. The easy questions act as a warm-up, and you may come up with ideas that didn't come to mind the first time. By understanding the whole picture, you can also control your thinking, such as not spending too much time on questions that are difficult or difficult for you but have low marks.

Karpathy also emphasizes the importance of 'keeping in mind that it's being graded by a human' based on his own experience as a teaching assistant (TA) grading papers in place of professors. Even with complex writing, it's important to be conscious of communicating with the grader, carefully explaining the logic of the solution, clearly circling the answer, and answering with the grader in mind.

Finally, Karpathy said, 'What I wish someone had told me when I was an undergraduate is that, while undergraduates tend to want to get good grades, no one cares unless they get bad grades.' Karpathy said, 'Getting 85% in all your courses is enough.' He emphasized that rather than wasting time trying to fill the remaining 15%, directing that energy toward research projects, personal development, and solving real-world problems will lead to truly valuable learning.