Planning your academic goals
Goal-setting enables you to take active and tangible steps to achieve your desired academic outcome. Perhaps your academic dream is quite specific: become a teacher, physiotherapist, translator or statistician. Or maybe your desired academic outcome is broader: to cure diseases, save sea creatures or help others with your skills and interests. Each one of these dreams involves setting and reaching small (and eventually big!) goals. Each of these major goals can be broken down into smaller, more attainable goals that will propel you towards success.
Connecting short-term, medium-term and long-term goals
Many students find it easy to identify their long-term goals or dreams. But they often find it more challenging to identify relevant short-term and medium-term goals that will help them achieve that goal. In order for you to stay motivated, long-term goals must be connected to tangible short-term goals. Otherwise, your long-term goal isn’t so much a goal as a daydream! Think of short-term goals as stepping stones that help you “travel” towards your bigger long-term goal.
The main difference between short-term, medium-term and long-term goals are timeframe, and scope (how big the goal is).
Long-term goals are goals you aim to achieve over a long extended period—typically six months to several years. They represent big-picture outcomes that often require sustained effort. They are achieved through success in your short-term and medium-term goals.
Medium-term academic goals are usually achieved over a few months, a semester or a year.
They are more strategic and involve planning over time. Medium-term academic goals could look like building skills, rather than doing a task. In order to achieve medium-term goals, you will have to plan multiple short-term goals and successfully maintain them. Some examples of medium-term goals are:
- Achieving a Distinction average this semester.
- Improving academic writing skills before the next major assignment.
- Completing all prerequisites needed to apply for an internship.
- Forming a consistent weekly study schedule across the term.
You need medium-term goals to stay motivated and maintain direction beyond day-to-day tasks. Most importantly, stay motivated by reminding yourself of your long-term goals and how your short-term and medium-term goals connect and contribute to them.
Short-term academic goals can be achieved in the near future, usually within a few days or weeks. They are usually specific tasks. For example:
- Completing your lab report by next Friday.
- Attending all lectures this week.
- Scoring at least 80% on the upcoming quiz.
- Booking a meeting with a learning adviser for essay feedback.
- Reading three journal articles for your research paper by Monday.
Example of connecting academic goals together
We asked some students what their long-term goals for study are, and how they broke those goals down into more manageable medium-term and short-term goals.
| Student | Long-term goals | Medium-term goals | Short-term goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jonny, 3rd year Bachelor of Psychology | Graduate with a High Distinction average (HD) and get into an honours program. | Maintain a distinction average across all 3rd year subjects. | Complete all assignments on time and attend weekly PASS sessions. |
| Sam, 2nd year Master of Engineering | Become a self-regulated student who manages time independently. | Maintain a consistent study routine for the entire semester. | Create a weekly study plan and stick to it for 2 weeks. |
| Jude, 1st year Juris Doctor Law | Learn to engage and lead people. | Take an active role in a group project or student society. | Ask one question per tutorial or join a class discussion. |
You might like to think about how your own academic goals connect together over time. (If you’d like a refresher on time management, check out our resource Manage your time).
Setting process-oriented and outcome-oriented goals
In addition, your academic goals can also be separated into two types: process- and outcome-oriented goals.
Connecting process and outcome goals
Process and outcome goals are connected. Your overall academic dream is going to be much easier to achieve if you can break it down into clear, controllable steps in process goals while maintaining the drive and focus surrounding your larger outcome goals.