Top 3 tips for your first Uni Assignment!

Whether you have just started your first semester or are thinking about uni in the future, you may be starting to wonder how to best approach your first assignment.

My Top Tips:

1) Start early - gives you the most amount of time to plan and perfect your assignment.

2) Check your referencing guide - referencing can be difficult, especially at the start of your uni journey. Make sure you familiarise yourself with your uni's guide to referencing.

3) Ask for help if you don't understand the assignment brief - the key to doing well in your assignment is fully understanding your assignment and what you will be marked on.

What are your top tips for completing University assignments?

I hope this helps,

Matt
Wrexham Uni Reps

Reply 1

De Montfort University

Official Rep

Original post

by Matt-WrexhamUni

Whether you have just started your first semester or are thinking about uni in the future, you may be starting to wonder how to best approach your first assignment.
My Top Tips:
1) Start early - gives you the most amount of time to plan and perfect your assignment.
2) Check your referencing guide - referencing can be difficult, especially at the start of your uni journey. Make sure you familiarise yourself with your uni's guide to referencing.
3) Ask for help if you don't understand the assignment brief - the key to doing well in your assignment is fully understanding your assignment and what you will be marked on.
What are your top tips for completing University assignments?
I hope this helps,
Matt
Wrexham Uni Reps

Hiya!

This is some really helpful advice, especially about starting early and checking the referencing guide. I can’t stress enough how important starting early is myself. You never know how long an assignment will take or what might crop up unexpectedly. I’ve left one or two assignments to the last minute before, and the stress and emotional drain just wasn’t worth it.

If you’re struggling, don’t hesitate to ask for support. This could be from your lecturer, but also check whether your library offers academic skills or support sessions. I went to a few of these, and the staff were always so lovely and incredibly helpful. Even in my third year, when I thought I had referencing sorted, I still came across the odd tricky one, and they were more than happy to guide me through it.

Another thing I’d add is to look after yourself. Sometimes the best thing for your productivity is a proper break, a good night’s sleep, or just getting some fresh air. You’ll come back with a clearer head and more focus and hopefully prevent any burnout.

Breaking assignments down into smaller, manageable tasks also helps a lot, and remember that your first draft doesn’t need to be perfect, this is something I still need help with accepting.

-Maddie, Graduate from Health and Wellbeing in Society at De Montfort University

(edited 1 month ago)

Reply 2

University of Bath

Official Rep

Hi there!

Back up your points with evidence (Example et al., 2025)

Don't be afraid to lift references from your references - these will often be on the same topic so can lead you down useful rabbit-holes

Don't expect the perfect grade first time - its perfectly normal to achieve lower than you expect or want on your first few assignments - this is just a reflection of you learning a whole new way of writing and will improve with practice

Best of luck everyone 🙂

University of Bath

Reply 3

University of Salford Student Rep

Official Rep

Hey everyone,

This is such a helpful thread, getting tips early on can really make a difference when tackling your first assignment. Here are a few things that have helped me:

•

Check the mark scheme (if it's available). It’s one of the best ways to understand exactly what you're being assessed on. Knowing what the examiners are looking for can help you focus your efforts and aim for the higher marks.

•

Get feedback on a draft before submitting the final version. If possible, email your lecturer or attend their office hours to ask if they can take a quick look. Even a few pointers can help you feel more confident that you're on the right track.

•

Keep your references and citations up to date. It’s easy to forget to update your reference list when adding or removing sources as you write. Staying on top of this during the writing process can save you a lot of last-minute stress.

Hope you find these tips useful.

Best of luck with your assignments! 😊
Arslan – University of Salford Student Representative

Reply 4

EssexStudentRep

Official Rep

Original post

by Matt-WrexhamUni

Whether you have just started your first semester or are thinking about uni in the future, you may be starting to wonder how to best approach your first assignment.
My Top Tips:
1) Start early - gives you the most amount of time to plan and perfect your assignment.
2) Check your referencing guide - referencing can be difficult, especially at the start of your uni journey. Make sure you familiarise yourself with your uni's guide to referencing.
3) Ask for help if you don't understand the assignment brief - the key to doing well in your assignment is fully understanding your assignment and what you will be marked on.
What are your top tips for completing University assignments?
I hope this helps,
Matt
Wrexham Uni Reps

Hi @Matt-WrexhamUni 👋

This is great advice! Our 3 top tips would be as followed:

1) Plan ahead and make sure you have all the resources you need

2) Take some time between finishing the assignment and submitting it to look over again!

3) Ask for help when you need it and dont rush 🙂

Hope this helps everyone 😊

Essex Student Rep - Lavanya 💜

Reply 5

LancashireRep5

Official Rep

Original post

by Matt-WrexhamUni

Whether you have just started your first semester or are thinking about uni in the future, you may be starting to wonder how to best approach your first assignment.
My Top Tips:
1) Start early - gives you the most amount of time to plan and perfect your assignment.
2) Check your referencing guide - referencing can be difficult, especially at the start of your uni journey. Make sure you familiarise yourself with your uni's guide to referencing.
3) Ask for help if you don't understand the assignment brief - the key to doing well in your assignment is fully understanding your assignment and what you will be marked on.
What are your top tips for completing University assignments?
I hope this helps,
Matt
Wrexham Uni Reps

Hey there everyone 👋

My name is Siobhan and I’m a recent graduate from the University of Lancashire 🎓 I love this topic and it’s great to see so many great responses already! Here’s some things that I would recommend from my experience 😄

Create a plan of what to do before starting. In 1st year I would always start my assignments blindly and it would always end up as a disaster 🙈 Once I started to find my references beforehand and have a rough structure of what to do, I found the flow of things was much better!

Keep the objectives/marking scheme next to you at all times. I would always check the marking scheme beforehand and then never look at it again! 👀 In second year, I ALWAYS had the objectives and marking scheme next to me so I made sure I wasn’t going off track

Ask for help when you need it! I suffered in silence a lot in 1st year which burnt me out as I was making no progress. Once I opened up to my lecturers, I managed to get support from them as well as academic supervisors which helped me get a first class degree!!! Feedback is essential from others so don’t be afraid to seek it out when you’re not sure what to do or where you went wrong.