For some of you, the semester is finally over. For the rest, the finish line is just ahead.

Maybe you stayed on top of your studies and got good grades, or maybe you lucked out with easy courses and got good grades. Or, maybe (like me) you could have done better in both your efforts and your grades.

It may be too late to save this semester, but we've put together a list of seven keys to getting better grades. You may want to consider adopting some or all for your New Year's resolutions.

It would be outstanding if you could mix a few chemicals and make a potion that would get you better grades. Unfortunately, those of us not named Harry Potter can't rely on magic -- we need to work at it.

Fortunately, there are some best practices that will help you do better next semester. Make these seven keys your New Year's resolution and you'll have a better report card come springtime.

In most college curricula, you'll need two semesters of science and the corresponding lab courses to satisfy the science requirement. Unless you decide to pursue a science major, that means you'll need to pick an introductory course from the choices your school offers. So how does one go about doing this?

The easiest way to choose is having an interest in one of the choices. For example, I took Biology, Chemistry, and Physics in high school and got decent grades. When I got into college, I picked Physics because it seemed most interesting (and that was mostly my high school teacher being interesting, not the subject matter). College work is much more rigorous than high school, though, and I barely passed both semesters.

The modern periodic table has been at the heart of chemistry, biology, and other sciences since the pioneering work of Meyer and Mendeleev in the late 1800s. A periodic table has graced the inside front cover of countless science texts for as long as I can remember, but textbooks don't always do such a good job of explaining what it is and how to use it.

Unlike these static textbook tables, the Periodic Table Cramlet™ has several features that make it effective where the book is not: