How to reach university level depth?
I'm a CS student, and one thing I've been struggling with is how you're actually supposed to develop depth of understanding in university.
In high school (up to Grade 12), we had an entire year to learn a subject. You had time to attend classes, let concepts sink in, revisit them multiple times, and solve enough problems to build intuition.
At university, though, a course lasts around 15 weeks (~ 3 months of teaching and 3 weeks of reading and exams) . By the time you've attended lectures, done the readings, and understood the basic concepts, the next topic is already being taught. I personally found myself struggling to understand the concepts. After understanding a concept, I could not spend too much time practicing, or I would end up sacrificing another subject!
The thing that confuses me is that exam papers often expect a very deep understanding. They don't just test whether you know the material:they expect you to apply concepts in completely new ways, almost as if you've spent hours thinking about the underlying ideas and practicing every possible variation.
I understand that solving lots of problems is part of the answer, but when you're taking 4–5 other equally demanding courses, that seems almost impossible. In my experience, just doing the problem sets and tutorials does not seem enough to build exam technique and necessary intuition .
So my question is: How do professors expect students to develop that level of depth within such a short timeframe? Is there a particular study approach that helps build deep intuition efficiently, or is it simply expected that not everyone will reach that level in every course?