This research study sought to determine whether pre-reading assignments have an impact on a student's academic performance. Learning a new topic which oftentimes seems foreign is never easy. However, reading a short article or reviewing a slide-show presentation on the lecture topic before the lecture happens (otherwise known as a pre-reading assignment) can help alleviate the many burdens of learning new in-class concepts. The research participants consisted of thirty American undergraduate college students and were divided into either a control or experimental group based on the alphabetical order of their last name. Each participant took two of the same financial literacy tests which served as their pretreatment and posttreatment comprehension tests. An elementary level article on investing from Investopedia outlined the background information of the lecture on financial literacy. The article served as the pre-reading assignment and was administered solely to the experimental group. Both groups were asked to attend a series of small interactive lectures in order to measure the difference between their pre-lecture test scores and their post-lecture test scores. The findings were analyzed statistically through three Hedge's G Tests to identify means, standard deviations, and T values. It was found that the difference in test scores between the control and experimental groups were statistically significant at a 0.05 significance level as students in the experimental group outperformed the control group by roughly 9%. Implications include the potential integration of pre-reading assignments across universities in order to help improve academic performance.