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College Study Skills

Old tests may show you how your professor thinks – or is that cheating?

Some students have access to huge files of old tests for their classes from previous semesters. Is studying those tests considered cheating? That varies with the school and even the prof. Find out what your college’s stance is on old tests before you try to get any old tests to study, of course. I’m aware [...]

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Don’t let other people psych you out right before an exam!

There you are waiting outside your lecture hall to go in and take the exam, and and annoying person or group is reciting things you’ve never even heard of! Don’t let it scare

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How to study and learn better in less time

If you want to study fewer total hours, you’ll accomplish twice as much per hour if you isolate yourself in a quiet place with no distractions for your intense study sessions.

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Have the best study buddy you can find

If you’re a great student, (and you are!), you’ll have no trouble finding someone in each class who also has good study habits and is happy to talk to you about the class and studying for it. For heavy

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For memorization, make it meaningful or mnemonics!

If you have long lists of items to memorize, it really does help to come up with a mnemonic. You can easily think of a memorable sentence using words that share the first letter of the words you’re trying to

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Prepare for labs ahead of time

Here’s what happened to me the first time I walked into organic chemistry lab. After being assigned a bench, I opened the lab manual and saw a long list of things to weigh out, then there was a wall of text about what to do with those things. I got my

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Sit up front in class

We all know that if we go to a group event of any kind, we are more engaged with the speaker if we’re no more than a few yards away from him or her. In fact, there’s often a whole different environment going on in the back of a lecture hall or classroom, and the [...]

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Don’t waste time on what you already know!

If you’re taking a very rigorous class or high-volume (like in med school) class where there’s just no way to cover all of the material within the day or two before the exam, a very easy way to narrow it down is to only study the material you don’t know! I used to think I [...]

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Pay attention to how you learn best

Some people learn best when they’re seated at a desk with their books and/or notes in front of them. In my case, I study pretty well at a desk, but if there’s something difficult I really needed to dig into, I like to sit in the middle of my bed with notes and books surrounding [...]

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Review soon after learning to reinforce and retain!

If you have a really tough class or see a demonstration of something you’ll have to do later, then as soon as you get out of there be sure to sit down and shape up your notes. Remember all those places in your notes where the speaker was talking too fast and you gave up? [...]

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