5 Tips That Saved My Students 80% Of Study Time

1. Test, Don’t Study

Studies have shown that retention actually increases from the act of testing, but even less while studying. A study on somalian words had people in 3 groups, 1 who learned a set of words then moved on to the new material without being tested or given the words on the study material, 1 who learned a set of words then received them only on their study material, and lastly 1 who learned a set of words then were continually tested on them without having them on their study material. At the end of the study, the group who was tested without the words on their study material, not the group with the words on the study material only, retained the most words. Long story short, retention is increased with testing more than studying. This leads into how should you study? When you study you should do it as if you are continually being tested. Some students have this bad habit of only looking over the terms again and again, when in reality, they should be testing themselves on the material countless times as they go along. The more testing you do, the more experience and memorization you obtain. This means that you need to divide your time up appropriately to testing on new material (passages and discretes) and studying (both should be done every day. No day should ever be strictly one or the other if you can avoid it).

2. Review Your Exam With These in Mind

Many students waste tons and tons of time on exams. It is not worth taking an exam if you’re not going to review the material in depth, it’s just not. When you review the exam, you MUST go over every single wrong question, and what I tell my students is to write something down for every single question you get wrong. If you mess up the units, then write it down until you stop fumbling and forgetting to check the units. You’ll get tired of writing it down and it will put into perspective how often you get certain things wrong. It also keeps a log of your progress over time. Also, review (at least briefly) every right question, just make sure there wasn’t a fact you missed or something you didn’t understand, there is a chance you getting that right was a fluke, but you shouldn’t leave it to chance. When you review the wrong answers, go in with the mindset that you would take it again 1-2 weeks later and you must score 95% correct to prove you know the information. In reality, 3% of the questions are not worth your time to understand, you will know when you come across those questions. When you review your exam, do it the same day you took it. The reason, when you go to read the questions the next day, odds are you’ve forgotten some of the passages, need to read them again, waste time doing so, and never fully understand the second read of the passage anyways (this is likely because you’re too lazy to really try to understand it). Don’t allow your laziness to take over, your goal is to take the exam and review most or the entire thing on the same day. Then by the next day you’ve already hit each topic twice, and studying it becomes a breeze. If you can STUDY it the next day! Don’t waste time by studying it days later and forgetting what you were studying.

3. 3% of Questions Aren’t Even Worth Understanding Why You Got It Wrong

I made reference to this in the topics above. Have you ever heard of the 80/20 rule? It means that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. Time wasting on the MCAT questions work in this way, in my opinion. A portion of your questions will take up majority of your time yielding little to no results. You need to understand when questions are not worth your time to understand, and move on. There are 1000s of questions to practice on!! Don’t waste your time on individual questions you don’t believe will really help benefit your overall grasp of topics, this wastes more time than you know (but most students only realize this when it’s too late).

4. You Need To Know How You Study Best

So I can speak from my own experience in this regard because I’ve successfully learned quite a few glasses in just one weeks time (to make this happen I recommend checking out my videos on timeknowledgepower on youtube, here is the link to how to learn topics in 1 week time https://youtu.be/PVswyqKe1ks). However, everyone studies differently, so not everything I will tell you is universal. First, you need to be interested in the topic, I elaborated on this in another section below. Second, it’s best to make sure the time is optimum; if you’re half asleep, it probably isn’t the best time to be taking on difficult studying. I always used the times that worked best for me, often no earlier than 10AM and no later than 8PM. During those times I could still think, but coulnd’t maintain motivation, so I would do practice problems in stead and review them in the morning. Third, you need to be in the correct mood; this is probably obvious to be honest. That means don’t eat foods that make you feel like crap, and try to exercise a bit during the day to heighten your mood. Fourth, what is the right environent. According to the Yerkes-dodson law of arousal, we all have an optimum level of arousal. For me, it’s actually quite high, thus I tend to learn best in high energy environments. SHould you read the book “Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking”, you will find introverts excel at lower noise and arousal levels. Use this to your advantage. I liked to walk while studying, for one it changed the environments around me, and two is that it gave me some exercise which I was lacking during my studies. Fifth, there really isn’t a fifth, insert whatever you’ve noticed with your study habits here and stick to it.

5. If You’re Not Interested In the Topic, You’re Screwed - Here’s How to Fix That

If you aren’t interested in your topic, you’ll likely be wasting a ton of time. How do you solve not being interested? For one, think of your end goal, let that motivate you when the individual topic isn’t. Another way is to get someone who really enjoys it to accompany you and your studying. Lastly, find the teachers which have the passion you have on youtube or somewhere else. These were short and brief; if you use them all (assuming most of you aren’t using all of them) you’ll save copious amounts of time in the long run and break those score plateaus.