How I ranked 1st at Cambridge University - The Essay Memorisation Framework

• Explore the subject and find essay titles that cover the entire breadth of the syllabus.
• Keep in mind past essay titles.
• After you've covered those up (and gained a deeper understanding of the subject), put yourself in the shoes of the examiners and imagine what they could ask you.

• Start with a question.
• Use Google to get as much information as you can about that particular question (articles, review papers, everything that could answer your question). Keep all the information in a research document.
• Create the plan and start developing its sections.
• Look at the lectures and recommended reading list and finish your essay.
• Give yourself one day to do this for each essay (keep in mind Parkinson's Law: work expands to fill the time you allocate to it).

The three things that count:

1. Structure
2. Actually answering the question
3. Adding your personal touch, the elements that spice up the whole thing.

The introduction is the essential part because you are signaling to the examiner that you are doing all these things.

The objective of this stage is to transfer all your essay plans into your brain so that you can use them later during the exam.

Useful techniques:

• ANKI flashcards
• Spider diagrams
• A retrospective revision timetable.

• These flashcards are blocks of content that can insert into the essays you have planned. They also work for essays you have not prepared in advance: you have blocks of knowledge in your head that you can put into your new essay.
• Everything that is in your ANKI is going to get uploaded into your brain.
• Use them to memorize the paragraphs of your essays.
• Use keywords at the front of the cards: for example, the title of a paper you are going to discuss in your ANKI, a theory, or a concept.

• Using the memorized content blocks of the ANKI flashcards, you can build spider diagrams.
• You have the whole structure of the essay and the keyword in your diagram.
• Follow the same process for all your essay title. Put a date on each page.
• Use 1 page for each essay.
• You have to draw your essays from memory; if there are things you don't remember, actively work on those.
• This is a great way use active recall to ensure you know everything for the exam.
• Before the exam, you can browse through your diagrams.

This is the last step towards effective memorization and it involves systematic spaced repetition. You can do it by using a retrospective timetable.

This technique involves creating a spreadsheet that starts with a list of subjects, topics or essays that you have put together and then inputting the dates on which you study those areas as well as color code the system to provide a visual representation as to which areas we might need to cover again.This method will give you an image of your progress and an overview of how well you know your essays.