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Five Scientific Steps to Ace Your Next Exam | Scott H Young
Make Sure You Really Understand
Passing and failing rest on whether you understood some important ideas.
Your top priority should be to understand the core concepts. Identify the core concepts and make sure you can explain them without looking at the material.
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Key Ideas
When to Study
Studying time is more efficient if it is spread out over many sessions throughout the semester, with a little extra right before the exam.
Cover each piece of info five times from when you first learn it until your exam. It will enable you to retain the information with minimal effort.
What and How to Study
Testing yourself, so you have to retrieve the information from memory, works much better than repeatedly reviewing the information, or creating a concept map (mind map).
After the first time learning the material, spend the subsequent studying to recalling the information, solving a problem or explaining the idea without glancing at the source.
What Kinds of Practice to Do
- Mock tests and exams that are identical in style and form.
- Redo problems from assignments, textbook questions or quizzes.
- Generate your own questions or writing prompts based on the material.
Make Sure You Really Understand
Passing and failing rest on whether you understood some important ideas.
Your top priority should be to understand the core concepts. Identify the core concepts and make sure you can explain them without looking at the material.
Overcome Anxiety
Anxiety makes it difficult to remember things. To help overcome this, make some of your studying sessions like a mock exam, using the same seating posture, materials, and the same time constraints.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
10
Key Ideas
Ditch Your Learning Style
Learning styles (visual, auditory etc.) have actually little impact on our ability to learn.
The best way to learn depends on what you’re trying to learn in the first place. The ...
Find Meaning In Learning
If you try to force yourself to just memorize random facts, you’re likely to forget them.
We will most likely remember only the information that was meaningful to us, that we’ve been able to connect to our lives and our experiences.
Learn by Doing
We learn best when we perform the tasks we’re trying to learn.
No matter how good your grades were at college, most of your learning takes place once you enter the workplace and start applying what you've learned.
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Key Ideas
The best routine for studying
It is often unhelpful to hear that the perfect routine is the one you can stick to to help you reach your goals. As everyone is different in personality, constraints, and preferences, the ideal met...
The ingredient of the perfect studying routine
- Instructions can be in the form of lessons, books, or tutoring. They are useful to avoid wasting time with trial-and-error.
- Retrieval involves deliberately remembering the knowledge, not just passively reviewing it.
- Spacing is repeated reviews, spread out over time. It forms part of a regular routine where you cover old knowledge along with new.
- Understanding. The goal of learning is for ideas to make sense. Explain the concept to yourself. When you get stuck, find a textbook or teacher to help you.
- Feedback. You don't have to get feedback from other people. When you can get accurate feedback that doesn't need another person, go there first.
Fixing your current studying routine
To perfect your studying routine, look at your current routine, and see what's missing. For example:
- An amateur painter will grow faster if they add instruction to their existing knowledge.
- Learning history by reading a lot: Why not write an essay or converse with other history buffs?
- You work correctly through a course, but don't space your learning: A ten-minute pop-quiz on previous topics can help you remember and save hours later.
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Key Ideas
Self-control
It’s your ability to resolve conflicts between your short-term desires and your long-term goals.
For example, successful self-control means sacrificing immediate pleasure (cookies a...
Why self-control matters
People who have high self-control aren’t missing out on enjoyment. Not being able to resist temptation and enjoying life are not the same things.
They tend to eat in a healthily way, exercise more, sleep better, drink less alcohol, smoke fewer cigarettes, achieve higher grades at university, have more peaceful relationships, and are more financially secure.
Biological limits to self-control
Research showed that self-control is ultimately limited by our biology. We can’t exercise effortful self-control indefinitely – the brain has to do regular maintenance to remain functional.
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