Please thank Cal Newport for this guest post. I will be writing up a post at his blog, Study Hacks, very soon. Cal is also a successful author, with two books entitled: How to Become a Straight A Student, and How to Win at College.

A Surprising Discovery

To research my second book I devised a simple plan. I would choose 50 students, all of whom had high GPAs, from a variety of schools and majors. Each student would besubjected to a tedious interview that extracts every last littledetail about their study habits.

My assumption was that each student would have his or her own custom-built toolbox of tactics. I would pick and present those that seemed most interesting.

But my assumption was wrong.

As I began to collect and review my interview material I kept stumbling across pieces of advice or strategies that appeared again and again. Even more unexpected, many of these repeat offenders were strategies I too had devised as part of my own academic turn around. I soon developed an astonishing theory: When it comes to making straight A’s, there seem to be a collection of universal laws— common strategies that almost any student who sets out to improve his or her performance will ultimately stumble upon. Like the laws of nature, they are fundamental.

One of the most prevalent of these straight-A laws, and arguably the most important, is the following:

The Quiz-and-Recall Method

Most students study using rote review. The method is simple. Collect all of your notes from both lecture and reading assignments, then read them silently to yourself, again and again, as many times as you can tolerate before you become overwhelmed by fatigue.

Conscientious students start a day or two in advance and are able to review everything several times. Less conscientious students wait until the night before — and are often still rote reviewing up to the literal last minute before the test. Indeed, the word “cram” can be defined as: “rapid rote reviewing.”

The straight-A students I interviewed did not do rote review.

In fact, they despised rote review because they could correctly identify its inefficiency. As any cognitive scientist will tell you, silent reading is a terrible way to retain material. Your mind wanders and the material is retained at an abysmally low rate.

Here is what straight-A students do instead:

1. They collapsed their notes into clusters which I call big ideas. It doesn’t really matter how they decide this grouping, it’s enough that clusters are somewhat consistent.
2. They assigned a one-sentence prompt for each big idea. For example: How do Gibbon’s ideas contrast with the scholars of the early 20th century?
   
3. For each prompt, they attempt to lecture out loud, as if talking to an imaginary class, the main points from the corresponding big idea. They do this without looking at their notes. If they are successful, they move on. If they had trouble, they put a checkmark next to the big idea.
4. After the first pass, they take a break, and then repeat, only focusing on the big ideas that got checkmarks. After this run-through, they repeat again, focusing only on the big ideas that still gave them trouble in the second pass. And so on.
5. This continues until they finish a pass with no checkmarks.

I call this the quiz-and-recall method. And it’s incredibly effective.

Two things to notice:

First, for some reason, lecturing out loud makes concepts stick in your mind. Once you explain an idea, it has a way of intertwining itself in your neural pathways, and refusing to let go. Once is enough— you’re going to remember that material. The same doesn’t hold true for rote review. You can read over a set of notes 10 times and still forget the important ideas by the next morning.

Second, by only focusing, on each pass, on the big ideas that gave you trouble in the previous pass, you’re eliminating wasted time. Ideas you are familiar with get a minimum of time. Tough ideas get the most time. In essence, you minimizing the time required to learn every last idea.

It’s Like Magic

Students who trust the quiz-and-recall method report that its effectiveness is almost eerie. A common experience for me, using this technique, is to sit down for an essay exam and find myself able to remember, almost word for word, arguments from lecture that I ingrained using q-and-r. Needless to say, the resulting essays (and grades) were strong.

This is a simple change. But it’s devastatingly effective. If you change just one thing about how you study, consider making the crucial switch from rote review to quiz-and-recall.

This controversial topic of the various methods of study has caused me to create the following poll. Answer it anyway you see fit:

Popularity: 4% [?]

Share This

GPA or Grade Point Average, is the one deciding factor that compares the quality of your work with your classmates and ranks you accordingly. The higher your GPA the better. But sometimes it is much harder to increase this simple number than it first seems. Thankfully, there are some simple steps you can take to boost your GPA. Pick the Brain has provided a few tips on this very topic, but I have found a few more that prove very useful.

John Wesley’s original 7 tips include:

1. Go to class - You would be surprised how often this is not followed. When you get to university you will learn that nothing is compulsory, and none of your lecturer’s will care if you go to their courses or not, so it is extremely difficult to stay focused and motizated.
2. Sit in the Front Row - Not my favourite place to sit in a class, but it will get you involved, and make it easier to learn more.
3. Take Notes by Hand - I am a massive supporter of this idea. I don’t think that you learn as easily just by following through printed notes. Actually writing the information down engages a different part of your brain, meaning that you are thinking about the concept and memorizing it at the same time.
4. Do a weekly review - I have never tried this, but I suspect that it would work well. Most of the time you do this automatically however, whenever you are studying for an exam or preparing an assignment.
5. Go to office hours - Again, I have never tried this, because I do not think that intruding on a lecturer in their time is of any benefit. If you have any questions, just ask them during your classes or directly afterwards.
6. Find smart people to work with - Working through questions, and analysing key concepts can be a great way to fully understand the topic you are studying. It is for this reason that I encourage everyone to get a mentor. Someone older who can help you out, but have a smart fellow student in your same course can often be just as good.
7. Avoid all-nighters - All-nighters are not the most pleasant experience, but most of you will do at least one of two in the next few years. Sometimes they are unavoidable, but I would try to eliminate them as much as possible.

My three additional thoughts on how to increase your GPA are of a different thought process, but are still highly valuable.

1. Take easier courses - Make sure they are related to your major, but taking a few easy courses is a great way to boost your GPA. You just have to make certain that you will score extremely highly in all the assignments and exams. Remember, most courses are weighed the same, so a quick, simple course can be a great way to increase your GPA.
2. Focus on the important assessment - It can be very irritating, but it is often the case that some of the least important assignments in terms of marks can be the hardest and take the most amount of time. Try to focus on the assignments and exams that will have the biggest impact on your overall grade.
3. Remove distractions - Acquiring a high GPA can mean a lot of study. This is a very hard thing to do for many people, so you must help yourself out as much as possible. A good way to do this is to remove all distractions from your study area - TVs, computer games, mobile phones…

Having a high GPA can mean a lot when you are trying to get your first major job, or if you are trying for scholarships and academic awards. Often it is not easy to increase this number by a lot, but it is worth a try!

It’s very difficult to keep yourself focused when studying for an online degree through an online education course. You can consult from encyclopedias and dictionaries i.e. german english dictionary or the online french english dictionary to take help in your studies. Always choose the best online courses offered by a reputable institution like the University of Maryland.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Share This