How to Study in College
Introduction
One challenge in college is that you often have only a handful exams that may make up your entire grade for a course. So what is the best way to prepare for them?
A group of researchers read lots of studies that other researchers did on study strategies that students reported they often used (that kind of study is called a “meta-analysis”).* They found only a few were actually supported by the research. (See what they found wasn’t useful and my suggestions for tweaking strategies you like to make them more effective.)
*Daniel Willingham, a cognitive scientist who was one of those researchers, posts videos on his TikTok channel. To get the most out of his work, read his book Outsmart Your Brain on a winter or summer break – it offers lots of useful tips.
Primary strategy – Practice testing
Practice testing (also called retrieval practice) is the main activity to use for exam preparation. Think of it like being an athlete who practices their skills, or a performer who rehearses lines, music, or dances. It keeps your skills up.
When it comes to subjects like math and some science or programming courses, it may be easy to figure out what to do – you just pick problems to solve or codes to write and make yourself practice doing them.
Practice testing can be used to study for other kinds of information, too. For instance, if you need to know a lot of foreign language vocabulary, create a stack of index cards with the terms on one side and definitions on the other.
Go through the stack trying to recall what’s on the other side of the card, starting with the terms facing up. Make sure you practice it “both ways,” so that the in the next study session, you go through the stack the opposite way, with the definitions facing up so that you have to remember the words they represent.
Willingham says you should say the information aloud when practice testing. In other words, if you’re using flashcards, before you flip the card over, say what’s on the other side. If you don’t, you risk keeping your information at a stage where you just have recognition, meaning you know the information when you see it but it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to recall (retrieve) it on the test. Students who prefer to create study materials on the computer can create a master spreadsheet or Word document with two columns – one with the terms and one with definitions. For practice testing, create a copy and clear the information in one column and fill it in. Next time, make a copy of the master where you clear the content in the other column.
If you want to feel really confident when studying, write down your answers before checking the other side of the flashcard. That way, you can be confident you’ll be able to do so on the actual test. This will allow you to check your answer against your notes to make sure it’s not missing any essential elements.
*BTW – a meta-analysis found that use of flash cards wasn’t an effective study strategy. Perhaps it’s because not enough students used them in the way Willingham suggests. Visit this page to see what other strategies don’t have research support. If you really like them, try my suggestions there for how you might tweak them to be more effective.
The other strategies “layer onto” practice testing. They are how you set up your practice testing and how you deepen your studying while doing it.
Interleaving
If you are in hard sciences or math, create a self-test that pulls problems from several different chapters, and mix them together. (In other words, don’t put two from Chapter 1, then two from Chapter 2, etc.) The idea is that each time you see a problem, you need to figure out how to solve it without being able to use context (ex. “I solved the problems from Chapter 2 this way”). It’s unlikely that the professor will have problems on the test in the order in which you learned them, so practice in the way you’ll be tested.
This can work for other kinds of information, too. If you need to memorize vocabulary, mix up the terms from different units on the self-tests you create (or shuffle the flashcards).
Distributed practice
The researchers who did the meta-analyis found cramming works, but only if you need to remember the information for a very brief time. (You also would have to spend enough time reviewing information to get it into your memory.)
What works better for long-term retention is spreading your studying out over time (distributed practice). Remember that you may need to know information for the final that you also studied for the mid-term.
There are a few good reasons to use distributed practice:
- you retain information more effectively if you go through cycles of retrieving information (ex. writing down vocabulary terms or facts), then forgetting, then retrieving the same information again, then forgetting, etc. Think about passwords. You only remember the ones you keep entering into your computer or phone;
- knowing you’ve been studying throughout the term (or at least for the few weeks before an exam) may make you less stressed as exams arrive;
- it takes away the risk of being really tired or sick right before an exam and not being able to concentrate or study effectively (or at all).
The ideal way to do this is to carve out some time each week throughout the term to do some studying. (See this page for tips for creating a study schedule.)
If you don’t want to do weekly studying, plan to start studying at least a week ahead of exams (starting earlier is better) and schedule study blocks a few times a week in that time with time in between the blocks for each exam, if possible.
Strategies for deeper processing
The last two strategies the researchers found effective were elaborative interrogation (ex. asking yourself why something is true) and self-explanation (explaining an idea to yourself). These strategies may work better with information that can be explained (often the information you learn in classes in Liberal Arts, Social Sciences, Humanities, etc.). For instance, if you were studying the development of cities in the ancient world, you would try think about why things happened the way they did. For instance:
- Why they are often located near rivers? (Was it because access to water was important for people to live, to help create materials like bricks, and to transport things on barges from other areas?)
- Why did they build the kinds of structures they did? (What were the resources nearby that could serve as building materials? Did available stone allow them to build higher, and did people with more status live on higher floors?)
When asking yourself questions and explaining concepts to yourself, another way of elaborating is try to connect information you’re studying to information you already know, when possible. For instance, if you’re trying to memorize the definition of “aqueduct,” you can just keep quizzing yourself on it until you’ve mastered it. Or, if you know that “agua” means water in Spanish, once you’ve learned what “aqueduct” means, you can think of the two pieces – “aque” (like water) and “duct” (like in a heating system) to help you remember what it means.
Of course, you can apply these two ideas to studying other kinds of information. For instance, if you have to solve a physics problem, think about why the formula you’re applying is the right one to use.
Final thoughts
Talk to friends (if you’re comfortable) to see how they prepare. You may get an idea for a strategy that you like.
At the same time, don’t feel bad if something your friends use doesn’t work for you. Everyone has different preferences and strengths. The only thing that matters is what works for you.
Remember to set aside enough time to do the work. If you don’t, you reduce the chances the strategies explained here will work.
Good luck!
*Reference – Bjork, R. A., Dunlosky, J., & Kornell, N. (2013). Self-regulated learning: Beliefs, techniques, and illusions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 417–444. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143823