10 Study Hacks Every College Student Should Use
The students use a variety of techniques or hacks to study that they are positive or straightforward to apply. With these methods, they prepare their exams for years, without even doubting their effectiveness. But when they fail, they begin to understand that something must change in the way they study.
If this is your case, and you are looking to change the way you study or need the advice to pass a subject once and for all, we have ten unusual hacks to tell you, with which you will learn to study better:
10 Study Hacks For College Students:
- Make exam drills
Exam simulations allow you to get closer to the type of questions that may appear on the test, and think about the answers beforehand. There are times when you can access exams from other years. Or even to the previous ones of the same year. In this way, it is possible to understand what format the teaching team generally proposes, giving the possibility of creating a simulation exam.
- Group discussions
Share with your friends what you learned, forming study groups in which they discuss the different contents to explain to each other those ideas that they do not fully understand. They can use a face-to-face meeting or take advantage of new technologies to set up Internet forums, Facebook groups, or Skype or Hangouts conversations.
- Writing can be a great exercise.
Visual memory is a crucial factor, so the best thing you can do is write and learn. If you write the essential ideas of each topic by hand on a sheet and also use colors or drawings, you will get to see the concepts more clearly. You can also complete it with information from books. In this way, you will ensure the assimilation of the essential ideas, and you can visualize them once you are in front of the exam.
- Divide the stimuli
We are assuming that you have 4 hours to study today and that the first three are devoted to the study of new topics and the last to your review. We recommend dividing the three hours time as well. In that case, you would be doubling the daily stimulus to two different study strips. It can help you fix knowledge since the review part can be better to do after taking rest.
- Rewriting or explaining to someone else
It is a way of fixing what has been learned and, at the same time, noticing where we need to reinforce the study a little more. It is a way of self-evaluation, while at the same time, we are helping someone else.
- Make schematics/structures.
These are better fixed in the brain, so they can be easier to remember.
- Key associations
Previous knowledge about a topic allows linking it with new aspects. It is easier to retain information if it does not accumulate too much; therefore, it is convenient to review what you saw in the previous class before attending the next one. Continuity has positive effects on memory because it strengthens connections.
- Reading aloud
As we said before, involving different senses in the retention of information will help you to retrieve it later. Reading aloud implies that your eyes and ears are participating in the process to apply the data when necessary. You can even appeal to this method when you study with other people, so everyone concentrates their attention on the same subject.
- Explain the lesson to someone else
The fact of explaining in your own words what you have learned is possibly the most valuable advice to study since it will bring you two significant benefits. On the one hand, rephrasing the lesson is a way of mentally reviewing what you have considered, so the time you spend on this will serve to assimilate better what you have studied before.
On the other hand, it will serve to self-evaluate, detect points that you thought you learned but that at crucial moments give you problems, and offer you a relatively faithful image of your progress.
- Put what youve learned into practice.
Knowledge sticks to your mind when you use it frequently. Internet exercises, conversations with native speakers in language learning, capturing images with the camera if you are learning photography, examples from previous exams, and other tools are ideal for applying this tip.
These study hacks for college students are straightforward to apply, so you should not hesitate to try them. The key to score? Prepare everything well in advance to avoid nervousness and last-minute stress.
