The Return of Q & A

After spending a nice evening yesterday working through my backlog of Study Hacks e-mail, I felt inspired to do an old fashioned Q & A style post. I like these posts because they allow me to cover a lot of ground quickly and reinforce some of the Study Hacks basics. If you’re amenable, I’ll try to work more of these Q & A dashes into my regular rotation.

And as always, feel free to e-mail me with your own student questions.

From the reader mailbag:

While most of your site deals with college and some grad school advice, I haven’t seen anything for med students.  Have you talked to any successful students in med school?

Cal responds:

I have. The consistent message I hear from med students is that there’s a unique best way to study for each course/professor combo. If you can find this best way, then the task isn’t too bad. By contrast, if you don’t, you can end up spending endless hours and still not score as high as you hoped. With this in mind, these students recommend that for every class talk to both the professor, and older students who already took the class, about the best way to study.

From the reader mailbag:

I’m currently very sick (sniffles, fever, coughing, sore throat etc.)… but I also have five very scary midterms coming up very soon. What’s your advice for dealing with sickness when deadlines loom?

Cal responds:

Assuming your sickness is merely tiring (like a cold) and not debilitating (like the flu), then I recommend that you adjust your detailed date/action style midterm study plan (you do have a detailed study plan, right?) so that over the next few days you’re only doing 1 – 3 hours of work on your test preparation. Do this work early in the morning and afternoon, and then spend your after-dinner hours relaxing until sleep.

Once you start to rebound, review the study tasks that remain and then make the best schedule possible for completing them. (This will likely include a few hard days.)

From the reader mailbag:

What are your thoughts on rewriting lecture notes?

Cal responds:

It’s a waste of time. The best students learn how to process the information as its presented and then record good notes, in their own words, on the fly.

From the reader mailbag:

I read your article about grand projects.  I’m really interested in business, economics, and travel, so I want to start an travel abroad program that takes students to China to study China’s different economic policies. Do you have any ideas for a more feasible grand project that involves econ and business?

Cal responds:

As I explain in this article about innovation, it can be difficult to think up feasible grand projects from scratch. For example, to start a travel abroad program out of the blue will almost definitely fail. (The logistics and experience required for such a venture are staggering!)

This is why I recommend the following three step path: (1) join a community related to your interest; (2) pay your dues; (3) complete small projects to gain access to larger, more impressive projects.

The support and resources of an existing community will enable you to accomplish much more than if you were working on your own.

From the reader mailbag:

I just found out my final exam schedule and it’s not pretty.  I have 4 final exams in 3 days!  I am extremely worried now and I just do not know what to do or how to go about studying for these exams!

Cal responds:

The dates of your exams couldn’t matter less! If you have a detailed date/action style exam study plan (sense a recurring theme to today’s post?) then you should have no trouble completing all the necessary preparation work. Whether the exams all fall on the same day, or are well-separated, this should have no effect on a study process that spans 2 – 3 weeks.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Q & A post, but I’ve received so many good questions recently, I thought it was about time this series made a comeback!

From the reader mailbag:

How would you go about taking notes on Biology textbook chapters?

Cal responds:

Take notes using your laptop and format them directly as focused question clusters. This removes any obstacles between your notetaking now and efficient studying later.

From the reader mailbag:

In grad school, I’ve gotten into a low-productivity loop: Spend two hours ramping up on one class, get nothing completed, repeat with another class. Not only is it unproductive, it’s really, really unpleasant. Most other people I know also report that this is the main difficulty with grad school: switching between multiple tasks.

Cal responds:

On the tactical level, three things have worked for me…

First, use an autopilot schedule to take the decision-making out of what work to be doing when.

Second, move to different locations for different tasks. The change of setting can help reset your mind. (For example, some work I do at my desk at MIT while other work I tackle in various libraries — the specific library depends on the type of work required.)

Third, it helps to have a predefined start-up and shut-down routine, so it’s easier to turn your mind off and on. For example, I often record careful notes in my lab notebook when I finish working on my thesis. These notes cover the main theorems I proved or techniques I tried. By contrast, when I start working on my thesis, I clear my desk, shutdown all computer applications and turn off my monitor, put out a clean sheet of paper, and re-read the last section I worked on; simple stuff, but it works.

At the strategic level, be wary of deep procrastination. For grad students, this can come in the guise of becoming tired of being a student. You might check out my thoughts on grad school for some inspiration on how to recharge your career.

From the reader mailbag:

How do I perform a post-mortem style analysis on a writing assignment I bombed?

Cal responds:

Setup a meeting with your professor. Make it clear that you don’t want a better grade on this assignment. Instead, emphasize that one of your goals is to get better at writing for your future assignments. He or she will be happy to provide feedback on what separates your work from the top papers. After you get this feedback take the time to map out specific changes to your paper-writing system.

From the reader mailbag:

With reading week fast approaching at many colleges, I’m wondering if you could post about how undergrads could best make use of free time during this week? For example, would it be better to focus on one subject a day, or would it be advisable do some work on each subject everyday?

Cal responds:

Work on one or two subjects per day. Any more, and you don’t have enough time to ramp up your focus. Any less, and you’re not studying at all. To ensure you cover everything, make sure you have a plan. I suggest the project folder method (which you can see in action here).

From the reader mailbag:

I looked for posts about this weird problem I’ve been having (I can’t stay awake in my favorite class) but didn’t find anything related.

Cal responds:

Lots of students have this problem. The cause is not lack of sleep, but, instead, lack of a regular sleep pattern. That is, if you go to sleep and wake up and different times each day, this can throw your sleep cycles out of whack and make you crash unexpectedly.

It’s better to get less sleep on a regular schedule, than more sleep on an erratic schedule. During the week stick with a common sleep and wake-up time.

I have three questions about your focused question clusters study strategy.

1. Is the list of rapid-fire questions for one test (with answers) supposed to be nearly as long as a textbook chapter?
2. I’m confused — what exactly are they supposed to cover?
3. Can one go about making them without spending several days’ worth at the computer or with a pen and pencil?

Cal responds:

1. Hopefully much shorter.
2. Everything you need to know for the test.
3. Try to inline the question building with your note-taking in class and while doing reading assignments. Don’t wait until right before the test to construct all of your clusters from scratch.

From the reader mailbag:

I have two majors and a minor. I love one of my majors (Psychology) and my minor (French). Most of my stress comes from my other major (Business). I dislike my business classes and find them hard. I want to go to grad school for Psych after graduation. I am using business as a “back up”… but this “back up” is taking over my life!!! If I could have things my way, I would finish the psych major, apply for grad school, and graduate.

What do I do? I am too scared to not go the B-school route…

Cal responds:

Let’s review: You have two majors. You really dislike one of the majors. This terrible major has nothing to do with what you want to do after your graduate. It’s hurting your performance in the major you like. Your only justification for sticking with this extra major is that you have a vague, unverified belief that it will somehow be a “backup.”

I wonder what I might advise…

From the reader mailbag:

Realistically, I’m going to end up with a ‘B’ in a psych course I’m taking this semester. Do you think I should withdraw from it to keep my GPA higher? On the course transcript, instead of a grade, it’ll say ‘W,’ but it won’t affect my GPA. Do you think med schools will look at this “W” and hurt my chance of admissions?

Cal responds:

Don’t withdraw. And stop obsessing over your GPA.

Instead, focus on doing quality and efficient work in each individual class. If you don’t like your performance in a particular class, do a rigorous post-mortem to help you polish your technical study skills for the classes to follow. You’ll get the best overall results if you follow this short-term, skills-oriented mindset.

From the reader mailbag:

How do you craft a good schedule? I know that it might vary from one student to the next, but I was thinking about having classes from 9:30-5:30 on just Mondays and Tuesdays next semester (with a 15 minute break between each of my 5 classes). What are your thoughts on this type of schedule?

Cal responds:

You’re right about optimal schedules being different for different types of students. The Monday/Tuesday schedule sounds interesting. It would allow you, for example, to treat Wed – Friday as regular work days during which you could systematically work through your assignments for the week. I like the control that gives you. I also like that your weekends and evenings could be free.

On the other hand, it would require hearty mental stamina. (Remember when Leena tried something similar and it didn’t work out…)

My conclusion: If you’re good at working for long periods, then yes, try this. If your attention wanders, however, you might need a more diverse daily setup. Some tactics that seem to work well for most students include: a plan.txt file, an autopilot schedule, a task management system like GTDCS to coral your stuff, and, of course, a sunday ritual.

Reader question #1:

I did very poorly on my first test (an 80%)…is it easy or common to rebound from such a grade and eventually end up with a satisfactory grade, like an A?

Cal responds:

We’ll start with some tactical advice then move on to something more philosophical.

Tactical Advice:

You’re used to numeric grades being synced to a letter grade scale. Therefore, you see an 80% and think “I got a B-”, and then conclude that you are now a low B student who will never get into graduate school.

Not true.

Numeric grades at college do not match letter grades. They match, instead, what percent of the points you got right. Your final grade will be relative to the class. It’s possible that 80% is at the top of the class, or maybe the bottom. It just depends on the test. It has nothing to do, at this point, with A’s or B’s.

I once got, for example, the highest overall grade in my discrete math class at Dartmouth after scoring a 50% on the midterm. It turned out that for that particular exam, 50% of the points was pretty damn good. I’ve also had scores in the 90′s deemed average due to the fact that so many students got every single point right. Again: it depends on the test.

To sum up the tactical advice, don’t sweat specific scores. Just keep working to get as many points as possible in each exam. The final grade will reward you.

Philosophical Advice:

Now it’s time for some tough love. I think there’s a bigger issue at stake here. It seems you’re approaching college the same way you approached high school. You fear that if you make any mistake — e.g., missing an ‘A’ in any class — that you won’t succeed after graduation.

Here’s the most important piece of advice I can give you: college is not high school. There is no college admissions officer in your future who is going pour over your transcript looking for an excuse to reject you. That’s not the way people get jobs. That’s not the way medical schools choose students. That’s definitely not the way graduate schools choose students.

So chill out…

I suggest the following freshman year starter advice:

1. Don’t obsess over your grades.
2. Experiment with different study habits. It will take you most of this first year to figure out what works for you.
3. Keep your course load light and interesting so you have the time needed to get into the material. You’re new to college-level academics, so, for now, it will take you longer than you might like to learn stuff. Maybe much longer.

To put things in perspective: My first grade at Dartmouth was a ‘C’. It was a paper for my freshman English seminar. It sucked.

During my second semester, I had to change one of my courses to pass/fail because I was doing so poorly. I was still figuring out how to take notes, and write a paper, and prepare for a blue book exam (a real mystery to me at first). It was not until midterms of my sophomore fall that I started to get the hang of studying at this level.

And I ended up doing pretty well for myself…

Reader question #2:

Extracurricular-wise, I love to play basketball, I enjoy math, and I enjoy the sciences. However, it feels as though I’m being sucked into all these leadership and culture organizations that have no relevance to my true interests. The qualm I have about devoting time to basketball is that graduate schools or med schools won’t look so impressed by my efforts with that.

Cal responds:

Graduate schools and medical school won’t care about any of the clubs you mentioned — be it the cultural organization or a basketball club. So, for the love of God, stop joining clubs that don’t interest you! I know, I know, you are still in this college admissions mindset that somehow you needs lots of hard activities to get “accepted,” blah, blah, blah.

You need to forget this mentality.

Let me put your mind at ease with a reality check…

Here is what graduate schools care about: your grades in the relevant subjects and your research experience. Nothing else matters. They really could not care less that you’re the president of the Aleutian Irish Eskimo Cultural Heritage Club. (See this article for more information on graduate school admissions.)

Here is what medical schools care about: your grades, your MCATs, and some sign that you understand the reality of life in medicine and have a real interest. As with grad school, the fact that you spend 30 hours a week chairing different cultural organizations, or whatever, doesn’t matter to them. (See this article for more information on medical school admissions.)

Here’s my advice to you: Drop the clubs you don’t like. No one cares about them. I don’t mean to be harsh, but when I see an Ivy League student who is the president of a bunch of cultural clubs, I think: here is someone who is just blindly trying to do stuff to impress people. Translation: someone who is boring and uninspired.

Instead, do two things. First, choose something that really interests you; something that will help you make friends and provide social opportunities and a sense of community. This will make you happy, which is important. It has nothing to do with post-grad opportunities.

Second, if you want to go to medical school or graduate school, tack on the appropriate research or interest in medicine activity that they require. Read the two articles I linked to above for a specific game plan on what sort of activities matter in this context.

If you need extra convincing, read this open letter I wrote last spring to new college students. It’s message: “Your temptation will be to treat college like another admissions process…here’s the thing, it’s not like that at all.”

Accept this idea and a lot of your worries will be alleviated.

I’m wondering what changes a college student who intends to transfer should make. I ask this because colleges usually expect transfer applicants to have taken a fairly rigorous schedule and still earned decent grades, as well as participated in extracurriculars. While I’d love to do the zen lifestyle thing it just doesn’t seem like an option until I’m at the college where I want to be.

Cal responds:

The goal of the Zen Valedictorian philosophy is to become more relaxed without becoming less impressive. Applying it to your situation, we can generate these observations:

• The college won’t care about the difficulty of your individual courses. They’ll look at your G.P.A. and your major. They’ll verify that you’re taking a normal course load. They’re not, however, going to go course by course, and ask: “How tough is this professor?” or “How much work did it demand?” So keep your load reasonable and balanced.
• In terms of extracurriculars, as we’ve discussed before, a laundry-list impresses no one. Instead, choose one thing, focus on it, then once you’ve paid your dues, look for a place to innovate. This will always be more impressive than joining ten clubs — regardless of whether you are applying to college, applying for a job, or trying to transfer.

Remember, it’s not the Zen Slacker philosophy (which is much easier!), it’s the Zen Valedictorian. Finding ways to relax without scuttling success is what makes this lifestyle both tricky and worthwhile.

From the reader mailbag:

As an engineer, I have to do a lot of problem sets. Oftentimes one of my professors assigns homework that covers subject material we haven’t learned until the day before the problem set is due. How do I handle this?

Cal responds:

Talk to the professor. Most likely he’ll be happy to adjust the problem sets to make sure they don’t include the most recent material. He’ll also be pleased to know at least some students aren’t waiting until the night before to start work!

Here’s the thing, if he’s like the engineering professors I know, he’s not trying to be mean, it just never occurred to him that the late additions to the problem sets were causing trouble. Good things come to those who communicate.

From the reader mailbag:

I’m a high school senior. I was wondering what advice you would offer me to manage my time, and get things done more efficiently? I guess some of the advice you offer on your blog applies to only to college students and I was wondering how you would modify it for high school?

Cal responds:

For high school students, the following tips seem to work especially well:

• Use an autopilot schedule: set specific times each week, to work on specific classes. High school workloads are more predictable than college workloads, making it well-suited for automated scheduling.
• Increase your study efficiency: take smart notes and use smart review strategies. High school students often make life much more difficult than it needs to be by using terrible study habits (think: reviewing a textbook with the iPod on and the instant messenger window blinking.) At this level, you can get away with bad habits — but it makes life suck. If you start taking good notes and stop reviewing like a moron, you’ll be embarrassed by how quickly you get work done.
• Start everything early: break things up into small pieces and start right away. I suggest taking a look at the ESS Method and the Same Day Rule. In high school you get a lot of assignments, but they’re easier than college level work. The main problem, therefore, is scheduling pile-ups. By starting early and making constant progress you can keep on top of this large amount of small things.

At the 30,000 foot level, however, the biggest most important recommendations I can offer is to live the Straight-A Method and, when in doubt, experiment to see what works for you.

I read your article on activity innovation. Here’s my question: how do I find the “ultimate” activity for my field of interest? I mean, I look at the examples you give and think: “Wow, I would never have thought to do that.”

Cal responds:

Don’t expect to think up your awe-inspiring project from scratch. Instead, following the program laid out in my activity innovation article: you need to first gain access to the relevant insider world by joining a related club and then paying your dues. This will probably take at least a year. Maybe two. Just keep taking on projects and completing them.

As time progresses you’ll learn more and more about the insider details of this world. After you’ve paid your dues, you can then package some of this knowledge into a project custom-built to invoke the failed simulation effect in outsiders; i.e., defy their ability to explain how you did what you did. There is no shortcut here. You have to gain access and prove yourself first before you can think up the flashy stuff.

For example, you told me you’re interested in environmentalism. Let’s pretend that your college has a student club that publishes an environmental science journal. You join the club. For the first year or two, you climb the ranks; helping to edit and do layouts and sell ads. Eventually, you become an editor. At this point, one of your insider connections — let’s say the club’s faculty advisor — mentions that the college is hosting a big environmental science conference. He notes that it might be nice to have a student conference held at the same time. Because you’ve paid your dues, you jump at the chance and pull this together. You make it happen by using the access and connections you’ve built over your past two years in the club.

It would be hard for you to think up the conference right now, as a rising freshman with no insider experience. But two years into a club and holding a leadership position, such possibilities will abound.

From the reader mailbag:

I read your chapter from Straight-A about just reading the introduction and conclusion of your assignments and then skimming the material in between. That all seems well and good…but isn’t it only applicable to social sciences, hard sciences, or other non-fiction assignments with logical structures? With a few weeks before classes start I need to read The Odyssey and The Illiad, and a course I will be taking will be a humanities course in which I will have to read classic works which are also fiction. What do I do?

Cal responds:

You read the whole book. Carefully. And relish it. My advice is to find a quiet and contemplative environment. Preferably somewhere with wood paneling and musty old books. This will put you in the right mindset.

My tips for efficient reading, as you note, are only for non-fiction. If you’re taking a course that assigns literature, you have to read it.

From the reader mailbag:

I used the morse code method to take notes on my reading. How do I now study it? Do I put it into Q/E/C format or — gasp! — do rote review?

Cal responds:

For the uninitiated, the morse code method has you read an entire assignment at your natural pace without stopping. To take notes, you make pencil marks in the margin. A dot signifies “important point” and a dash signifies “detail related to the most recent important point.” The motivating idea is that more elaborate notations would slow down your pace, which leads to mental fatigue.

To study your morse code notes, you have to (eventually) go back and transform the dots and dashes into something more useful. My suggestion was to paraphrase in your notes the points indicated by the dots. For the dashes, also add a paraphrased note, but indent this with a bullet point to offset it from the relavent “dot” note. Typically, lots of internal editing occurs here. You’ll likely toss out 25 – 50% of your dots and dashes. Finally, try to throw in a question and conclusion around your points so that you can later study using quiz and recall.

Of course, this effort is only for articles you need to understand well; perhaps for an exam or a paper. If a passing familiarity is fine, don’t bothering taking any additional notes. Just skim your dots and dashes right before class to bring you up to speed.

College classes are generally spaced out; each class meets once or twice a week and you take only 4 to 6 classes per semester. Isn’t applying your tips to a class schedule like this easier than applying them to a rigid high school schedule of 9 periods, 7 of which could be AP (which is how my schedule is based next year)?

Cal responds:

High school has a different rhythm than college, and therefore requires a slightly different approach. With this in mind, I have two big pieces of advice…

First: it is easier to screw yourself with your schedule in high school. At the college level you take a small number of courses all of which are expected to be tough. In high school, on the other hand, you have 8 or 9 periods to fill. It is not expected that every one of these periods is equally hard. There is lunch, and gym, and maybe a study hall or two. There is also the possibility of lighter electives or vocational classes sprinkled throughout.

If, however, you try to fill most of these periods with the toughest possible classes — ahem, 7 A.P.s !? — you can get into a situation where it’s almost impossible to keep up. So my first piece of advice: craft a balanced schedule.

This basic advice has become harder to preach because, at some point, high school students collectively decided that the more A.P. courses you take at once, the better your chances of getting accepted at a top college. This is masochistic nonsense. It has no basis in the reality of how admission decisions are made.

My advice: Don’t schedule more than two A.P. courses per term. Balance them with other courses you enjoy. Do well. And stop killing yourself! In my humble opinion: 7 A.P.s at once is ridiculous; your health will suffer, your grades will become erratic, and it’s not going to help you get into Harvard. So why do it?

My second piece of advice: start early and work constantly. There are many more assignments in high school, but they are also much smaller than college assignments. The key is to avoid pile-up. An efficient strategy is to put in 1-3 hours every weekday at the local library. The quiet lets you focus and rip through your work.

While I’m at, I’ll mention that you should not write papers all at once. Do little pieces throughout the weeks leading up the deadline and finish it in one final weekend spurt. Never — and I can’t emphasize this enough — work on or near any machine with an Internet connection. Facebook and IM will increase the time required to finish a writing assignment by a factor of 3 or 4. Write first. Go online later.

Thus endeth my high school fire and brimstone study sermon…

From the reader mailbag:

I have been trying to get better at studying for the past 2 years of college. An autopilot schedule is exactly what I need, but that’s harder said than done. Any tips?

Cal responds:

As I’ve learned from my College Chronicles experience, it’s difficult to jump from disarray into precision organization all at once. It’s just too much. What happens is that small things in your new super schedule will slip through the cracks and this, in turn, will destabilize the whole shebang, quickly sliding you back into your old ways.

My advice: start slow. Maybe with just one or two autopilot sessions per week. Try this for a month. Once you get used to reaping the benefits of getting some work done regularly, habitatize a few more obligations. The students with the most efficient study systems tend to get there step by step.

If you’re looking for a little more guidance, you might check out Scott Young’s recent articles on conducting 30 Day Trials.

From the reader mailbag:

I am interested in reading your books. Does the content of one book build on the other, i.e. where should I start — which book?

Cal responds:

Here’s my advice: buy several hundred copies of both then distribute them to your most influential friends in the popular media.

Once this is complete, then keep in mind that neither book really follows the other. How to Win at College is 75 pithy rules for improving all aspects of your college experience. How to Become a Straight-A Student focuses entirely, and in great detail, on the academic piece of college life.

You can read excerpts of both here. There are also more than 25 Amazon reviews of each here and here. (As I always mention, only a handful of the early reviews for each are from people I know.)

I’ve just finished my first year at Stanford University, and I’m not at all happy with my academics. My main concern is science. I’m a pre-med student. I was very enthusiastic about Organic Chemistry, among other classes, before taking the mid-terms and finals (and not doing well on them). I was wondering if you had any specific tips towards such science courses?

Cal responds:

Though I can’t tell for sure what’s going without actually knowing you, your e-mail smells to me of a standard study skills mismatch problem. It’s common for ambitious, smart students to arrive at a school like Stanford and assume that by simply putting in the hours — starting early and spending plenty of time on assignments — the good grades should follow. At these top schools, however, time alone is not enough: your study habits must match the classes. This is tricky to get right at first. It took me, for example, about a year to find a standard toolbox of study hacks worked pretty well.

My advice: run a post-exam post-mortem on your most recent finals. This should suggest some new note-taking and review tactics for your to deploy at the start of the next semester. Treat this as an experiment. After you get back your first graded assignments of the new semester, conduct another post-mortem, evaluate what worked and what didn’t, and make further changes.

I want to share one additional warning. A common complaint I’ve heard about Stanford, in particular, is that many of the students are “ducks” — they try to appear calm on the surface while their feet are paddling furiously below in the water to keep them afloat. In other words, be careful that you’re not taking on an overly punishing course load or too many activities just because it seems to be “standard” for your Stanford chums — they might be faking their serenity.

From the reader mailbag:

I have heard that the GPA is relatively unaffected by low grades in one’s final year. Is that true or is it an urban myth?

Cal responds:

Who cares!? Take a reasonable course load. Don’t have too many activities. Sign-up for classes that interest you, give them the attention they deserve, and, in general, enjoy life. Your GPA will do just fine, regardless of how it’s calculated.

(All of this being code for: “I have no idea how that calculation works…”)

From the reader mailbag:

Would you find starting a ping pong team at my high school to be interesting? Would colleges feel the same?

Cal responds:

My general rule of thumb: if your main criteria for participating in a high school activity is that you think a college will find it interesting, then, almost always, they won’t. The best way to get a college to think you are interesting — which is much more important than many students understand — is to actually be interesting. Cool stuff has a way of shaking loose from there.

Among other things, becoming interesting might mean that you:

• Meet interesting people;
• do interesting things just for the hell of it;
• read interesting things solely for the thrill of motivation;
• take crazy trips;
• be spontaneous;
• and, above all else, make a feeling of engagement and excitement the number one quality you seek in your daily life.

Though if you’re really good at ping pong, I know someone who would love a match…

As a high schooler — a freshman actually — I was wondering if your radical simplicity philosophy applies to me? I attend a very good high school that is competitive for grades. I always feel the need to take the hardest courses and take as many as possible. I want to try the radical simplicity method but somehow I feel that if I do so, I’m working under my level and it won’t make me competitive for college. Can radical simplicity work for me?

Cal responds:

Here’s my advice for high school students:

1. Improve your study habits. Most of your peers are terrible at studying. Having a decent set of habits can make a big difference in the simplicity of your schedule. Work some place that’s not your house. Don’t write papers with the internet on. Follow a schedule. You’re a Study Hacks reader, you know the drill…
2. Refuse to be overloaded. High school students sometimes ask me how to choose a course schedule. My advice: choose the most challenging schedule that you can handle without having to work late at night on a regular basis. Make this non-negotiable. If the schedule you want forces you to stay up late then it’s too hard for you.
3. Slash and burn your activities. There is a lot of weird lore circulating through high schools about what sort of activities you need to get into a good college. Let me make this simple: it’s almost all entirely wrong. The whole laundry-list, I need to have many different activities to show off different aspects of my “personality” approach is dead. It doesn’t work. Here is who Harvard wants to admit: Bob Dylan with good SAT scores. In other words, they want a really interesting, original, innovative person whom they have no doubt can handle the academic challenge of the school. So take a reasonable course load. Do well. Then in your extracurricular life, cut out that stupid internship at the local science lab and the volunteering trip to teach good nutrition to crippled orphan nuns with speech impediments, and, instead, focus on becoming an interesting person. Talk to other interesting people. Go to interesting things. Try interesting things. Surprise people. You’ll be happier and the admissions officers will be pleased — finally! — to see real.
4. Start studying for your SATs very early. If you want to maximize the schools you get into while minimizing stress, then the most time-efficient formula: be a really interesting person, that everyone likes, and that gets involved in weird, interesting things, and who did fine in his classes — but certainly not valedictorian material — and who, by the way, has an outstanding SAT score. Bonus points if you hit the score on your first try (they see how many times you took the test.) This fits an admission officer’s preferred storyline that you’re this fascinating, brilliant young person whose too busy living life to obsess over every last test in class, but, when faced with the SAT, blew it away no problem.

My final advice is to ignore your friends’ (and their parents’) theories about getting into college. If they’re anything like me at that age: they’re idiots.

From the reader mailbag:

What time management advice do you have for a student who’s heavily involved in research?

Cal responds:

From my experiences I can identify two big ideas for how best to integrate undergraduate research into your schedule. The first: stop making research compete with your classes. For example: I did a lot of my undergraduate research during two summers. (I dug up some departmental support to hang around on campus.) In addition, during two semesters of my senior year I arranged for my research to take the place of a regular class. One semester I got credit through the auspices of a “thesis writing” course offered by my department, the other semester I just took a reduced course load (I had some AP credits burning a hole in my scholastic pocket). This avoided me having to pit research against a full slate of classes.

There were some times, of course, in which I was taking a full course load and still had some research to complete. In these occasions I dialed back my obligation to my main extracurricular (writing) to free up some more time and then — this is key — integrated regular research time into my autopilot schedule.

This technique of reduce then regularize is the only way I’ve seen students make good progress on research during a normal full term.

From the reader mailbag:

I’m enjoying your book How to Win at College and I am intrigued by your chapter “Do One Thing Better than Anyone Else.” I’m having a difficult time thinking of what I do or could do better than any own I know. How should I go about finding a hidden talent of mine?

Cal responds:

Don’t get caught up on talents. Just focus on one activity that seems interesting and go above and beyond. For example, let’s say you like writing for the school paper. Make it your only activity. Go after better stories. Get more quotes. Don’t write the shit filler that a lot of young student writers do when they’re short on time and bored. Try to become an editor. Try to get articles picked up on college news wire. In short, become known for being really good at being a journalist.

The same logic applies to just about any activity that catches your interest.

I recently received an insightful collection of questions from a Study Hacks reader. In short, he was trying to reconcile my philosophy of radical simplicity with the ambitious goal of getting accepted to a good graduate program. I address his main points below…

You recommend that students not kill themselves doing obscenely hard work loads and working their butts off for straight-A’s. On the other hand you say that grades are important for graduate school admissions. Would you please write about how someone who wants to go to grad school can best apply your radical simplicity ideas?

This is an excellent question. I like it because it highlights a common misconception.

I’ll start by clarifying my position. Grades are important. You should get good grades. (This should come as no surprise considering that I wrote a book titled How to Become a Straight-A Student.)

If you review my recent radical simplicity manifesto or my open letter to new college students you’ll notice that getting good grades is a core motivation. The logic proceeds as follows: If you focus on one major, and a reasonable course load, and not too many activities, you will be able to really engage your courses and avoid the typical student assignment shuffle; i.e., spasmodically flailing from one deadline to the next.

The results of this engagement:

1. You get good grades. It’s crazy how easy it is to get an ‘A’ when you like and understand the material.
2. You do so without a lot of stress. This is especially true if you couple this reduced schedule with the type of efficient study habits preached here every week.
3. You get really good at the material. Your professors will notice that you really understand and care about what they’re teaching. They end up writing great recommendations and offer interesting opportunities to you. (It’s these “department stars” that have the easiest time getting into graduate school. It’s somewhat ironic that the way to become a star is to do less. Ironic but awesome. )

This brings up, I think, a more important point. Why did this reader interpret the radical simplicity manifesto to say “don’t sweat grades?” The answer: students are deeply committed to the false belief that grades must be the result of a sacrifice requiring hard, stressful work.

This belief is so strong, that when this reader saw the idea that you shouldn’t work your butt off, he made the immediate, intuitive leap that this also means you shouldn’t worry about grades.

One of the key messages of this blog and my books is to dispel this myth. To get good grades with a reasonable schedule and reasonable study habits is not a hard task. To get good grades with a crazy schedule and a triple major and two thousand activities is near impossible.

Let’s move on to his next interesting question…

Other than research, what else does someone interested in grad school need to be doing — and not doing — and how do we free ourselves up to live a great life while not jeopardizing our chances of getting accepted?

I’ll share my understanding of graduate school admissions, which applies mainly to the sciences. (I invite feedback from those who know more than me on these topics). From my experience, to get into a good graduate school, you need:

1. To get good grades in the relevant subjects.
2. Be known as one of the best students in your major.
3. Demonstrate, unequivocally, that you can handle the demands of research.

Notice that becoming president of 10 clubs and volunteering on the weekends does not make this list. In the few casual conversations I’ve had with professors who served on graduate admission committees, I’ve never once heard a mention of something outside of a student’s grades or research experience.

Practically speaking, this means the following advice applies to the aspiring grad student:

• You should slash and burn your schedule to the point that you have more than enough time to really focus and engage with the courses in your major. Don’t double major. Don’t pile multiple hard courses into the same semester. You need to live and breath the core material. No one cares if your schedule was hardcore. Get over it.
  
• Get started in research. Don’t be lazy. A common tale here at MIT: a hardcore (read: over-scheduled) student signs up to do undergraduate research because he heard it was important for graduate school. Because the student is so hardcore, this involvement soon becomes seen as an annoyance — one more thing among dozens eating away at his limited, stress-saturated time. The student does the bare minimum. Makes excuses. And, eventually, the professor forgets about him. Don’t do this! Instead, go beyond the bare minimum. Do good work fast. After a year or so of proving yourself you’ll be rewarded with the type of responsibilities that will, down the line, impress the professors reviewing your file.
• Time permitting you can add back at most one serious extracurricular activity. This provides some non-academic balance to your life. But this all about you. So don’t do it unless it’s something you find meaningful. Also, don’t add more than one thing. It’s key that you leave a sufficient buffer of free time to relax, and decompress, and pursue random opportunities.

Take this all with a grain of thought. But I think these basic concepts are sound. To summarize, the key to getting into graduate school: focus on your major; be a good researcher; don’t do too much else.

The good news is that this lifestyle is quite reasonable. You like your classes, become an expert in your subject, don’t feel overwhelmed, and have plenty of time left over to relax. Not a bad way to spend your four years on campus.

So to answer the question that titles this post: Yes. And you’d be a fool to try it any other way.