Study Hacks

From the reader mailbag:

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.)

[Note: Because I’ll be away from technology tomorrow to enjoy the 4th of July festivities, I’m posting Friday’s post one day early. See you on Monday. Enjoy the fireworks…]

Troubles In Physiology

A reader recently wrote me in search of some advice. He was taking an intense human physiology course and worried about his grade. This student is responsible and possesses amazing willpower. Accordingly, in an attempt to ensure top marks, he had been following an incredible study schedule:

Monday - Thursday
Class: 8-12 (Human Physiology)
Lunch: 12-1pm
Working out: 1-1:30
Library: 2- 7
Dinner: 7-9
Library: 9-11

Friday
Library: 8-12
Lunch: 12-3
Library: 4-10

Saturday
Library: 8-12
Lunch: 12-3
Library: 3-6
Dinner: 6-8
Library: 8-10

Sunday
Library: 8-12
Lunch: 12-3
Library: 3-6
Dinner: 6-8
Library: 8-10

My Advice: Stop!

With such an outrageous number of hours spent hitting the books, this student expected to breeze through the class. Then he took the first exam. He got a 70 — well below the average.

What’s going on here? There are literally no more waking hours left in the day for this student to study.

In response, here is the schedule I recommended he follow instead:

• Study two hours after lunch, every other day, and a good chunk of time on Sunday morning.

In other words, my advice for improving his grade in this class is to study much, much less. Allow me to explain…

The Quantity Myth

A common myth plaguing college students is that grades are a function of smarts + hours spent studying. Since you can’t change your smarts, your only option to increase your grade is to study more. What I love about this reader’s story is that unless he is taking the absolute most difficult human physiology course ever taught in the history of mankind, his experience completely invalidates the study hour quantity myth.

In other words, if devoting every possible waking hour to a single course doesn’t budge your grade, there must be something else more important playing a major role in determining your score.

This is why I advised the student to significantly reduce his work hours. Once this slash and burn is complete, he can turn his attention to the real question at the core of the studying process: what’s the most efficient way to transform the inputs, arriving in the form of lectures, into outputs, leaving in the form of exam answers?

Here are some resources to jumpstart this thought process:

• Studying is a Technical Skill
  Why do Olympic swimmers clock worse times when they try harder in the water? In answering this question we discover the crucial different between technique and effort, and why the former is where you should focus when planning your study schedule.
• Pseudo-Work Does Not Equal Work
  When it comes to measuring how much work you’ve done, hours alone are a terrible metric. This article integrates intensity of focus into the equation and teaches you how to schedule productive work, not simply time.
• The Focused-Question Cluster Method
  A specific study technique fine-tuned to the type of abundant material presented in the type of class our example student faces.

Beyond these existing articles, I’ll also mention the following specific advice:

• Don’t think in terms of getting a 70 despite the number of hours you studied. Keep this in mind: most of your study hours were wasted. If you had studied a third of that time you would have probably made the same grade.
• Concentrate more on understanding what is being said in lecture as it is being said. Ask questions if you need to. When taking notes, try to synthesize and then write the concepts your own words. Understanding is key. Rote transcription is worthless.
• Eliminate all Rote Review. Also a complete waste of time. Your entire studying schedule should be focused on being able to synthesize and explain the material, out loud, without looking at your notes, as if teaching a class. That’s what indicates learning; not how many times you read the material quietly to yourself.
• Above all: Relax! It’s human physiology, not the future of the human race. No one actually cares how you do. And it’s possible to sometimes screw up exams. I do it all the time. It happens. Live life. And keep this class only a small part of it.

The take-away message from this reader’s problem should be clear: hours are meaningless when it comes to studying. Keep your focus on learning the material and you’ll avoid landing yourself in a similar, terrible, over-scheduled situation.

From the reader mailbag:

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…

From the reader mailbag:

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.

A Devious Thought Experiment

I want you to consider the following thought experiment:

The president of your college shows up at your dorm room early one morning. He has some surprising news. Due to a new policy, all students at your college will have their records classified. That means, after you graduate, you are forbidden — by punishment of imprisonment — to ever again mention:

• Your major.
• Your classes.
• Your grades.
• Your activities.

All potential employers and graduate schools understand this and won’t penalize you. They will only know the name of your college and that you passed your courses and graduated.Consider this simple question: in this thought experiment, what would the remainder of your college career look like?

I am really interested in your reactions. If you get a chance, I encourage yout to leave your answer as a comment to this post or e-mail me.

We’ll revisit the topic soon. I think it gets at a larger discussion that we’ll find productive.