How to Study Efficiently and Ace Your Exams – Sinclair Prep Study Tips #2

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Do you have what it takes to be the top student? How far are you willing to go to secure that spot?
The game is on and we have to study hard and betray harder!

Welcome back to Sinclair Prep Study Tips, a mini-series I’m hosting on the blog inspired by Katie Zhao’s upcoming dark academia YA novel How We Fall Apart, out August 17th! Get ready to learn how you can study efficiently so you can be the top student…

How We Fall Apart

Related: My Most Anticipated 2021 Releases

My Study Experience

I’m 23 now and I’ve been in full-time education for the majority of my life. So needless to say, I’ve had to do a lot of studying! As a child, I was lucky enough to get good grades without much effort, which ultimately led to me never having to figure out how to study efficiently. But in my final years of high school, I invested the time and energy to learn how I learn. And my findings have served me well!

I’ve had to study for different kinds of subjects and exam formats. My undergraduate degree is in theatre and media studies, which consists of lots of reading and fewer hard facts to memorise than other subjects. But I’m currently studying for a biochemistry exam and have passed a criminology exam with a high grade, both of which required me to understand and memorise huge quantities of fact-based information! And even though biochemistry is as far outside my comfort zone as it gets, I know I can trust my study methods to ace the exam. So let’s get into it!

Study Mistakes to Avoid

Don’t make my mistakes! I’ve wasted a lot of time at my desk using study techniques that didn’t work for me that I could’ve spent doing more enjoyable things. So to help you use your time efficiently, here are the main two study techniques that might not get you the results you want. Of course, different things work for different people and these two aren’t absolute no-gos, they’re simply things I used to put a lot of effort into when there are better ways out there!

• just highlighting. Don’t get me wrong, highlighting isn’t bad. Actually, highlighting key pieces of information is incredibly useful! But it shouldn’t be the only thing your doing as it’s not a very efficient way to get information into your brain and have it stick around.
• rereading everything. Similarly, simply rereading also probably won’t do the trick. I used to reread my notes a lot and what happened was that I thought I knew the information, when all I did was recognise it! So how do we fix that? I’m about to tell you…

But! Please don’t think you have to be some sort of study machine. Studying can suck and I’m all for finding joy where we can. Do I own way more pastel highlighters than I should? Yes! And I love them. So please don’t let anyone tell you that your methods are a waste of time. I get a lot of joy out of taking pretty notes and highlighting in my favourite yellow. Is it the most efficient thing I could do? No. But enjoyment matters so I’ll continue to do it because I’m here to ace my exams and have a fun time doing it.

How to Study Efficiently

So, what are ways to study efficiently? It’s actually quite simple, all we need are two easy methods. Combined, they’re basically a superpower, at least to me. I’m talking about active recall and spaced repetition!

Active Recall

Active Recall is the single technique that made the most difference to how I study. It’s simply the act of actively recalling information instead of recognising it! This means your brain has to work harder because it actually has to retrieve the information. That way, you strengthen your neural pathways to that information and accessing it becomes easier in the future.

Oh, and it becomes a lot harder to tell yourself you totally know something when you actually don’t! It’s certainly harder and more uncomfortable than just rereading, but it’s going to save you time and energy in the long run.

Spaced Repititon

There’s a good chance you’ve seen this handy graph before! It shows a curve of how quickly you forget information based on the intervals that you’ve reviewed it in. As you can see, with each revision it takes your brain longer to forget the information! We can use this to our advantage with spaced repetition.

Basically, spaced repetition helps to store information in your long-term memory, making it easily accessible when the exam comes! We love efficiency and not having to rummage our brains for the answer we were sure we knew! Additionally, you can create a system for yourself to only review the information that you’re not 100% confident on. This saves time because you only study what you don’t already know!

YouTuber Ali Abdaal talks more about these two techniques in this video if you’d like to know more about the science behind them!

How to implement the techniques

Ultimately, you’ll want to combine active recall practices with the intervals of spaced repetition. It’s really that easy! Those two methods together mean you address your weak spots, build string neural connections all while assuring the information isn’t going to vanish into the limbo of your brain, never to be seen again.

Flashcard Software

A very common way to implement both of these is to use software like Quizlet or Anki! Both platforms allow you to create flashcards of various kinds, you can test yourself and the software will determine the best intervals for you, depending on how well you knew the answers!

Anki is free but has somewhat of a learning curve. But if you can figure it out, it’s very powerful! Quizlet has a free version, but most of the fun features, including a spaced repetition algorithm, are behind a paywall. Other than Anki however, Quizlet offers various styles of mock exams and games to test your knowledge so it isn’t a pure flashcard app.

Paper Flashcards

If you like things analogue, use good old paper flashcards! This is the system I used for French vocabulary back in high school. I got myself one of those flashcard containers and split it into three sections. One for the words I knew immediately, the ones I wasn’t sure on and one for the cards I didn’t know at all. I’d go through the cards and sort them into those categories. That way, I could make sure to spend more time studying what I didn’t know.

Digital Spreadsheet

If you don’t want the hassle of figuring out a new software but still like things digital, you can simply make a spreadsheet. I was inspired to do this by Ali Abdaal and it’s such an easy but brilliant idea! This is the technique I use in combination with my favourite active recall method that I’ll talk about in a second! Here’s what my spreadsheet looked like for my criminology revision:

Basically, it functions the same way as flashcards! If I want to test myself, I simply hide column B or make the answer text white, so I can’t cheat. Then I answer the questions, check the answers and rate my competence. I then go and colour code the questions in red, orange or green, based on how well I could answer them. And tadaa, the next time I go through that particular lecture, I can immediately see where I struggled.

Blurting

But how do we make sure we actually know the information, particularly for stuff that doesn’t fit well onto flashcards? My favourite active recall technique is something I call blurting. It’s insanely easy, I simply write down everything from memory, correct myself and identify gaps in my knowledge. Fun fact: this is how I studied for my A-Level biology exam because I needed to remember a lot of diagrams. So I just copied them down from memory over and over again, until I knew them by heart.

This is also what I do when I use flashcards to avoid tricking myself into thinking recognition is knowing. If I force myself to write down my answers, I can clearly see if I know something or not! Plus, going through my answers with a red pen is way more fun than it should be.

Some Closing Words

And there you have it, that’s my prime knowledge on how to study efficiently! Personally, while I have used both Anki and Quizlet and found them useful for certain tasks, I love my spreadsheet and blurting combination. It’s the lowest effort and it’s free. And I’m all for making studying as easily accessible as possible! Education can already be so expensive so it’s important to me to not make anyone think you need fancy tools or any specific software to succeed.

Ultimately, you have to figure out what works best for you. And while spaced repetition and active recall are probably scientifically the most efficient ways to study, if you don’t like using these systems, that’s okay! We all learn differently and that’s great! My goal here is to simply share my personal experience and advice in hopes that you can benefit from them.

Let’s Chat

Have you ever tried active recall and spaced repetition to study more efficiently? What other techniques have helped you study?

I hope you have a lovely day,

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