How to Study in College
1. How often should I study, and for how long?
One of the simplest, empirically-supported strategies for successful learning is to study for short periods daily — that is, to space your practice. Avoid long, intense study sessions (or “cramming”) when possible. When researchers track the progress of participants learning a new skill, they find people take less time to learn something if they spend a little time on it each day, even if that means spending more days in training. Short, frequent study sessions are more efficient. For example, work on math problems for 20 minutes every day, instead of waiting weeks to get several chapters in on an afternoon. Basically, my high school band teacher who said he’d rather have us practice 15 minutes a day than for two hours Sunday night had it right.
Why? There appear to be several reasons for shorter sessions being more advantageous. First, each time we sit down and start studying, we are forced to recall what we learned last time (“Okay, what do I know about this again?”). Studying then includes retrieval practice, built-in. If I study calculus 6 times a week, that’s 5 times that I have to retrieve what was it was I was doing and what I remember about it. Ultimately the goal is to retrieve the information, right? So why not make it part of studying.
Shorter sessions also avoid interference. The more a person studies the same subject in one sitting, the less effective the brain is at cleanly sorting all that information out as the hours wear on. Let’s say I ask you to memorize a list of 20 random words, and then I test your recall of them. Then, I ask you to forget those words and ask you to memorize and recall a second list of words. Then a third, and a fourth. Here’s what research has found. First, everyone’s performance drops overall from list to list to list, as you would expect. We tire. But — and this is the critical point — recall of words from the second list will include a few newly-remembered from the first list. Errors from the third list will include words that were on the second list and the first as well.
Here’s the thing: your brain will not stop processing something just because you have stopped consciously thinking about it. Older information will continue to hamper processing of new information. When we cram information for hours, the brain will continue to work on what you were thinking about 10, 20, 30 minutes ago while you have continued on. As a result, interference can start to occur, and all of the information is stored more weakly and with more errors. It becomes harder to distinguish between similar concepts when we’ve been force-feeding our brains for hours. It’s like eating at the buffet and expecting our stomachs to be able to sensibly distinguish between salad, entree, breads, and dessert. It’s just a batch of chemicals, now. Avoid “knowledge soup.”
For the same reason, it’s good to switch subjects every hour or so. If you have the energy to continue studying after an hour, consider moving to another unrelated class while your brain absorbs what you had focused on so far. Research has found that recall performance on memorized word lists will drop when all the word lists have to do with the same topic, such as automobiles or jobs. But, when the fourth list switches to a new topic (say, kinds of fruits), recall rebounds.
Most students won’t do commit to this schedule, and you have to overcome these hurdles for this to work for you. First and foremost, it’s always easier to procrastinate. You have a keep a schedule with shorter sessions. Second, the 15–30 minutes of study doesn’t “feel” very tough. Without the “feeling the burn,” we don’t feel like the shorter sessions are working. People like to feel fatigued from effort. It makes them value the experience more, even though it’s less efficient! It reminds me of how auto manufacturers are having to add engine sounds to muscle cars so people can enjoy the roar a less-efficient engine.
Exercising your brain isn’t like going to the gym. Pushing the brain harder to memorize only makes it more likely that information disappear all the faster. It’s not good over the long run. If you study in small amounts routinely, you’ll find you learn smoothly and with less fatigue, and even have the time to think more deeply about what you are learning. Unfortunately, you may feel like you are somehow being lazy. Test yourself on the material from time to time, and if you are getting it, then you’re fine.
(This advice applies to any kind of productivity, really. Working on a major term paper for 15–30 minutes at a time, daily, makes for a much better paper and writing experience than shoveling verbal garbage for six hours straight with no time for revision. If you have a massive, frightening 30-page term paper due at the end of the term, then set some deadlines. Get your resources together and read them by midterm. Sort them into a sequence that makes sense, and then write about half a page a day. Anyone can do that.)
One final tip on the length of study time. End studying on a high note. Let the experience of learning be rewarding. Don’t wear yourself down until studying has become a drag. If you beat yourself up with the material, you will not want to return to it. Once you have put in the time, find a moment of satisfaction, and stop there. This is another advantage to shorter study sessions.
(Oh and by the way. In terms of how much studying: your professors expect an average of 3 hours of study per credit hour a week to be successful in their classes. It is not assumed that you can sit through an engaging lecture that oversimplifies the topic and then be ready for the exams or an informed discussion. A lot of students don’t know about this expectation, but it’s a norm that has held for most universities and programs for decades. So, if you are taking 15 credit hours of academic classes, you need to schedule about 45 hours of study time to engage the material and review. While the quality of study is important, the right quantity of study has to be met. If you rely solely on palatable, easy-to-digest lectures to indicate how much you have learned, you’ll be shocked at your first exam scores. Notice that if you spend about an hour a day for each class, you’ll roughly approximate the spaced practice approach to this norm.)
So that was scary. I’m sure the amount of necessary time depends a lot on the class and your prior experiences. What this norm doesn’t tell us is, how should one study?
2. How should I study?
I have four major tidbits to offer here. Researchers have found assessed how well we decide what to study, how to best think about the material we want to learn, and how to accurately decide when we have learned the material well enough.
First, our intuitions about how difficult material will be for us to learn is fairly accurate. When starting, you can move past the material that appears simple to grasp with confidence. Go to what is just out of reach. Mark the material that you know you cannot grasp without help, so you remember to ask about it later.
Second, mentally expand upon what you are studying. This can happen while listening, reading, or reviewing. What do I mean by “expand upon”? Essentially, add to or react to the material on the basis of its meaning. Find the meaning of the material and if possible, add something of yourself to it. Doing this makes it much likely to be successfully retrieved later. There’s many ways to go about this, including asking questions about the material such as:
- Why is this being introduced now? How does it connect to what I already know?
- How would I ever use this information in the future? How would I know when to use it?
- Does this remind me of someone or something I’ve done before?
- How do I feel about this?
- Does this conflict with other knowledge I have about this topic?
Interestingly, the questions or the answers do not have to be realistic for the memory boost to occur. A person can study chemistry from the perspective of being lost on an island, looking to see how the material could help one survive. Even if the answer is negative, it becomes more memorable.
Other well-known ways to expand on what you are thinking about are to diagram out what you are learning into some organized structure. The organization only needs to make sense to you. Another is to write out a summary what you have been learning. Making mental images of the material can help recall, but is not as effective other methods.
Why does adding meaning work? Your long-term memory for knowledge is primarily structured by the “semantic” nature of our experiences — that is, the gist of what happens to us. We don’t record information perfectly like digital video recorders. We take away from a situation is what we thought mattered at the time. Decades of doing this has meant the creation of a massive database of memories of events that are individual to you. Deeper, personal thinking about material means embedding the information into your personal web of knowledge. More mental pathways to the information are then developed, compared to memorization by rote repetition.
Speaking of a personal web of knowledge, there is one topic you know more about than any other: yourself. If you find you can connect information to yourself personally, then you have found a way to connect it to the single largest database of knowledge you have. So, if you can add personal meaning to what you are studying — whether tying it to a situation that a movie character was in, or questioning your assumptions about what you know — then you improve the odds of retrieval later.
The meaning-based focus of our long-term memories is probably why researchers can’t find evidence for using a pen to highlight what we read. It’s too superficial, at least alone. I highlight what I read to keep my focus and maybe add some structure to paragraph text for review, but highlighting doesn’t add new meaning to what I am reading.
This is also why taking notes by hand appears to be better than typing them. Any kind of benefit from motor skills involved in handwriting is purely speculative at this time. What we do know is that handwriting slows people down, so they can only take down what they need in order to remind themselves of the major points. This is perfectly suited for study and review. (The Cornell note-taking system promotes this, too.)
Third, practice retrieving what you know. This seems straightforward but we don’t do it. Many of us learn fairly passively, only taking in information. But unlike experiencing entertainment, in education you are expected to reproduce that knowledge later, and apply it in some fashion. It simulates the goal we are trying to accomplish. Also, it gives us the opportunity to discover that we don’t know the information as well as we did.
There are many ways to practice retrieval — writing a summary works, as well as taking those stupid end-of-chapter quizzes you see sometimes. They actually help! Who knew. Another excellent idea is to teach someone else what you have learned. The act of retrieving the information becomes a learning experience in and of itself too. Some researchers claim that self-quizzing is better than re-reading the material (assuming we read the material carefully in the first place).
So far I’ve told you about finding the material that’s at the right level to challenge yourself, that it’s best to focus on the meaning of the material we are studying, and that you need to quiz yourself. This leads me to the final tip.
It turns out we are not necessarily accurate in deciding when we have studied something well enough. Researchers estimate that we are overly confident of our learning by as much as 30% on some memory tasks. This is quite a problem!
The reason for this is so simple that it might bowl you over once you hear it. The goal of learning is to get information into long-term memory in a way that we can readily access it, right? So if you pause your studying and at that very moment, think about whether you know the information well enough to recall it later, are you checking your long-term memory? Nope. You’re using your short-term (or “working”) memory to evaluate. Of course it seems familiar right now! You were just reading about it! When we stop and immediately poll ourselves, we are checking our momentary comprehension, which is not long-term at all. What information we can access right now has little to do with what we’ll remember later.
Without more effort, working memory for an idea lasts about 18–30 seconds. You want to know what you retain after that length of time. So, here’s what you need to do. Give yourself a short delay before trying to recall what you’ve been studying. Take short breaks, and when you return, ask yourself, “What was I just studying?” Can you remember? Can you paraphrase what you were studying? You answer to this will be much more indicative of long-term retention than checking for information in short-term memory. You only need a minute or two of delay. This simple tip can help to avoid the dreaded illusion of knowing, when a subject seems familiar but really we only weakly grasp it. It allows you to better calibrate your estimate of your learning to reality.
To review:
- Move to what is of reasonable difficulty
- Add to what you are studying by focusing on the meaning of the material
- Practice recalling what you know
- Quiz yourself after a delay
3. What should I do after studying?
Learning is key, but what you do after study can help to retain information too.
Get some serious sleep after studying. Modern memory researchers conceptualize learning as a brain activity that happens during the day, and memory formation as a brain activity that occurs during sleep at night. We need time to “consolidate” the information that we have learned into the massive database of knowledge that is our memory, and the primary time for that consolidation is while we are sleeping. Don’t study for hours overnight and catch about two hours of sleep before a morning exam. Study, break when you are tired, get a solid night of sleep, and review in the morning. The information will have had time to become enmeshed into your long-term memory. The alertness will enable to focus on the task at hand.
By the way: during a performance or an exam, a little nervousness is beneficial and okay. Don’t let it freak you out — you wouldn’t want to be so calm that you are nearly restful. A mild amount of anxiety keeps you on your toes.
In conclusion
So there we have it. Spreading out your study time will mean less frustration, and you’ll be forced to retrieve what you know too. Focus on the meaning of what you are studying, and use delayed review to test your retention. And get some sleep before exams.
I wish I had known about these as an undergrad — studying in shorter bursts would have been very helpful while working a part-time job in college. But keep some perspective: no matter how good your intentions are, everything changes when the crapfest that is normal life hits you. When that happens, and it will, just do what you can and let the rest go. You’ll be fine.
Hey it’s not just me. Other people know about this stuff too.
