General Tips

The following tips, originally posted at StudentAwards Conversations, were contributed by students in our membership.

• The best way to study, I found, was talking to the prof ahead of time and asking where to focus your studies. Saves you a lot of time memorizing stuff you won’t be tested on. (Posted by: adilafzal)
• 1. Attend all classes instead of just studying a whole new topic on your own. This way you will reduce a lot of time understanding the facts and core knowledge you will need to get good marks. 2. Take notes during lectures, then go home and review them and jot down any questions you may have. 3. Go to tutorials if provided and needed. Since class sizes will be smaller than in lectures, you won’t have to wait so long to ask the tutors any question you have. 4. Form study groups with your friends or someone who you can study with so you can exchange comments on the topic you’re studying and ask each other questions and test each other. 5. Circling and highlighting the important points in your notes/textbook, if necessary. 6. During studying/reviewing, you may like to write the facts down in point form again or draw mind maps, diagrams, and illustrations if you’re a visual learner. For people who learn better by listening, say them out loud (if you can). 7. Try to avoid procrastination. Study at the U library if there are many distractions at your home or residence. 8. Don’t study at the last minute. Try to review things constantly so that you won’t have to relearn the things you might have forgotten at the start of the year. (Posted by: briannajchan)
• Here are two very effective ways of studying that work for me: 1) Write it out, write it out, write it out! I write it and re-write it until I can write everything without looking. It can be messy and scribbly, as long as you are saying it in your head and writing it down. Sometimes I write something out 15 times… if it is a chart, this works especially well. 2) Study with a friend in your class… or with a friend not in your class! Studying with someone in your class is very effective because they can explain things to you that you may have missed and you can explain things to them too. It is a symbiotic relationship! Also, teaching someone something builds confidence with the material and is a GREAT WAY to remember stuff! (Posted by: emilyclairerose)
• Don’t cram for memorization tests. Instead, read the material a week or so before the test, and then review it for like 15 min each day. I find repetition like that spread out over a week really helps me (crazyman123)
• It really works well for me if I read whatever I’m trying to memorize before bedtime because your brain processes that information when you’re sleeping 🙂 Also if you’re trying to memorize a list of something, it helps if you read it over a few times in the normal order and then read it backwards and then finally the normal order again.

Multiple Choice Questions

The following tips, originally posted at StudentAwards Conversations, were contributed by students in our membership.

• The trick with multiple choice questions is to not simply choose a right answer (often more than one option will actually be correct), but to choose the BEST or MOST CORRECT answer. (Posted by: CatRunner)
• Try to predict the answer without looking at the options. If your prediction is there, then it’s likely correct, but still, read the other answer choices to eliminate them. (Posted by: freebird)
• Once you circle something, leave it be, unless you happen to remember concrete evidence supporting another choice. Often your intuition comes in handy more than you think. (Posted by: scoobygiggles)
• If you’re stuck, circle the question and move on. You might spend all your time stuck on one question, and not leave enough time for the rest of it. When you’ve finished your test, go back to your circled questions and work on those. (Posted by: scoobygiggles)
• Sometimes a multiple-choice exam will help you out. For example:

1. w – not too sure, probably true
2. x – I know this to be true
3. y – never heard of this one… crap
4. z – this is definitely wrong

A) 1, 2, and 3 are true, B) 1 and 3 are true, C) 2 and 4 are true, D) only 4 is true, E) All are true.

Well, knowing that 4 is untrue, I can immediately rule out C, D, and E, and I know 2 is true, so I can also rule out B, so it MUST be A. I have no idea what answer 3 is, but I guess it is true. Answer 1 must also be true. Simply by knowing that 2 is true and 4 is untrue, I was able to come to the correct answer (A). (Posted by: mynameismattgotmlgo)