
A Look Inside the Process of One of the World’s Most Efficient Studiers - ph0rque
http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/05/18/anatomy-of-an-a-a-look-inside-the-process-of-one-of-the-worlds-most-efficient-studiers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StudyHacks+%28Study+Hacks%29
======
giberson
If you're lucky enough to be able to sit in a class taking notes and basically
"get" the course material, when it comes to studying the necessary formulas,
there's a quick and easy study tactic that requires about a single hour prior
to testing. Basically, condense all your notes [formulas only, or concise
examples] into a single page front [maybe back] and then read the page--over
and over until the class starts. Receive the exam, flip over to the back page
or ask for note paper [assuming they provide it] and regurgitate what you read
back on to the paper. It takes about ten minutes. Then, take the test,
referencing your notes as needed. I like to call it memory dumping, I've known
lots of people who do similar but have there own names for it.

The crux of this tactic is that you actually understand how to apply formulas,
so it of course presupposes you know the material.

~~~
SandB0x
I made condensed notes for a few courses, but the _act_ of creating them was
key, not the resulting few sheets of paper. I wouldn't write any results down
until I could derive them myself (within reason). And writing them by hand,
rather than typing/latex. Somehow, I can understand something much better if
I'm reading my own script than a print-out, even if the content is identical.

------
tokenadult
Cal Newport here points to the example of Scott Young, so then I was curious
to look up Scott Young and to figure out where he went to university. He
writes, "Popular discussion asks whether college is worth the money and time.
I can’t say for sure. I went to a mid-tier, public Canadian university, with
tuition around $5000 per year and leaving with no student debt, so my
experience may be atypical."

<http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/tag/university/>

I can't say whether or not his study strategies would work as well at a
university that is not a "mid-tier, public Canadian university," or whether a
student might have to study a lot harder at, say, MIT or the Indian Institute
of Technology. Indeed, especially not knowing the exact name of the university
from what I have looked up thus far, I have trouble knowing what the admission
requirements are at Scott Young's university.

I have to fully agree with Scott Young's advice, "Befriend Exchange Students."
That's a great way to learn about the world before accumulating enough money
to travel widely.

A question for Cal Newport: how do we know that Scott Young is "one of the
world’s most efficient studiers" if we don't know how challenging the courses
are at his university? After edit: I see that Young writes, "This is perhaps
my only regret in university is that I weighed interest too much over
challenge in selecting my major."

<http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/tag/university/>

Maybe some people who take more challenging majors are studying just as
efficiently as Young did even if they take more hours per week to study their
major courses.

~~~
Shenglong
Canadian universities don't really have entrance requirements, and they have a
very low workload. If you have an 80% average, you can get into most Canadian
schools for most programs. The 1st year honors mechanics course at Cornell is
more work than an entire semester's work at in 1st year Canadian university.
Cornell's 1st year Engineering Chemistry course covered more than 4x the
material covered in 1st year chem at Queen's University in Canada (the course
has since been removed).

But you'll have to realize that even between top American schools, course load
and marking differs. My friend went to Oxford from Cornell, with a bunch of
students from other top American schools for some program. I remember him
saying how he partied all day while the others were complaining it was so
hard. He described it like this: "At Oxford, if you're asked whether you'd
rather do a problem set or get beaten by a stick, you'd take the problem set.
At Cornell... you'd definitely take a moment to consider." I don't want to get
into grade inflations/deflations here though. Feel free to contact me if you'd
like to know.

Canadian universities also take 90% as the general A+. When he says he's
getting an A+, it means he's getting somewhere between 90 and 100%. I don't
think I can emphasize well enough, how easy this is. For one Human Resources
exam, I studied 30 minutes the night before after getting drunk, and wrote the
exam the next morning hung over. I got a 94%. That's the only reading/studying
I ever did for that class. This isn't unique to this university either.

I personally usually just need to read, listen, or work through something once
to get it, depending on what the material is. However, his methods make
logical sense I guess.

~~~
woodrow
I have no experience with Canadian undergraduate business education, which is
what the author of the article appears to be taking, but I don't doubt that
it's less challenging than engineering. Canadian engineering programs have
higher entrance standards than this, and are accredited by a national
authority for engineering education. And we still had to work fairly hard,
especially in the fundamental Computer Engineering courses, even though they
are less challenging than courses at MIT.

However, Canadian schools are also not generally the elite institutions that
the Ivy League+MIT+Stanford are either. The top Canadian universities are
public institutions with larger undergraduate populations that to a reasonable
extent serve regional demand and need, rather than attracting the best from
across the land (with some exceptions). A more reasonable comparison might be
agaisnt some of the top 10 to top 30 public schools in the US, instead of MIT
or Cornell or Oxford.

~~~
wunderfool
true, but also, these schools are more than adequate to equip a society to
function

the top-tier universities of united states cater to the top 1% of the world,
have incredible research records, nobels, etc... yet by almost any measure,
the US itself as a nation is beginning to fall behind canada on per-capita
measures of wealth, education, longevity, and happiness. this isn't that
astonishing, the US is also falling behind many scandinavian nations with
apparently unknown universities

remember last week's nba final? the "superstars" lost.

~~~
FrojoS
And where is Canada in per-capita measures of wealth when compared to
Luxemburg?

In my opinion, the United States is the modern Rome, though , of course, way
more powerful and advanced than Rome ever was, and will be so for the
foreseeable future.

------
ghshephard
Totally agree that his strategies are the key to mastering material in some
types of course - but, it does suggest you have sufficient IQ in the first
place to do things like "Learn it the first time, understand associations,
etc..."

It should be noted, though, that there is a large array of course where
pattern association and critical thinking aren't going to help you that much.

My Psyc180 Brain and Behavior course was basically identifying and recalling
an ungodly number of neuro chemical pathways and elements. Anatomy 101 (which
I did not take) enjoyed a week or three of "Let's learn what the 200+ Human
bones are. Great, now we move onto muscles." And, I didn't even want to think
about what it would be like to subject myself to the ultimate pain that
Organic Chemistry is. I would _love_ to hear of a human being that can get
through Organic Chemistry courses without the requisite X hours outside of
class per hour of lecture. (For a 13 week semester consisting of 3 hours/week,
that would typically suggest 80-120 hours of studying for the 39 hours of in-
class time) - I've seen that course knock out many a pre-med candidate who
decided that maybe this wasn't where they wanted to go in life.

Even more interesting would be to find a human who could simply cram all that
information in the week before the final without having studied outside of
class.

But - overall, great study suggestions for courses of a particular type.

~~~
mercurio
I must disagree with the Organic Chemistry bit. I took advanced organic chem
as an elective in college and I absolutely loved it. Yes there are a lot of
different reactions, and there is some memorization involved, but there is a
very beautiful theory unifying so many diverse reactions and the focus was
always on understanding the reasoning why and how those particular reactions
occur (reaction mechanisms). Once you knew the basic facts, then solving
problems involved a lot of deductive reasoning (in positing new mechanisms)
and creativity (in building new compounds using known reactions).

~~~
ghshephard
It's possible that your college had a different focus in Organic Chemistry
that involved less memorization, and more conceptualization?

Here is one typical text for Organic Chemistry:
[http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-Paula-Yurkanis-
Bruic...](http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-Paula-Yurkanis-
Bruice/dp/B000VCVPC4)

Roughly the same as yours?

------
adamtmca
I don't know anything about Scott Young but this article makes me pretty
skeptical that he is "One of the World's Most Efficient Studiers."

His notes on the exam: "draw a timeline", "check the cpp" and comments in
section two: "bonds are paid semi annually", EAR > quoted rate etc betray a
very easy/ introductory finance class.

Furthermore, according to tokenadult he is at a "mid-tier Canadian
university." There are only three or four good business schools in Canada and
in my mind there is no way that 50% of the class attending any of them would
have failed this exam. In my opinion it was either an easy class that lots of
people failed because he's at a mediocre school or he's lying about the
failure rate.

I suspect that anyone studying engineering/cs or who has any sort of
quantitative ability would have had no trouble attending the classes, doing
the readings and then prepping for 90 minutes and doing well on this exam.

Finally, I don't think this is novel at all. The idea that memorization takes
longer than understanding a concept in a general form should be no surprise to
anyone who's ever crammed for an exam of this sort. And really, he just
attended the classes, did the readings, took notes and then reviewed what he'd
already learned - theres nothing ultra time efficient about this at all.

------
hugh3
Everybody studies differently.

When I was an undergrad my strategy was as follows:

a) Never do any "study" during the semester. (Go to lectures, take notes, do
any required assignments, but that's it.)

b) When stu-vac rolls around (a week before the exams start), write a set of
really nice summaries of everything you learned in each course, based on your
notes and textbook.

c) Print out these summaries and... well, probably never look at them. It's
the act of writing the summary that's useful.

But that's me. It might not work for someone else. I can't possibly comprehend
the idea of staying up all night studying before a test -- how can there
possibly be twelve hours' worth of material to study?

Also I was studying physics and maths, both of which are mostly about
understanding rather than memorization. Put me in an anatomy class and I might
well fail horribly.

~~~
bodski
_"... well, probably never look at them. It's the act of writing the summary
that's useful."_

Very true. I'd say that writing out by hand works best, as opposed to typing
it though.

~~~
hugh3
To each his own. I personally found that the painful process of typing all my
equations into Microsoft Equation Editor caused me to concentrate on them in a
way that simply scrawling them down doesn't.

------
niels_olson
I did an unpublished survey of my med school classmates, got a decent response
rate, about 70-80% as a I recall. I asked how much time they spent on about 30
or so study habits, and then some demographics. One of the demographic
questions was "which quintile of the class do you think you're in?"

So, not exactly awesome methods, but some promising leads. There was a lot
"meh" in the middle, but, in order

1) review and condense your notes the week before the exam is the single best
thing you can do

2) go to class, read the book, and make one set of notes (eg: take notes on
the reading, then add targeted bits during lecture, or vise versa)

3) Do the assigned homework. Or, in the case of medical school, do a lot of
question books and understand the answers (question banks are the staple of
medical school, which is a whole 'nother post). Add what you learn to your
notes.

3) If you can't go to class, listen to the podcast, but taking notes is
critical, and whatever you do,

35) don't take notes on a computer. Perhaps partially due to WiFi access,
going to class and typing notes was the worst idea you could have, actually
worse than

33) listening to the podcast without taking notes and

34) going to class and not taking notes at all).

I also found there was a skew in the bell curve: completely innocent, one
might expect people to evenly distribute among the quintiles, but there seemed
to be a skew, which has been repeated in other studies: the top students
slightly under-rate themselves, but the bottom students significantly over-
rate their abilities, so there's a huge bulge in the middle, but it leans to
toward over-confidence.

Applying Bloom's taxonomy(1), there seems to be a tactile-kinetic element to
note-taking, and there's critical thinking involved in choosing what to write
down, because you can't just transcribe the lecture and the book. There's
further synthetic thinking when you try to merge class and book notes, and
there is further synthesis when you build those notes into that a pre-test
crib sheet.

If I were designing school from the ground up, lectures would be 20 minutes.

(1) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blooms_Taxonomy>

~~~
lutorm
_the top students slightly under-rate themselves, but the bottom students
significantly over-rate their abilities,_

Sounds like what you would expect from the Dunning-Kruger effect
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect>)

------
keiferski
I hate to sound like a hopeless optimist, but am I the only one that is a bit
disheartened by the focus on studying/acing an exam, rather than actually, I
don't know, learning something? As in, a focus on grades distracts students
from the real point of an education.

I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't even be at university if you're not
foaming at the mouth to acquire the knowledge. Sure, there are classes that
you won't enjoy regardless, but tactics to beat them should be an exception,
not the rule.

~~~
hardy263
But how would you quantify the amount of learning that you've actually
retained? Would it not be through some sort of question-answer based system on
the material that you've covered, and using a weighted scale for each question
depending on the difficulty of the question and how you applied the concepts?

As much as I enjoy learning about computers and circuits in class, how would I
actually _know_ I understood how they all interact with each other something
without testing myself?

Acing an exam easily is a pretty good indication that you've learned the
subject material fairly well.

~~~
aik
I've aced a fair amount of exams in my lifetime, and knowing what I know now
about "knowing", learning and understanding, acing a majority of those exams
were in fact a TERRIBLE indication of the amount (and quality) of learning
that had taken place. For example, all those A's in my electromagnetism and
thermodynamics courses, or calc courses -- completely unwarranted. I would say
about 95% of it was mindless memorization of formulas and the application of
the formulas mostly through the usage of algebra. Testing/performing on deeper
conceptual understanding = virtually non-existant (which I can easily prove to
myself by the lack of understanding I have at the moment when I actually try
to apply the concepts).

------
zeteo
If it was Quantum Mechanics, or at least Calculus, I'd be somewhat impressed.
But Corporate Finance... The 50% pass rate and repeat failures probably
evidence the proportion of students who take that class without understanding
basic Algebra first.

------
msluyter
Am I alone in thinking that -- whatever their merit, generally -- these
techniques will be far less effective in mathematics courses? You could write
out a one page note compression for, say, calculus, but then still be unable
to solve word problems or proofs unless you had also spent a lot of practice
solving them.

~~~
stephen_g
I agree, and it's the same for all the engineering courses I have done. I
could explain almost all of the concepts for a lot of my courses with hardly
any study, but 90% of the exams I do are (essentially) just solving problems,
and being prepared for that often takes a lot of practice in my experience.

------
anigbrowl
This is one of the best articles on the subject of rapid learning that I've
seen in years. The point about knowing is being able to teach is particularly
important. It's great if you have a patient friend or partner who is willing
to listen to your half-baked explanations _qua_ explorations of a new subject;
just be willing to honestly answer that you don't know if your listener poses
a question that had not occurred to you. Even alone, visualizing yourself
teaching or applying an idea is a very powerful technique.

Don't be afraid of moving slowly through dense material, even if that leads to
multiple reinventions of the wheel during study. There are few things more
satisfying than contemplating an idea, observing a problem or question arising
from it, and developing your own solution - followed by finding that same
issue examined in a subsequent page or lecture. Sure, you could have just kept
reading and had the answer handed to you on a plate, but that's much less
memorable.

The practice exam is just as important, though. You're probably familiar with
the saying 'an engineer is someone who can do for ten cents what any fool can
do for a dollar.' Learning is an enjoyable experience for smart and curious
people, but without putting pressure on oneself to reproduce the information
learned the practice can be self-indulgent, and in that case the material is
not remembered as well as it might be otherwise. If we think of learning as a
sort of knowledge engineering, then we can also think of time as the cost
constraint that sets the skilled professional apart from the amateur.
Constraints force compromises, and learning how to make efficient compromises
is extremely important. Perfectionism is a luxury that few of us can afford.

------
msie
To be clear, although only 3.5 hours were spent studying for the test, many
hours were spent learning the course.

~~~
bobwebb
The time spent learning the course would still have been spent, had one not
used this special method of revision. Still a good point, though. The idea
that one can magically learn for an exam in three hours or so is sadly not
true...

~~~
stoney
> The time spent learning the course would still have been spent, had one not
> used this special method of revision

Not necessarily true. He specifically lists learning and understanding
concepts as they were taught as a part of his strategy (his principle #1). I
adopted pretty much the opposite principle - not putting in too much effort
during the term and learning it all at the end. So I would presumably have put
in far fewer hours during the course than he did. So comparing my total
revision time to his would not be a fair comparison.

Incidentally, this wasn't a deliberate strategy of mine, it's just how I liked
to do things, but I think maybe having the full content of the course before I
started serious learning may have been a benefit.

I also spent a lot less time on revision than many of my peers, so I don't
think learning during the course is necessarily a prerequisite for minimising
time spend revising.

------
jamesbkel
This is very good for learning (and then using) knowledge quickly/in a short
time frame. This is basically how I worked when at university.

However, my siblings don't work this way... they take a long time and work
quite hard when it comes to learning. That is not to say that they are slow or
unintelligent. In retrospect I envy them a bit. I can put on the illusion of
being brilliant since I can pick something up in a few minutes... but ask me a
year from now and I'll probably need to repeat that process. However, they are
in medicine, so as ghshephard suggested, the effectiveness of this technique
could vary widely by domain. If you take a long time to carefully understand
the fundamentals of the human body, you probably won't need to learn too much
more about it later. Not to say that you won't need to keep on up current
practices, but you also don't need to deal with the "API for kidney function"
changing anytime soon.

Also, I agree with the connection/analog process for quick learning and
application, but you can only stack so many analogies before you're living in
your own self-constructed world.

------
Tycho
The thing he didn't mention is will-power / the ability to focus / capacity
for thinking. I think the vast majority of students fail to pay attention in
class, but even when they do, they fail to think _hard_ about the concepts
being presented. I see it in myself, when trying to grapple with a new
concept, it's so easy to say to yourself 'just give up' and turn your
attention elsewhere. Especially since you can tell yourself that your
diverting your attention to something equally valuable (eg. reading the next
page of the book, or listening to the next part of the lecture).

It's easy to mentally pat-yourself-on-the-back for doing X hours of studying,
much harder to confront your cognitive limits by trying to integrate a new
concept on the spot (as opposed to picking it up gradually through practice
and experience).

Another thing to note though is that if you develop the self-discipline to hit
the library for hours on end every day, that self-discipline will arguably
serve you better in life than the A-A+ average you might have gained with
better study techniques.

------
Apocryphon
I would like to see these methods applied specifically for a CS course.

------
bugsy
The claims that the article documents "one of the world's most efficient
studiers" is very bizarre.

He studied 3.5 hrs studying for an exam, not counting any of the time studying
the subject in the weeks and months before the exam. That sounds pretty
normal. He's not saying he studied 3.5 hrs during the whole semester total and
aced the course as a result.

I typically spent 0-15 minutes studying for exams because I was already
prepared, always got A or A+ and usually the top score in the class at a
renowned program at a top university.

I did well because most the students were not interested in design or
engineering and were there because their parents wanted them to study it.
These other students (by which I mean asians) would do things like get ahold
of the test in advance (cheating) and get together and try to figure out the
answers. But they were mostly clueless because they thought cheating would
overcome their failure to meaningfully study during the semester. Cheating
made their academics much worse because it was a crutch they relied upon
rather than bothering to do the necessary work. But the poor results of the
cheaters distorted the curve and made it relatively simple for others to get
an A: it's not as if I got perfect scores. I remember one class I got
something like 20% and that was the highest score in the class. Yeah, it was a
difficult test, as it should have been, after all this was engineering school.

Me, I did the projects and read the assignments. Before the exam here are
things you should do:

1\. Do not study or think about the topic at all.

2\. Drink a glass of wine the night before.

3\. Go to bed early and get at least 9 hrs sleep.

This assumes you have been keeping up. If you have not been keeping up,
cramming won't do squat for you except make you tired and do worse than you
would have from just getting some sleep and guessing on the test.

The only studying specifically for a test I would do is to casually flip
through my notes a few minutes before the test, where I'd have notes in the
margins about things that were easy to get mixed up and such stuff that I had
specific problems with. These things I had already spent time mastering in the
months or weeks leading up to the exam, I obviously don't bother trying to
learn anything for the first time at this point, that's just silly.

One last tip - don't care about grades at all. If you care about grades you'll
be motivated to get high grades, which means you'll be drawn to cheat and then
you'll end up not actually knowing anything in reality. By not giving a rat's
ass what grades you get, you have no motivation whatsoever to get involved in
cheating clubs and groups, and will study what you want when you want, and
you'll do great.

~~~
msie
_These other students (by which I mean asians) would do things like get ahold
of the test in advance (cheating) and get together and try to figure out the
answers._

Wow, I feel sorry for any honest, hard-working asian who's ever crossed your
path.

~~~
hardy263
I'm asian, and my method of studying is the similar to the one in the article.
But a couple of months ago, to my horror, my own father advised me to use that
tactic. (trying to figure out the exam answers in advance using previous
exams)

I still keep to my method, but I don't think any discrimination was intended
from the grandparent post. It's fairly common for non-passionate people to try
to achieve good results without putting in effort to learn the subject. It's a
question of whether you value time or learning more.

~~~
msie
There is nothing wrong with using previous exams to study for an exam. They
are a source of good questions. In fact the article mentions using a test
exam! It's the teacher's fault for being lazy about reusing test questions.
Many student societies keep a filing cabinet of old exams and I've seen books
of old exams published. How about all those SAT prep courses???

------
switch
This is, in a nutshell, how to be mediocre at stuff.

It's a bit pointless going to college and spending 4 of the best years of your
life doing stuff you aren't interested enough in to devote yourself to.

In fact, you could argue college itself isn't the best use of those 4 years.

I'm thankful for people like this because they leave all the outlier spots
(best spots that offer the most rewards (financial, satisfaction, recognition,
etc.)) to people willing to pick something they love and willing to work hard
as hell at it.

------
gohat
This is very cool.

But, to be honest, I’m not that impressed. I can’t recall ever studying more
than 3 hours for a test (usually about 2 hours) and just graduated an Ivy
League college with an ~A average.

Now I did usually start studying 2 weeks or so in advance in multiple 20
minute sessions. I did so because last minute cramming doesn't work for me,
but it did result in high grades with not so much total time spent.

~~~
falsestprophet
Lovely, now try scoring an A average at a top engineering university without
studying all day everyday for the duration.

~~~
dfreidin
I did that. Computer Engineering at Purdue. The only classes I ever studied
for were the ones that I didn't pay attention to in lecture. I never took
notes (this drove my teachers crazy in high school). There were only a few
classes in which I got less than an A-, and only one of those was an ECE class
(statistics; I couldn't make myself pay attention). All I did was go to
lecture and do the assignments.

------
tybris
I never bothered with notes. They never seemed to work for me. I think and
memorize visually or systematically. Having connected words or flat sheets of
paper is no good to me. I also saw tests as of more of a nuisance and a
disruption in building an understanding. To spend as little time on them as
possible, I would figure out how the lecturer creating the test thinks.

The day before the test I would spend a few hours having an imaginary
conversation with the lecturer and made sure my model of him matched all my
recollections of him/her (if unknown, I'd just imagine a generic lecturer).
The imaginary form would ask me questions that might be in the test and I made
sure I could answer them. I usually found the actual test to be predictable
and much easier. My GPA in college was among the top 1%.

I've tried to teach this technique to others occasionally, but with limited
success. It usually fails on not being able to imagine a honest representation
of someone else and only asking yourself questions you want to be asked.

------
chegra
For me:

1\. Select the right course. Course with a lot of fact details to remember
forget them, for instance, history, business law, biology, geography. Do
calculation based course, typical a good foundation in maths is required.

2\. Choose the right lecturers. Some lecturers you just wouldn't be scoring an
A off of. It's not you, it's them. "These nitwits didn't even comment their
code right; there I'm taking 5%". <\-- Avoid. You generally look for someone
who grade is skewing to the high percentage and is normally distributed[avoid
bimodal distribution] . For your cores course you might not be able to avoid
such lecturers, but kill your optional courses.

3\. Go to every class.

4\. Take notes at every class.

5\. Clarify anything you don't know right there and then. Think to yourself
that if you don't know the rest of the class don't know either, and they are
probably too shame to admit it. Never let shame stand between you and an A.

I think the key to the guy technique is simply to learn once. Whether everyone
can do this is a little suspect.

~~~
bfe
In my experience as both a T.A. and a student, a bimodal distribution of
grades wasn't uncommon in courses with a good professor with high standards
teaching challenging technical material. What's the rationale for avoiding it?

~~~
chegra
I think the people who fall on the bad end of the spectrum will have a
different opinion of the professor. I have an axiom to consider yourself
average, even though you might be above average and make your decision from
that perspective.

------
aleemb
I found the example complicated. Real _learning_ comes from simplifying. In
the case of the provided example, it is trivial to simplify.

$100 is worth $121 after two 10% interest cycles. The PV formula asks the
reverse: what is $121 two cycles out, worth today (what is its present value)?
In reverse, we can calculate that by dividing $121 with 1.1 twice. That's
pretty much what the formula is : FV/(1 + i)^N or $121/((1.1)^2) = $100.

kapish?

~~~
jvandenbroeck
Idd, I was thinking the same thing, he takes an easy formula & creates weird
pictures with angles from to, "to make it simple"

------
lmarinho
That doesn't seem to be the case but I've met a lot of not-too-bright students
that managed to get excellent grades by "optimizing" their study to answer
precisely the kind of questions asked more frequently in tests.

------
jamesbkel
It would be helpful to have an actual GPA. I'm really not sure what a GPA
between A and A+ even means. At my university there was no +/- distinction.

~~~
kissickas
I think it differs but A- to A is usually 3.5 to 4.0.

------
jvandenbroeck
Good grades come from hard work, researching the subject, being active in
class,..

Saying you Aced an exam with only 3.5 hours of studying is just _retarded_..

It's the same as working in a Mc Donalds for 4 months, then taking a test
about the contents of the hamburgers. And being able to recall every onion
piece that's on a hamburger -- without studying.

Of course you would succeed, you where making hamburgers for 4 months...

Yes the strategies he mentions are good, but he leaves out the most important
aspect. The main focus of the article should be on hard (yet efficient) work
during the school year.

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kees
Very useful article, can use some suggestions myself. But I'm not that
impressed, mainly because he's talking about a dead simple finance course.

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teyc
I wonder if this approach is any good at mastering technical exams like SCJP
etc.

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zellyn
tl;dr: Pay attention in class and studying is more like organizing and
reviewing what you already know, which doesn't take that long. Duh.

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aneth
The most important steps he details require the same extraordinary
intelligence that makes one an extraordinary student. The most difficult thing
for a genius to understand is what it is like not to be quick minded. Most
students could stare at the same material for days and not generalize the
concepts the way this guy does as he listens to the lecture.

