Tips For Efficient Studies When Going To College

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 27th, 2010

It often happens that students study a lot, but still feel the need to excel more. They feel that the amount of input is not proportionate to the output. This is because there is so much to study and with other activities around, it is difficult if not impossible to memorize everything and store that in memory forever. For most of the students there is a problem in learning and remembering. Moreover, these days, students are not only burdened with heavy coursework, but also other non-coursework activities.

As such students need to know as to how they should develop efficient study habit. Our brain takes time to take in information and process it. If you go on with this process non-stop for a long period, the system will get tired and will take longer and longer time to process information. So take a break of about ten minutes for every 50 minutes of work. This will help to refresh your brain and make work longer. This way you will retain information for longer time even if you do not memorize.

Review your notes at the end of the by reading, writing, thinking or talking about it. You can also do this every after one hour of study setting aside ten minutes for it. Researches have prove that if you do not review or recall what you have learned, you are most likely to forget 50-80 percent of what you have learned in the next 24 hours. So try to retain as much as possible by reviewing your lessons.

Review your notes at the end of the week setting aside five minutes to each hour of material for that week. Also set aside two to four minutes of review, per hour of study, at the end of the month. Weekly and monthly reviews are done to make sure that you curb forgetting.

You can also try changing subjects or tasks every hour. You will feel easily bored doing or studying the same things for hours. Hence the brain will take longer processing time. You read a particular subject for an hour, take a break, refresh yourself and come back to study something new. Remember that the human brain does not easily assimilate the same material hour after hour. So better reorganize your studying routine so that you don?t get bored and end up squeezing your concentration power. The best concentration level can be retained for about half-an-hour. So change your task often.

Do not read with your mouth. Some students feel they learn faster when they are mouthing. But the fact is that the brain reads faster than the mouth. Moreover, the concentration level is also high when you read with your brain.

You should also read with a purpose. As you read, develop a questioning mind. Pose questions yourself as you read and also try to answer them. This way will develop an analytical reading habit that will help you to retain information for a longer period.

These study tips will be very handy for every student. For students pursuing distance education, these tips will be very useful. Since they don?t attend classroom lectures, and learn at home, they can benefit if they use these study tips. The same is true of students pursuing online degree programs.