How Top Students Study, According to Research

When researchers ask students how they study and compare the answers with their grades, a few habits stand out. They are mostly things done alone, often weeks before an exam, which is why they are easy to miss. This post covers what those habits are, what the evidence says about them, and how to start using them.

What the research says

Marissa Hartwig and John Dunlosky (2012) surveyed 324 undergraduates about how they study and compared the answers with their grade point averages. They found that:

• students who said they tested themselves tended to have higher grades;
• lower-scoring students were more likely to study late at night;
• all students, and especially lower-scoring ones, tended to let the next deadline decide what they studied.

A later survey of a large undergraduate biology course by Geller and colleagues (2018) found a similar pattern. Higher-scoring students were more likely to report testing themselves and planning a study schedule ahead of time, and less likely to report cramming.

Two cautions. These are surveys, so they show what higher-scoring students say they do, not that those habits caused their grades. And in the first survey, rereading was also linked with higher grades.

The case for copying these habits comes from experiments, where researchers control how students study. A review of that research by Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) rated two techniques as the most useful: testing yourself, and spreading your study out over time.

Spread your revision out

Spacing means coming back to the same topic on separate occasions instead of covering it all in one go. Nicholas Cepeda and colleagues (2006) pooled the results of 317 experiments. With total study time kept the same, spaced study did better than massed study in all but 12 of the 271 comparisons they could make.

The best gap depends on when the test is. In a later study of more than 1,350 people, Cepeda and colleagues (2008) taught a set of facts, reviewed them after a gap, and tested them some time after the review. The best gap was:

• about 1 day, when the test was a week after the review;
• about 11 days, when the test was five weeks after the review;
• about 21 days, when the test was ten weeks after the review.

A gap that was too long cost less than a gap that was too short.

For example, if you cover the causes of the First World War in a history module this week and the exam is about seven weeks away, a first review from memory in about a week and a half fits these results, with another closer to the exam. The spaced repetition planner can work out the dates for every topic from your exam date.

Test yourself instead of rereading

A page you have read three times is easy to read a fourth time, and that ease can feel like knowing it. In an experiment by Roediger and Karpicke (2006), students who read a passage four times were more confident they would remember it than students who read it once and recalled it three times. A week later, the rereading group remembered 40% of the passage and the recall group 61%. There is more on this in active recall versus rereading.

A simple way to test yourself:

1. Close your notes.
2. Write down what you remember about the topic, or answer questions you wrote earlier.
3. Open your notes and mark what you missed or got wrong.
4. Go over those parts, and test yourself on them again in a few days.

Ask about confusing points early

In courses where each topic builds on the last, a small gap early on can cause trouble weeks later. In a first-year engineering mechanics module, for example, free-body diagrams might get one early lecture. They are then the first step in most of the problems that follow, and a mistake in the diagram carries into every line after it.

In week two, the question might be small: "When a book rests on a table, does the force the book exerts on the table go on the book's free-body diagram?" (It doesn't. A free-body diagram shows only the forces acting on the object.) Left until week eight, the same gap can turn into not following the topic at all, which takes much longer to sort out.

To keep on top of this:

• Keep a short list at the end of each set of notes of anything you didn't follow.
• Clear the list within the week, by asking after the lecture, in a tutorial or in office hours, or by checking the textbook.

Go back over topics you already understand

Understanding something and being able to recall it later are different. In a theory set out by Robert and Elizabeth Bjork in 1992, storage strength is how well something has been learned, and retrieval strength is how easily you can get it back right now. Retrieval strength falls over time when you don't use what you learned. So a topic you understood well in October can be hard to recall in December, and you won't find out until you try.

Katherine Rawson and John Dunlosky (2011) tested how much of this kind of practice is enough. Students practised recalling concepts until they got them right, then came back for later relearning sessions. The later sessions made a large difference to long-term retention for little extra practice. Their advice to students:

1. In your first session, practise each concept until you have recalled it correctly three times.
2. Then relearn it in three more sessions, spaced well apart.

These return visits can be short. In a law module, one might be ten minutes explaining offer and acceptance from memory, with a case for each, before you check your notes.

How to keep track

The hard part is remembering what is due: which topic needs a review, which question you've now got wrong three times, and which course it belongs to.

A notebook works:

• one line per topic, with the date you last reviewed it and the date it's next due;
• a separate list of questions you got wrong, with the date.

Today in SymbioLearn does this from what you've actually done in a Module. Each Concept it lists has a line saying why it is there, such as "This one has caught you out a few times recently" or "It's been 14 days since you last worked with this." A right answer given at least two days after you last worked on a Concept doubles the gap before it comes back, up to 60 days, and a wrong answer halves it.

Where to start this week

1. Pick one topic from about three weeks ago.
2. Before opening anything, write down what you remember about it.
3. Compare that with your notes. What you missed is where to start.
4. Put the next review of that topic in your calendar, using the gaps above as a guide.
5. Start a list of anything you don't follow in lectures, and clear it by the end of the week.

If you'd rather not keep track by hand, add your study material for one course to a SymbioLearn Module and check Today for what's due.