Tag Archives: study skills

10 Skills High School Students Must Have To Prepare Themselves for College Life (Guest Post)

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, grades, high school, study skills by

It’s never too early to learn new skills, especially if you know these skills will be central for college success. College is very different from high school; your responsibilities and the self-discipline required to meet them increase drastically. By cultivating these skills as a high school student you will be able to prepare adequately for college life.

College awaits you. Be prepared!

College awaits you. Be prepared!

1.         Time Management

Coursework, classes, and exams are your basic responsibilities in college, so it’s essential to be able to manage your time wisely to avoid pressing deadlines and failure to commit to your responsibilities. Honing your organizational skills will help you act proactively and manage your time more efficiently.

Time management is closely related to your study habits. To manage your time efficiently you need to review your notes daily, expand on them, and assign time for research and comprehension, especially for challenging textbook reading.

2.         Stress Management

College can be very stressful if you’re not prepared for it. During your high school years, make an effort to always have your stress levels under control. Sticking to a healthy, balanced lifestyle will ensure your stress can be managed in a sustainable and effective manner.

To avoid feeling overwhelmed, take care of your body and mind; engage in sports, eat healthily, and find channels for expressing your frustration, whether it’s through art, writing, or talking with someone. Knowing how to relax and process your anxieties rationally are two other important aspects of stress management you should master before college starts.

3.         Computer Literacy

Technology is changing education from the roots up. Having basic computer literacy skills, like touch typing and researching, are skills you will find handy in college. Many students find it easier to use a laptop or a tablet for note-taking, so mastering fast and accurate typing skills will facilitate your studying.

4.         Critical Thinking

In college you will be expected to critically analyze study material, journal articles, and other often obscurely-written academic material. Critical thinking is the ability to engage intellectually with what you read. Rather than passively taking in new knowledge, critical thinking and analyzing means you assess, challenge, and then absorb new knowledge in ways that ensure it can be beneficial and, as much as possible, objective and freed from dominant discourses.

5.         Note-Taking

Note-taking is a complex skill. It requires attention, critical thinking abilities, and efficient writing so as to not miss any valuable remarks by your instructor. High school is a great time for starting to work on your note-taking skills, which you will find to be essential for college success.

If you choose to use a laptop or tablet for note-taking, you need to have advanced typing skills to keep up with your professors’ speech. So better brush up on your typing skills today!

6.         Note Reviewing

It’s not enough to take good notes if you never bother studying them. More of a habit than a skill per se, daily reviewing of your notes means less time during exam preparation because you will already have substantially covered and comprehended the study material.

7.         Motivation

In college you will not have as much support from your parents and instructors; college is a more independent road you’ll have to walk. For that reason, being able to find motivation internally is crucial. Motivation is what will help you stick to your efforts and resist the temptation to give up when things get ugly.

Discover what motivates and inspires you. It’s what will push you to achieve your goals and make you a better person and an achiever.

8.          Reliability

The increased independence college grants a student is often undercut by that student’s yielding to bad habits of procrastination and unreliability. Students naturally prefer to engage with more fun free time than educational activities, but if they do so to excess, their academic performance suffers. Avoiding procrastination and successfully committing to your duties is a central skill for college success.

9.         Concentration and Study Environment

College is full of distractions, and that’s why you need to know how to concentrate and shut off any diversions. A quiet, isolated study environment that also inspires learning will help you stay focused on your academic work. There’s no better time to practice this skill than in high school, which is already a very noisy and distracting place!

10.        Completing Assignments

In college there will be no one to remind you of your responsibilities, and as an adult you will be expected to meet deadlines for all your coursework. Get into the habit of committing to your tasks and do so ahead of schedule. You never know what might come up, so it’s better have extra time on your hands than scrambling to compensate for unexpected events that take up the time you’d planned on using.

These ten skills will boost your performance during high school and prepare you for college life, and your professional life thereafter. Start mastering them one by one and you will be able to start and finish your college years full of confidence and enjoying your well-earned success.

About the Author: Chassie Lee is the Content Expert for eReflect – creator of Ultimate Vocabulary Software which is currently being used by tens of thousands of happy customers in over 110 countries.

Learn how to succeed in college from the experts.  Order your copy of The Secrets of Top Students today!

 

A College Student’s Guide to Time Management (Guest Post)

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, grades, high school, self-help, study skills by

Sam Greaves is a writer who specializes in topics related to college life, study hacks and productivity. He writes for Classof1, which is one of the largest providers of online study help for college students.

“I wish I had more time….”

If you haven’t used this line in college, then I’m pretty sure you’re doing well in the time management area.  But for those of you who are struggling to keep things going within the limited time available, this post is for you!

I could write about the plethora of time management techniques that you could use to manage your time. However, let’s start by looking at the basic rules of time management. You can use these rules to optimize the way you’re spending your time, and to create your own time management techniques.

guide_to_time_management

Rule 1: Understand the Objective

The first rule is to understand the purpose or the objective of all the tasks that you do (or need to do). This will help you understand why you should do it. And if there are multiple ways of doing it, this will help you determine the best way to reach the objective.

Rule 2: Prioritize

The problem with tasks is that you almost always have more than one! Especially as a college student, you have to be constantly juggling between lots of things. The best way to make the optimum use of your time is to do tasks based on priority.
You should be able to rank your tasks based on the importance or the urgency of the task. So when you have to do your school work, the tougher assignments or the ones with the closer deadlines should almost always have the higher priority.

Rule 3: Split into Smaller Sub-tasks

It’s best to divide and conquer your work, i.e., split big tasks into smaller sub-tasks. Organizing your work into smaller tasks makes it easier and achievable. Sometimes the massiveness of a task can make it daunting and you may put it off for a more favorable time. Whereas the smaller sub task can make the whole thing seem more approachable.  Dividing the task into smaller units will ensure that you’re constantly progressing in your task!

Rule 4: Take Them One at a Time

Although students like to be proud of their multitasking abilities, studies have shown that multitasking is a weakness, not strength. At any given time, two tasks are the maximum our brain can handle. So it’s detrimental if you try to overload your brain with more than two tasks at a time.
You should always plan to ensure that you’re doing just one task at any given moment. This will make you more effective and efficient in dealing with what you’re doing. Since you’re not distracted with multiple tasks, you will be performing at your highest potential.

Rule 5: Be Relentless

“With self-discipline most anything is possible.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Almost any habit that you want to build requires persistence and self-discipline, and it’s no different with time management. While in college, many times you may have to make the hard choice between doing the task you want to do and the task you should do! So being relentless in following your plan is crucial for the success of your time management efforts.

Rule 6: Track and Control

Last but not the least, you should make a note of all the tasks that you plan to do. This will make it easier for you to constantly be aware of the tasks you have pending at any given time. Tracking your tasks also serves another, more important purpose of being able to monitor your progress. This will help you make changes wherever necessary, and plan in advance for any impending tasks.

Now that you’ve learned about the basic rules of time management, you can get started on making the most of your college life. If you’re not satisfied with just the basics and would like to learn more about time management and productivity, I would highly recommend the following titles:

  1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
  2. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

Photo Credit: gadl cc

Learn how to study quickly and efficiently.  Order your copy of The Secrets of Top Students today!

8 Deep Study Tips for Math Students (Guest Post)

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, grades, high school, school, STEM, study skills by

By Harry Red.  Harry is a developer and math fanatic who helps students at exammastery.com

Deep study is a rare commodity. It’s what happens when you’re studying at your peak ability. Mathematics definitely requires lots of deep study. But it doesn’t really come naturally to us. With some practice though, you can train yourself to fall into deep study mode more easily.

question-glass

1. Make a dent

Ever spent a whole day avoiding the actual hard work you wanted to do? Ended up doing busywork instead?

Everyone’s done that.

Fortunately there’s a way out of it: ignore things that are trivial but urgent (chores etc.) for a while, and make a dent in that difficult, non-urgent thing you’re somehow avoiding. Make some small amount of progress on it.

It doesn’t have to be big. It may take several attempts. It may be just a vague, uncertain feeling of having understood the subject a tiny bit better. But it can release a lot of anxiety – conscious or otherwise – and give you some energy and insight so that you can later nail the thing completely.

In math, small insights can make a really big difference towards understanding some larger concept. A single, apt diagram, a carefully remembered assumption, or an unwritten, abstract and seemingly trivial equation or mathematical fact can be enough to set your mind on a marathon to finally connect all those little dents that you made when you last studied the subject.

2. Jump around when working on questions

At least two bad things happen when you’re neck-deep in math: tunnel vision and myopia. Not seeing other parts of a question, and focusing too much on the minutiae of just one aspect of it.

Both waste time and increase your risk of failure.

So next time you find yourself stuck in tunnel vision or math myopia, stop yourself. Feel free to jump around. Go back to the question and pick out key words or concepts. See if you can quickly verify given results. (Trig identities are usually a good target for this.) Recall definitions – maybe write them down.

The point is to engage with the material at varying levels of breadth and intensity. Actively avoid the thing you were working on: it brought you into tunnel vision, so you want to get as far away from it as possible.

This can save you both study- and exam-time. Both are extremely valuable.

3. Change your views on proofs using the ‘scaffold’ method

Writing a mathematical proof can be much like constructing a building.

First, you need a construction plan, or at least a rough idea of where to begin. Then comes some scaffolding and preparation. Then the actual construction – putting things in place so they’ll stay there when the scaffolding is removed.

Suppose you’re asked to prove something in an exam. You understand clearly what you’re asked to prove, you’ve broken down the problem into smaller parts as best you can, and you’ve got a few ideas of how to get from one thing to another and then to something that is at least close to what you’re asked to show. However, something is still stopping you from actually writing down the proof, because you’re not sure you’ve got the details figured out correctly.

Cases like these are where the scaffold method is most useful. The idea is this: write the scaffolds in, then do the actual construction work.

That is, don’t worry too much about the intermediate steps and their mathematical rigour for the moment. Instead, write down what you are able to write down; for instance, any intermediate steps, leaving some free lines between them. This will set the problem out more clearly in your mind, and may even trigger memories of similar proofs that you’ve worked through during revision.

4. Don’t neglect boring stuff

As strange as it may sound, you need to be aware of how bored you are while you’re studying.

When you’re in the ‘bored’ mode, you’re just trying to get by. It’s likely that you’ll miss very important things if you just coast through a part of your subject without conjuring up actual interest for it.

You need to prevent this. Monitor your boredom levels (only you can do that accurately), and take a break whenever they spike. (When I say ‘monitor’ here, I don’t mean make lists and charts. Just use your subjective judgement.)

Taking a break in such situations is effective because everyone’s level of enthusiasm for something drops once they’ve spent a long time expending mental energy on it. Enthusiasm is replenished with rest and time spent doing more enjoyable or relaxing activities.

So take that break. You will lose a bit of study time, but as long as your time-management is not too far off you won’t lose anything important. Try not to think of this as lost study time. A difficult, less interesting subject is best studied with a fresh mind, not an exhausted, interest-starved one that will make all the wrong connections at the worst possible time.

Sound obvious? Maybe so. You should be taking breaks anyway. But monitoring your boredom levels is a good way of measuring a lot of things in one go. Boredom is complicated. Taking that extra break because your boredom indicator goes critical will help you avoid missing important bits of your subject.

5. Watch out for behaviour deemed ‘interesting’

Sometimes you’ll get questions like this:

a) Investigate the function f(x), particularly its properties with regard to |some topic on the course|. (4 marks)

b) Draw suitable conclusions from this. (2 marks)

I call this a professorial question – it’s asking you something in a roundabout way. These questions might explicitly ask you for ‘interesting’ behaviour, or they might just instruct you to ‘draw suitable conclusions’ from some mathematical argument. In a lot of cases, what they’re really asking you to do is to link the question to ‘interesting’ behaviour that you’ve previously studied in your course. Physics exams are especially prone to this.

It’s like you almost need to know what to do in advance.

The trick is to identify ‘interesting’ special behaviour before the exam starts.

Whenever your lecturer, teacher or textbook goes on about so-called interesting behaviour, pay extra attention. You may be looking at something that is more exam-relevant than you think.

However, it’s not always easy to spot when this is happening. Sometimes it’s obvious. Sometimes you can smell interesting behaviour when one part of a course links in to a much larger field.

For instance, in a course on algebra you may be told that there’s no general algebraic solution for any polynomial of fifth degree or greater, and to get usable numbers out of such equations, we usually need to develop numerical techniques for solving these, which in turn is a huge topic in mathematics.

6. Start with a long attention span

Mathematics contains a lot of information. Simply reading it will take up much of your mental bandwidth.

You’ll need to have a big enough attention span to process everything and avoid missing important bits. The tiniest detail can make all the difference.

But nowadays, it’s hard to start anything with a long attention span. So you’ll likely need to spend (read: waste) time trying to adjust your attention span.

Here’s what you can do. Before you start a difficult exercise, go read a slightly heady but non-math text for 15 minutes. Then start that exercise.

You’ll find that your attention span has expanded a bit.

The reason why I’d recommend reading a non-math book is that you don’t want to exhaust the math faculty of your brain. See what kind of books will work best for you.

Best part? Over time, you can read entire books like this. I’ve read The Book of Five Rings, The Art of War and most of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos using only this method.

7. Return to neutral + leave study hooks for tomorrow

It’s hard to get motivated to do a long, hard math study session.

Here’s what you do. Keep an eye out for interesting topics or problems that you’ve just encountered near the end of a study session. Then, don’t study them. Restrain yourself and leave those topics or exercises for the next session.

That gives you an incentive to get back into the material even if you are distracted and don’t start your next study session when you intended to.

There’s a passive variation on this – call it returning to neutral. That is, don’t leave a tangled mess of study notes on your desk after a long session, because when you come back to it in the morning you’ll lose at least some motivation in cleaning that mess up.

8. Use hard exercises

Pick a few hard exercises on your course. Make sure they’re likely to be relevant for your exam. Struggle with them.

When you’ve solved them, memorize some of the key insights that led you to solve the problem. That’s right: memorize them.

Why spend time on even more memorization? The reason is that math exams often reuse the same kinds of problems. So if you already to know how to solve them at a basic level, you’ll have a real advantage in the exam.

But even if those hard problems don’t turn up in the exam, they provide some of the best teaching you’ll ever get. By definition, they’re going to be weird in some way. And understanding weird things improves your mind.

More math study tips on www.exammastery.com

Learn how to succeed in math and other subjects.  Order your copy of The Secrets of Top Students today!

Can a Learning Disability Make You a Better Student?

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, grades, high school, learning disability, study skills, Stuyvesant by

In his new book David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell argues that having a learning disability can actually be beneficial.  I couldn’t agree more!  I wanted to share an article I wrote a while back about how my struggles with learning helped me become a top student. 

I was never officially diagnosed with a learning disability, but I often suspect I have one.  I struggled with listening comprehension throughout my academic career.  More often than not, I walked out of class having no idea what the teacher was talking about.  In science labs, I would stare blankly at the equipment in front of me because I couldn’t process verbal instructions.  In Spanish class, my ability to read the language far exceeded my listening skills.  Sometimes I hated going to school because I felt like I learned nothing there.  And yet, I managed to become valedictorian of Stuyvesant High School, one of the most competitive public schools in the country, and graduate first in my class from Columbia University.

How did I do this?  By using techniques familiar to many learning disabled students: hard work, perseverance, and playing to my strengths.  Ironically, my learning weakness may have contributed to my academic success.

I learned at an early age that my reading ability was far better than my listening comprehension.  Since I didn’t absorb much during class, I took extremely detailed notes so I could review them at my own pace.  I became a speed-writer by using my own brand of shorthand to record every tidbit of information, while most of my classmates were satisfied with a skimpy outline.  I think this really worked to my advantage.  According to a 1968 study by John McLeish, students remember only 42% of the information in a lecture by the time it ends, and only 20% a week later.  My classmates may have understood the lesson while it was being given, but when test-time rolled around, most of that understanding had evaporated.  I, on the other hand, knew the lecture better than ever because I had reviewed it several times.

I also relied on textbooks and other written material to explain what I had failed to grasp in class.  Books were my primary teachers, especially in high school.  I read complex passages over and over again until they were permanently etched in my brain.  I also took extensive notes on reading assignments to reinforce what I read.  These notes became invaluable for things like participating in class discussions and writing papers.  Whenever I wanted to support an argument, I could quickly look at my notes instead of desperately flipping through books to find some half-remembered fact or quotation.  All of this reading and note-taking was time-consuming, of course, but it forced me to develop a strong work ethic.

I also turned down offers to join study groups, since I knew I wouldn’t absorb information in such an environment.  I believe that this made me a more independent learner.  While many of my classmates asked one another for explanations and clarifications (and were often given faulty information), I would examine my books and go to the teacher’s office hours for help.  In college, I often took courses that complemented my learning ability.  For example, I took Latin classes to fulfill my language requirement because they focused on reading instead of oral comprehension; and I majored in history in part because it emphasized the analysis of written texts.

I believe that by compensating for a weakness, I became a stronger student overall.  I sincerely doubt I would have been at the top of my class if my listening comprehension had been better.  There are two things I hope you take away from this: (1) everyone’s needs are different, and you must find the method of learning that works best for you; and (2) learning disability comes in all shapes and sizes, and may be found in those you least expect.

Stefanie Weisman is the author of The Secrets of Top Students: Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Acing High School and College.

4 Ways to Survive School Even If You Don’t Have a Time Machine (Guest Post)

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, grades, high school, study skills, writing by

Alexandra Harmening is a recently graduated writer who loves avocados and is currently living 365 Days of Pride and Prejudice.

While trying to squeeze my undergraduate degree into three years, things often seemed more than a little bit hectic. I frequently informed professors that I was working on discovering how to be in two places at once. But that one never really panned out.

Sometimes it is hard to keep your sanity as a student. From homework to internships to some semblance of a social life squeezed in between, the undergrad years brim with busyness. Fortunately, there are four healthy habits that can help students survive school and still succeed, even without a time machine.

The author giving her valedictory speech.

The author giving her graduation speech.

1. Jumpstart Projects

One of the only ways that I made it through school with my grades intact was starting papers and projects as soon as they were assigned. For my senior these this meant breaking ground on research six months early. For end of the semester papers, this typically meant checking out resources from the library during the first or second week of school.

Working ahead is probably the inverse of a common collegiate plague called procrastination. Where procrastinating leaves you sleepless and stressed for the last month of school, completing projects ahead provides time for editing, sleeping every night, meeting to consult your professor, time to print out the paper and freedom from stress during finals week. (In fact, finals week used to be my favorite because by then everything was almost wrapped up—well, except for exams. Sound crazy? I dare you to try it.)

2. Sleep  

“There’ll be time to sleep when we graduate,” friends and I would tease as we typed furiously. Unfortunately, sleep is easily overlooked in the long list of assignments to check off during the day. But most of the time, it is easier to pause in the middle of a project, go to sleep and wake up with a fresh brain and new ideas in the morning.

Complex brain functions such as updating working memory, planning, attention, sense of time, dealing with novel situations and verbal fluency are dramatically affected by sleep-deprivation because the brain is forced to overwork, notes Jim Horne, PhD, who directed a sleep research laboratory at England’s Loughborough University.

“Sleep deprivation is bad for your brain when you are trying to do high-level [thinking] tasks” confirms University of California, San Diego researcher and author Dr. J. Christian Gillin. And sleep deprivation “may have serious consequences both on performance and on the way your brain functions.”

The lesson here: sleep is probably more valuable than we give it credit for being as college students. And in some cases, the key to success on that test tomorrow morning might actually be crashing on your pillow rather than enduring a caffeine induced all-nighter.

3. Know When to Say No

The trickiest thing about college for me was all of the amazing opportunities that sprang up each and every week. I wanted to grab them all in case it was the last time anyone ever asked me to be on the library committee or go on a hike or play in the pit orchestra for the spring musical or work as a part-time tutor or join student government or go out for coffee or—you get the picture. But one of the greatest life lessons that you can start learning while still in school is when and how to say, “No.”

Not to sound like a homework Nazi because it really is important to work towards a balanced life with fun activities and breaks, but there are too many possibilities to answer yes to them all. Unless, of course, you have a time machine.

Identifying your goals for coming to college is a realistic way to begin checking your list of commitments and deciding what are valuable priorities and what can actually be cut. This might be painful, and it doesn’t mean that you can’t ever be involved in amazing and enriching extracurriculars. It just means that you can’t be a member of every single school club or work three and a half jobs while taking 18 units. 

 

4. After a Hard Day of Writing, It’s Good to Write Some More

When you’ve spent the last seven hours writing, memorizing, reading and then writing some more, it is great to relax with a little more writing. Yes, that does sound crazy, but if you are a writer, then you probably know what I mean.

The idea here is to make time for your passion because sometimes, in the midst of pursuing a degree in the subject you love, it becomes easy to forget why it matters and what there is to like about it.

For me, this manifested itself in scribbling out thoughts for my own blog once a week called My Year with Elizabeth Bennet. It was a great way for me to unwind and process while remembering why I was majoring in English.

Now, an engineering major might feel that sitting down to write is one of the most stressful activities I could suggest. But taking an afternoon to pull apart a VW Bug and then reassemble it on the roof of the dorm building might sound amazing. Finding a creative outlet, one that won’t be graded by your professor at the end, is a positive way to unwind and rest. It’s any kind of practical return to your first love that you can invent.

There is probably no one formula for success that any student at any school can download to automatically work. But remembering the basics or sleep, planning ahead, setting priorities and returning to your interests will hopefully help you to find an efficient balance for your college years. And maybe after graduation, you will have developed the skills to start building that time machine.

Give yourself the gift of great grades.  Order your copy of The Secrets of Top Students today!

How to Succeed in School and Still Have Time for Fun (Guest Post)

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, grades, high school, study skills by

By Jessica Socheski

After the pressure of SATs, advanced placement classes and university applications, many students are excited to start a new life in college and experience living in a dorm. But for college freshmen who want to do well in school, maintaining an active social life on campus might seem next to impossible.

How to Succeed in School and Still Have a Little Fun

Maintain your grades and your social life!

Fortunately, there are a few steps to college success that might just allow you to hang out with friends on Friday night instead of holing up in your room with your chemistry text.  For students who care about their grades but are still hoping to enjoy the typical college experience, here’s how to succeed in college academically without giving up on your social life.

Plan Ahead

One of the most common failings of college students is neglecting to set up a plan. In what is often dismissed as harmless procrastination, a surprising number of students tend to do readings at the last minute or wait until the night before to complete an assignment.

But if you want to be free to go out with your friends, it is imperative that you do your work ahead of time! For example, if you have a break after class, pull out the textbook and finish the reading for the next class, right there and then. Being efficient is key to freeing up time to socialize.

Actively review deadlines and make certain you know when your assignments are due. When a project is on the syllabus, break the large tasks down into smaller pieces. Don’t be afraid to start work on your final assignment after the very first class session!

You can also look for ways to streamline and multitask whenever possible. For example, bring your laptop to the laundry room and keep typing that paper between loads.

Be Present in Class

A letter to future college students which appeared in the NY Times blog warns, “when you realize that there’s no detention or punishment for missing classes, when you discover that the professor’s lecture notes are online,” it will become much easier to habitually skip class.

Many students choose to cut classes on a regular basis because they need to study for an exam, want to hang out with friends or simply can’t hear the alarm telling them that their 8 a.m. starts in 15 minutes.

But class time is really some of the most important hours you will spend during college. Professors are experts in their fields, and the time you have to learn from them is valuable. Studying for the test later is much easier if you’re already familiar with the subject from lectures. Finally, you are probably paying thousands of dollars to be in this class – so you might as well get your money’s worth!

Engage in Homework Time

In addition to using the classroom to succeed and planning ahead rather than studying later, find an optimal place to work – and then get cracking! If you are studying at a school with a tempting campus, such as South University Palm Beach, you should probably do your reading at the library instead of a sandy beach. Your studying will be much quicker and more effective without a distracting environment. And when you’re finished, you can hop over to the oceanfront to enjoy a well-deserved break.

With these strategies for effective and more efficient study time, you can get the most out of your college experience both academically and socially!

Image from www.womansday.com

For more tips on how to rule in school, order your copy of The Secrets of Top Students today!

The Secrets of Top Students Book Signing

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, grades, high school, New York City, Stuyvesant, writing by
Photo of Columbia University, courtesy of InSapphoWeTrust via Flickr

Photo of Columbia University, courtesy of InSapphoWeTrust via Flickr

I’m excited to announce that I’m doing a book signing for The Secrets of Top Students at the Columbia University Bookstore on Thursday, September 19, at 6 pm. I’ll also be sharing some of my top study tips for high school and college students!  This is a great event for parents and students in the NYC area.

The Columbia University Bookstore is located at 2922 Broadway, Lerner Hall (114th St.), New York, NY 10027. Hope to see you there!

What’s the Best Music to Help You Study? (Guest Post)

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, grades, high school, self-help, study skills by

While a lot of people work best in complete silence, there are many who prefer some form of background noise or stimulation in order to concentrate.

If you’re a college or graduate student who puts in long hours of studying, listening to music that you enjoy can help pass the time and allow you to concentrate on your work without getting bored.

Depending on your personality and the way your brain functions, there’s a high probability that certain types of music will help you pay attention and improve your study sessions.

The question is: What type of music will do that?

musicsession1

It’s obvious that certain musical genres are just plain distracting, emotionally charged, and not designed for concentration or relaxing. But there’s also a lot of music that can help you relax, focus, and be great accompaniment to a long study session.

While everyone’s different, here’s what I recommend for studying and concentration:

1. Lite jazz — Any kind of jazz will do, but vocal artists like Ella Fitzgerald or Sammy Davis Jr. are great for relaxing and focusing on your work. If you’re looking for something a little more upbeat, jazz fusion will have more of a pop sound and syncopated rhythm.

2. Classical — Classical music of any kind is a fantastic study companion. Not only does it sharpen your brain, but it’s easy to listen to and doesn’t distract you from other thoughts. If you were hoping for something a little more interesting than the average classical recording, try something like Perpetual Motion by Bela Fleck. He does a bunch of classical numbers on that album with a banjo.

3. Varied instrumental — Hearing other words can compete for your thoughts and make it harder for you to read or think through your own words. That means that instrumental tunes of most varieties are going to be better options for your study time.

Even heavier guitar stuff from Joe Satriani or Eric Johnson can make great studying tracks. Something more subtle, like an instrumental jazz or blues record, is also great for relaxing and concentrating.

4. Funk — Again, lots of instrumental options here, and a little more upbeat. Perhaps it’s not the most calm and soothing style of music, but it is smooth and can be a relaxing sound, even when you’re trying to concentrate on something else.

Helping you Relax

Music is helpful during a study session because it can help you relax, and while some people’s minds perform better with silence, music can be used as a tool to increase the length of time you’re able to focus on something.

If you want to try the music mentioned above, here are some sites where you can stream songs without having to pay for them.

1. Grooveshark — A form of social media for music lovers, Grooveshark allows you to search for music, create playlists, save them and then listen to them whenever you want. They’ve got just about every artist on the planet to choose from.

2. Arena — It’s similar to Grooveshark, but Arena puts more emphasis on the news and community aspect of streaming music. Arena also boosts the highest payout to artists per stream. You can search for music and make playlists.

3. Pandora — Pandora is designed to help you find new music that you’re more likely to enjoy, by letting you create stations based on artists that you already like. Once you select an artist, Pandora will play music similar to that artist. It’s not as “selective” as your other two options, but it will run on its own without the need to create a playlist; just select the initial band and you’re good to go.

Marcela De Vivo is a freelance writer and online marketing professional in the Los Angeles area. When she is trying to power through a long day at work, she enjoys creating a playlist to get her through. Follow her on Twitter today!

For more tips on how to study and much more, order your copy of The Secrets of Top Students today!

Summer 2013 Update

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, grades, high school, humanities, review, study skills by

A lot of my articles have been popping up on the internet recently, and I wanted to share some of them here.

1. What Motivates Top Students? Getting Into the Heads of High Achievers, HackCollege.
What I learned about academic success, from my own experience as well as from my survey of forty-five of the best students in the country.

2. Struggling to be heard: What it’s like to be a student who stutters, USA Today College.
An account of my struggle with stuttering in high school and college, how I overcame it, and what to do if you stutter or meet a person who stutters.

3. I Got the Highest GPA at an Ivy, But Not Because I’m Smarter Than Everyone Else, Your Teen for Parents.
Some surprising facts about top students and how they got that way.

My book, The Secrets of Top Students, has also received some great reviews lately. I was especially thrilled with this one from the School Library Journal: “…the book is a must-read for students in middle school and up, teachers, parents, and guidance counselors as 21st-century students learn to excel in the new educational landscape in which they find themselves.”

On a completely separate note, a funny article I wrote a few months ago, The Top 6 Reasons You Should Date a Pilot, has been Liked over 14,000 times on Facebook!

A book review that warmed an author’s heart

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, grades, high school, learning disability, review, school, study skills, Stuyvesant, writing by

Every once in a while, someone says something about my book that makes all the hard work I put into it worthwhile, and makes me feel like I truly accomplished something. I received such a review today, from someone called Stew Mulligan. I was so excited about it, I had to reprint it on my blog. The original review can be found here. Thank you Stew Mulligan, wherever you are!

The author and her book

The author and her book

“The Secrets of Top Students, by Stefanie Weisman, is a great book!

As a Stuyvesant High School alumnus, I know what it means to be that school’s valedictorian. Stuyvesant is not just any high school. It is a school that if you become a doctor you are considered an underachiever. They expect you to at least become head of a department in a major hospital or medical school. Stuyvesant graduate David Axelrod, is ONLY an advisor to the President; Stuyvesantian Eric Holder, is US Attorney General: not bad, but not a Supreme Court Justice. It’s where if you get 800 on your math SAT nobody lifts an eye. But in all seriousness, this is a school of really, really smart kids and, as such, I am awed by Stefanie’s academic accomplishments — not only the Stuyvesant valedictorian but she also graduated with the highest GPA from Columbia College. That’s like being the baseball Rookie of the Year and then following up by winning the MVP and Triple Crown. Stefanie knows how to hit academia’s fast ball, curve and knuckleball, and all for homeruns.

As a rule, if you want to learn something well, it is a good idea to learn from the best, and Stefanie Weisman’s Secrets of Top Students is now THE SOURCE on how to maneuver through the obstacle course of higher education. I guarantee that this book will not disappoint.

If school, in general, and tests, term papers and the like, in particular, give you anxiety attacks, then this book is definitely the relaxant. By all rights, Stefanie should never have become valedictorian. In fact, she probably should have been mediocre at best, since she has a certain learning disability. But by putting excuses aside, she learned how to use her strengths to overcome her weaknesses, by developing a relatively simple system of studying. In Secrets of Top Students she conveys her system, no longer secrets, in a clear and concise manner. And, I might add, with a particularly droll and somewhat self-effacing sense of humor. In other words, she explains how to walk the walk, how to traverse through the killing fields of the classrooms with the least possible pain and suffering. She explains how to avoid being an academic casualty or also-ran and to get through it all, knowing you did the best you can, while actualizing your potential.

This is not a textbook. But it tells how to penetrate the textbooks. This is not a lecture, but it tells how to absorb and retain what the lecturer is “trying” to expound. Being smart is not enough. You have to know how to learn. This book shows how to do it in an efficient and intelligent manner. Stefanie’s prose is concise and easy to follow and the book develops in a logical manner. (It ends with a chapter on “How to Take a Test”, by the way, since test taking is where the rubber meets the road.) The use of well placed bullet points and bold font help to highlight the most important concepts. At the same time, the book makes clear that there are individual differences, and that students have to make adjustments in their own studying methods that work best for them. Nevertheless, these basic concepts are still applicable, to different degrees and with different emphasis, to all types of learners.

Nor does the book sugar-coat the reality. It tells it like it is, which is to say that the most important thing in becoming a good, or a great student, is commitment and a willingness to work hard, damn hard. There is no easy way. There is only a EASIER WAY, a SMARTER WAY. This book is the roadmap.

I guess my only complaint, after reading this book, is that it was published 40 odd years too late. If only there had been a Stefanie Weisman to write such a book for us baby boomers, to help us get through the morass known as education, like a machete in a rain forest, who knows what grades I would have gotten. But today, 2013, if you are a young person wanting to maximize your potential in school, or if you are a parent of a student and would like to see your child rise to the top, take my advice and go out and purchase this book ASAP.”