Strategies for Success

7 STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS

From the McGraw Center for Teaching & Learning at Princeton University

1. Get to know yourself as a thinker and a learner.  When and where are you most productive? What tends to distract you? Knowing your intellectual proclivities and habits helps you to apportion your time more effectively and be more productive overall.

2. Set a personal goal for each course.  Instead of focusing solely on the grade, consider how each course deepens your expertise in a field of interest or contributes to your overall intellectual development. In other words, motivate yourself in terms of mastering skills and concepts as opposed to getting a good grade or avoiding a bad one.

3. Manage your time and attention.  People who devise detailed, goal-directed schedules are more productive and less stressed. And once you've scheduled your calendar, focus and stick to it by setting external stakes (meeting with professors, a reading group, tutor, or an Academic Coach) and rewards (dinner with friends, TV, etc.). During a study session, be in the moment: turn off distractions (cell phones, e-mail), and dedicate yourself to a single task. Dividing or continuously switching your attention between various tasks can cause you to do poorly.

4. Think like a professor.  Instructors have reasons for why they craft their courses as they do. As you move through your courses, spend some time considering these reasons. Ask yourself, for example, why you're reading this text at this point of the semester or what this writing assignment is designed to help you do.

5. Review your notes as soon as possible after class.  Students forget 50% of what they learn if they don't review withing 24 hours and 65% if they don't review within an week. Even brief reviews pay off.

6. Do a little work on an assignment the day it's given, preferably mapping out a plan or outline for its completion.  Starting a project often proves the hardest part; starting early gets you over this high hurdle with plenty of time to develop your work.

7. Explain a difficult idea, concept, problem, or passage to a friend.  Research shows that one of the most effective ways to learn is to teach. If you try to explain what you've been studying to another, you'll transfer the information from short-term to long-term memory, and you'll more clearly see what you understand and what you don't.

Click on the blue links below to find out more information.

STUDY TIPS & TECHNIQUES

• Goals - Learn how to set "S.M.A.R.T." academic goals for yourself 
• Time Management - Manage your time to maximize the efficiency of your studying
• Memorization Techniques - Learn different techniques for memorizing information you want to stay with you
• Note-taking Methods - Take more efficient and more organized notes
  • Why you should take notes by hand - not on a laptop

FIGURE OUT YOUR PERSONAL LEARNING STYLE TO LEARN MORE EFFECTIVELY AND EFFICIENTLY

• Barsch Inventory from Indiana University South Bend
• Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire from North Carolina State University

RESEARCH PAPER TIPS

• Don't Plagiarize - Know when to cite your sources