Study Mistakes students do

• Not knowing the grades you’re aiming for:

If your student doesn’t know what score they need to earn on each of their final exams in order to get the grades they want in their classes, how can they know which exams are most important to study for? Yes, in an ideal world, they would study everything for every class, and get 100%’s on all of their exams. But in reality, they have a limited amount of time to work with, so it makes sense to spend more time studying for the classes in which their grade on the exam is more important.

• Relying on their teachers to prepare them

Many students assume that they will be prepared for the test as long as they attend class, attend the teachers’ exam review sessions, and look over the study guides teachers have provided. The materials their teacher provides are a great clue about what they think is important to know for the exam, so they can be a great starting place, but just being present for the review sessions and looking over the study guide is not enough to guarantee that a student will do well on the exam. If they really want to do well, your teen needs to take responsibility for ensuring that they truly understand the material.

• Studying in chronological (rather than priority) order

One common approach to studying for exams is to sit down and look through all of the notes from class in chronological order. In addition to being a very passive study strategy (more on this below), it also puts students at risk of running out of time to review the material they learned most recently, which is often emphasized more heavily on the final exam and can also be some of the most difficult concepts to master – especially for classes like math and languages that increase in difficulty throughout the semester. Instead of studying in chronological order, students should try studying in priority order, spending the majority of their time on the information that will be most important for them to know for the test.

• Not testing themselves on the material

Practice testing (what researchers call “active recall”) is the most effective way for students to prepare for tests. Numerous studies have shown that students who test themselves on the material are learning and remembering the information better than students who do not take practice tests. Practice testing also helps students avoid “illusions of competence”: situations in which they think they know the information better than they do. Unfortunately, many students spend much more time reviewing their notes than they do taking practice tests. I strongly recommend students test themselves on the information they’re studying as frequently as possible, both to enhance their memory and to confirm that they have actually learned it.

• Memorizing, rather than understanding

I frequently see students who have been studying by trying to memorize all of the facts from a class, rather than truly understanding the underlying concepts. Memorizing can work well in some classes, especially in elementary and middle school, but it often backfires in more advanced classes. If they’ve memorized a definition but don’t really understand what it means, then as soon as the information is presented in a slightly different format, or they;re asked to apply it to a new type of problem, they will have no idea how to proceed. Rather than memorizing the information from their classes, your student should study strategies that encourage them to understand it.

• Studying with people who distract you

You cannot study with people who are going to distract you the entire time, unless you don’t plan on getting any work done. When putting together a study group, you want to make sure that the people in the group are going to be actively studying and helping one another.

• Refusing to ask for help before it’s too late

Don’t be the student that rushes to their professor’s office begging for a curve after you failed the class. Instead of waiting until it’s too late (aka after you failed the class), ask your professor for help whenever you’re not understanding throughout the semester. Your professors are here to help, and they want you to exceed in their class.