Advice on How to Study in College

Ari Hartmann, William and Mary '08, has been there. "It's so easy to get behind in a class, then just give up," he says. His way back to academic success: turning in at midnight instead of 3 a.m., and getting up around 9 or 10. Fortified by sleep, he no longer nodded off during lectures.

Of course, at times, your workload/procrastination habits will make an early bedtime impossible. Unfortunately, the later it gets, the less cooperative your brain is. Victoria Ryan, William and Mary '08, had a brain-saving strategy. Say she had a paper due at 11 a.m. She'd labor until 3 a.m. At that point, she knew she could finish in two hours. She'd set the alarm for 7 a.m., and, after breakfast, she'd return to the paper, refreshed by a good half-night's sleep and confident she could wrap it up by three minutes to 11.

Rule #3: Be a time manager.
Ah, the carefree days of a college student. Go to a class. Eat. Hang out. Eat. Take a nap. Watch nine episodes of South Park on your laptop. Eat. Hang out some more.

Then it's nighttime, and wow, there is a lot of studying to do. Val Lovenheim, Boston University '09, was in that sort of cycle and wanted to raise her grades. The remedy: time management sessions with the dean of her college.

The dean gave her time sheets. Hour by hour, Val filled them out. She saw how much time she frittered away. So instead of gabbing with friends at lunch, she'd read. She'd knock out a couple of hours of work by day, so at night, she wasn't overwhelmed by the studying ahead.

"The whole thing does sound kind of silly," she says. But it worked.

Rule #4: There's a study place for you.
Where to go for a productive study session? Some students swear by the library. Others are too distracted: So many people you know! One solution is to move far from the social whirl of the first floor. At lower or upper library levels, you may find quiet.

Or move far from the library altogether. "It's important to find spots on campus where the only thing you do is study or read," says Melody Kramer. She'd scout out sitting areas in academic buildings or find alternative libraries—the science library, the design library.

Margot Pass, Stanford '10, studies in a coffee shop—the further from campus, the better, to decrease the likelihood of meeting someone she knows.

Then there's the dorm lounge. Good luck with that!

Karrie Jefferson wins the prize for most unusual study locale. "I have to study in a place that's absolutely quiet, and I have to be by myself," she says (as you may recall, she reads her notes out loud). Once she got her own apartment, she began studying in the bathtub.

Rule #5: Keep up with the books.
It may seem fine to do required readings after class or the night before the midterm. Here's a radical thought: Do the reading before class. That way, you'll know what the teacher's talking about!

Alas, reading can lead to sleeping. Helen Fields, Carleton College '97, found herself dozing every time she dived into the 500 pages of Moll Flanders. She timed herself to see how long it took, at a speedy clip, to plow through 10 pages. Then she set up a schedule based on her optimal time. Devoted to meeting her goals, her eyelids no longer drooped.

Rule #6: Duly noted
Some students furiously scribble down everything the teacher says—especially on PowerPoint. As Jackie Bousek, Oberlin '08, discovered midway through her freshman year, PowerPoint presentations are online. You can even print out slides before class, then annotate them with the teacher's comments.