College is on its way or already here and with it comes: sleep deprivation.

Sure, it makes sense that the more you sleep the better your grades might be, but has anyone actually looked at this from a research perspective? You bet!

Back in 2001 a group of researchers looked at the GPAs of college students who were: short sleepers (less than six hours); average sleepers (six to eight hours); and long sleepers (eight-plus hours) and … the long sleepers had the highest GPAs.

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It’s 6 p.m. and you’re behind in your studies.  Tests and papers are coming up, so that means it’s not to hit the books and study, study, study.  But then you hit a few roadblocks.  You look around the house and can’t find a pen.  Then you need some scratch paper, and can’t find it.  Fifteen minutes later you find some and sit down to begin.  Now where’s that calculator?  Is it in the other room?  Did your roommate or brother take it?  After you find it, you notice that the batteries are dead.  Now it’s time to find extra batteries. And on and on it goes. (more…)

The study “strategy” for most students is the same:  Wait until the night before an assignment is due or before a test to hit the books and study.  Unfortunately, for most of us, that strategy eventually catches up and hits our grades—hard.

Good news:  There’s a better way!  Here’s a systematic approach that in 30 days can turn you into a master student.  We’ll start with week 1. (more…)

The last thing that you probably need when you’re at college is another place to “hang out.”  Most students have plenty of those.  What you need, instead, is a good place to study.  Let’s look at how you can take the small area you have in your dorm and turn it into an effective study zone. (more…)

The SQ3R study method is a technique that goes back decades, and possibly more than a century.  Still, there always seem to be those who have never heard of this classic way of studying your textbooks.  So for that group of people, let’s talk about it. (more…)

Reading a textbook is not like reading a novel.  A whole different kind of reading has to be  employed to really understand the material.  To study your books effectively and be ready for your class exams, try the following suggestions.

Ÿ  Don’t just read it; re-read it. You’ll find that the material often gets easier to understand the second time around.  Many people complain that they get confused by textbooks when they read it the first time.  Don’t stress out if you don’t think you’ve grasped it all that first time.  Just take a short rest and then go back to read it again.  And if you still don’t get it, read it a third time. (more…)

Maybe you’re one of those who takes notes in class just because it’s what you’re supposed to do–but then you never look at them after the class.  Or maybe if you do look at them, you find yourself regularly trying to understand what it is you wrote.  Or you wrote it.  If so, you need to overhaul your note-taking skills.  Taking notes should be a learning experience, and the facts you learn should stick with you.  Here are some suggestions for the power note-taker:

1) The first thing you should ask when you begin taking notes is, “What is the instructor’s purpose, and what is the textbook-writer’s purpose?”  This will give you a clue about where the class is going. (more…)

As a student, you have to  take notes for many, if not all, of your classes.  You then use these to study for tests and semester exams.  But there are problems with this method.  For instance, many of us have incomplete notes, and many more take those notes and never again look at them. (more…)

Not every course is as tough as the next. Some require little more than faithful attendance to pass.  This is especially true of many general education courses taken during your freshman year.  But there are others that are killer courses. These are usually the ones that make you memorize a ton of material from lectures, textbooks and your notes. (more…)

In many ways, study skills are synonymous with memory skills.  Your study will only get you better test grades if it leads to your memorizing the material for which you’ll be quizzed.  So let’s take a look at some tips that are sure to improve your memory and make your study time more effective. (more…)