“7 Insanely Powerful and Easy Study Hacks for Exams That’ll Make You Go ‘WTF?!'”

Do you want to know the 7 most powerful study hacks for exams that top students use to send their exam scores whipping through the rest of the class like a category 5 hurricane making landfall on them?

In other words, do you want to know the study hacks you can use starting today to never worry about failing classes, all-nighters and little to no stress about your grade?

Ever?

If so, you are in the right place.

You will find out everything you need to know about doing exceptionally great on all of your tests so you don’t have to worry about your academic future being in jeopardy all because your professors robbed you of this extremely valuable information every student should have.

In short, you will know how to study for exams in less time than you think.

Now bear with this because this post is LONG; I mean 4453 words long .

Yes, I wrote the introduction last, so if I had to give a prologue to this, particularly for writing papers it’d be: “Write the body first and leave the intro for last. You’ll save yourself.”

Try that for essays. It’s a time-saver.

Now, if you do exactly what the post says completely, you will never have to worry about grades again regardless of your major.

Are you ready for it?

Here we go.

Assuming you know that you must use your textbooks and quality YouTube videos and articles on the internet at all times while you are learning, here is what you have to do starting with the first point.

1. The Concepts Matter

Here’s the deal with this.

Most students feel the need to memorize as much as they can before the test because they’ve been conditioned to believe that in order to answer the questions, they have to know a series of steps and they want the professors to feed them the steps.

They also feel that in order to score astoundingly high on exams, you have to be naturally brilliant or a super genius to do so.

The reality is: The fact they believe these things is true, but they are incorrect in their beliefs.

The truth is you can score ridiculously high on exams and become a super-efficient self-learner if you understand how to know the concepts behind what you are learning.

Let me show you how to do this in the easiest way possible so you can get started on it.

Understand this: There is a big difference between simply knowing what something is and how to use it and knowing “why” you are doing what you are doing and where it comes from.

Why is this a difference?

Because when you know why you are doing what you are doing, you can logically deduce the next steps without having to memorize the steps because it is consistent with what the concepts of the topic suggest.

Do you follow me?

And when you know the “where” in things and why it comes from that place, you become confident in knowing the direction of where the problem is going without having to consult with what a manual says.

In other words, you are free to create your own path to the answer without any hesitation or doubt.

This is when you become self-sufficient with what you are learning and trying to do.

Do you understand where we are going here?

I hope so.

I can give you a boatload of testimonials from professors and students alike saying this works.

However, I’d like for you to try to understand the “why” in where things come from the next time you crack open your textbook.

Use this “why” to figure out where everything comes from.

You’ll be surprised by how much you’ll actually learn and you’ll enjoy the learning process more.

If you are not convinced, I’ll put a link to an interview by Elon Musk who elaborated on how students in his school (yes, he has a school) learn and I can testify this is same exact process I use when I am learning and it works incredibly well.

Have a listen here, particularly to the part where he talks about learning about engines.

Was that interesting?

I strongly recommend you follow the same approach when you study for your tests combined with the rest of the methods I will describe below.

You will be AMAZED at the results you see.

Now this next point is a killer trick all of the top students employ to fly over the rest of the class, so don’t miss the rest of the party!

Side note: If you are in a math class, do yourself a favor and watch any of these videos here for the class you are taking.

I promise you will not regret it and your IQ will triple overnight (not really, but you get the point) along with guaranteeing A’s in your math classes.

I explain why here if you are interested. Let these reviews here explain for themselves though.

2. Write Your Own Notes With Pen and Paper

Let me ask you a question.

How many people do you see on campus taking notes on a laptop?

Quite a bit, right? If you have been in a gigantic lecture hall, chances are you know what I mean.

Now with the exception of a class where the professor gives the answers to the test away, how many people actually do well on the test (I mean at least 90 percent consistently)?

Exactly.

Here’s the deal with taking notes on a laptop:

Multiple studies have shown a noticeable increase in retention, comprehension and test performance when different samples of students taking notes by hand and taking notes by laptop were compared.

In fact, the results were so overwhelmingly conclusive to the point where researchers compared the normal distribution graphs of the sample of students who took notes by hand and who took notes with pen/pencil and paper and they were so far apart I couldn’t believe it myself when I saw it!

Have a look here!

And a 0.39 Standard deviation difference (by the way, the standard deviation is the average distance of the data sets from the mean value).

Isn’t that insane?!

The full study from Princeton University is here if you are interested.

Regardless, this is full proof that when you take your notes by hand over laptop (even for computer science classes), you should fully expect your grades to skyrocket!

I think it’s safe to say I rest my case here when I say: DITCH THE COMPUTER FOR TAKING NOTES!

Writing your notes is the way to go.

Now just writing your own notes is a researched backed method of improving your comprehension.

But combined with this next technique that I’m about to show you, you’ll send your scores out of this world and to a galaxy far far away.

So grab your lightsaber for this next test taking hack because you are about to give Darth Vader the biggest beat down of his life!

3. Active Recall

This is the super hack of the super elite students.

Here’s what you do:

Instead of studying silently all of the time, you are going to talk aloud while you are studying and you are going to close your eyes at the same time.

You might be going “What the heck is this? Studying with my eyes closed? I don’t get it.”

Let me explain.

You are first going to read or watch the material you are learning.

You’ll write your notes down by hand just as we discussed before and right after you finish this, you will close your eyes and recite in your own words the material you just learned out loud. You will NOT look at your notes when you do this.

So for instance, let’s say I was reading any passage from a textbook and I wrote down my notes. I would then close my eyes and I would recite in my own words what I just read, just as if a teacher was teaching me the material.

I want you to try it right now in this post.

Take out a sheet of paper and a pen/pencil, take notes of what you’ve learned in this section (or so far in this post if you’ve taken notes) and close the notes while reciting what you learned from this section(s) in your own words.

Take a moment and try this.

Are you back?

Ok, let me elaborate further.

If you noticed, your mind was more engaged with the material and you were actively involved in shaping the material in your own words that made conceptual sense.

Also, if you recall from what you’ve been doing in the past, you probably haven’t experienced this level of retention by just reading and writing the notes and nothing else.

The reason you were not able to comprehend much information with the latter method is because your mind is not shaping the material in its own words.

As a result, you comprehended less material.

Do you get it?

Comment below if you don’t understand.

I’ll be more than happy to explain the method again or send you a recorded video explaining it with video with a live example of me doing the active recall process to show you exactly how it works.

Now what you do after the first day is for every possible day thereafter, you will try to recite the concept yourself without your notes by summarizing it in your own words, answering questions about or solving problems related to the concept to see if you retained the material.

If you still retained the material perfectly, you will move onto the next item on your agenda.

If not, you will go back to the book and the notes and read the book again and write your notes from that again in your own words and close your eyes and actively say the concept out loud to retain it.

Also, because you wrote the notes and nothing else, you were always dependent on the notes for your success on those tests and you did not truly grasp the concepts, which is really what contributed to subpar grades on tests.

Multiple studies have been done to prove this is the case.

According to one study, researchers had 4 groups study the same material within the same timeframe and they quizzed them all.

3 of the groups were instructed to do activities not involved with active recall, but one group was instructed to do active recall.

Guess which group outperformed the others?

The active recall group.

I hope you are convinced by now of active recall’s effectiveness and the fact that you should be implementing it ASAP to skyrocket your exam scores.

It really would be ridiculous not to use this strategy.

You would be giving yourself unnecessary stress if you didn’t use it!

Now knowing how to study is very important.

However, how to structure your studying is equally as important because the last thing you want is to experience burnout come exam time and while you are studying.

I am going to discuss a work routine all of the highest performing individuals in their field use to blast through everybody, so read on to know the secret trick.

4. The 90-30 Rule

Here’s what this is:

You work/study for 90 minutes straight with no distractions and you take 30 minute breaks thereafter doing anything other than studying/working.

If you are used to 4+ hour study marathons, this technique will save you.

Let me show you how.

According to a Florida State University study published in the New York Times, people who perform the best in what they do execute this strategy and as a result, they experience more productivity than their counterparts who do not utilize this technique.

The study doesn’t list specific names (as far as I know), but these statistics ring true across all walks of life.

You can see a video describing the study’s results here.

With studying, it’s no different.

I can testify that when I started to employ this strategy in my daily routine (even though I work more than double the 4.5 hours recommended), my grades skyrocketed past everybody else and I felt like I was superman when I was working.

I began to understand things better, my stress levels went down and I was able to predict what was on my tests since I began to understand things on a conceptual basis instead of just memorizing stuff and hoping for the best.

Everyone started coming up to me and telling me “How the heck are you getting these ridiculously high scores? We all have to study this and groups since this material is very hard, but you can do it all by yourself? That’s impressive.”

In short, they were probably not using the techniques I am providing to you in this post.

And I wasn’t asking for this attention at all. I was just going in there and taking care of business like anyone else.

This can be you in any facet of your life whether it’s academics or getting jobs or even getting into shape.

When people are coming up to you about how you are doing and you don’t ask for the attention after giving consistently great performances, you know you are doing something right and you are achieving something.

Why?

Because people want information and if you are the one with the results, they want to hear from you instead of anyone else since you have achieved what they don’t have and really want.

This makes them naturally curious to know and it make you extremely valuable.

Know that line for the future; it’ll come in handy.

As for academics, getting to the point of self-learning and exam ass-kicking mastery starts with following the research-backed 90-30 rule for maximum supercharge productivity.

You can also break for 20 minutes instead of 30 if you are comfortable enough with resting for 20 minutes instead.

Play around with the breaks and see which one will make you the most productive and go with that number between 20-30 minutes for your break.

Now, to really give the exams a big old beat down from Great Grandma in the South, you need an even more powerful technique than the ones I’ve already talked about.

Here it comes.

5. Do Your Homework Again

This may seem counter intuitive because you might be thinking that if you do the homework, you shouldn’t have to worry about it again and you’ll be fine for the test.

Wrong.

Let me show you why.

If you recall our discussion about active recall, we talked about how you not only have to repeat the material when you just learned it, but you must repeat the material a few days afterward to keep the material fresh in your head.

The same principle is true when it comes to homework.

Over time, you are going to forget what you’ve learned since you haven’t used it.

As a result, it needs constant refreshing if you want to retain the material, especially in your long term memory.

So with this, I recommend you quiz yourself periodically (say once per week at least) with closed notes just as you would with active recall and see if you can do the problems or memorize the terms for a particular section on your next test.

If you get the answers correct, move onto the next section or problem, but make any adjustments in your conceptual understanding with active recall and/or reading through your notes or book if need be.

Also, make sure you consult your professor in their office hours if you do have to ask them anything.

They SHOULD be able to help.

By the way, read this if you do have a bad professor.

You’ll definitely get a few of those and you MUST know how to deal with them to get through college with no issues.

Now if you have any doubts about this, think of it this way:

Repetition is the mother of all learning.

Typically, the tests are conceptually based off of the homework given, even though they are not necessary the same exact problems.

So if you can take advantage of this process of repeating stuff until you get it nailed down, does it make sense to do the homework again?

The answer is yes.

In addition to this, because the tests are conceptually based on the homework, I also recommend a super strategy where you do more problems than those that are asked.

Here’s why.

Professors LOVE to throw in questions that were not on the actual homework and were not necessarily covered in class.

This is their way of identifying who are the high-achievers in class and who aren’t the high-achievers.

If you do as many questions as you can outside of the homework and from the same sections the tests are covering, you are protecting yourself from the professor throwing a curve ball at you.

How does that sound?

This is how you can use the professor to your advantage.

You are getting into his or her game plan for the test that no one will have access to since they don’t try.

And additionally, if you go to office hours, you can come across as a student who takes an initiative to know more about a subject.

As a result, they might (not necessarily will) tell you what’s on the test or they can give you a bump if you are on the grade border.

Eventually, this can lend itself to a recommendation letter for you.

I would try to have at least 1 or 2 professors who will go to war for you since this is a great way to open the door for internships, jobs and graduate school, especially if the professor is well-respected in the area and/or industry you are trying to pursue work in.

So use this to your advantage.

And don’t forget, do your homework again and then some. Your future self will thank you later (and buy you a drink while you are at it)!

Now here comes the MVP of the team taking over the game and putting you over the top one and for all and that player is:

6. The Awesomest and Most Brilliant Test Taking Plan Ever Invented

Ok, I’ll admit, you will go “WTF” when you read this because from my experience and from the experience of other top performing students, these are mind-blowing test taking tricks that will make you go “WOW” when you do them.

Here comes the plan.

The first thing you will do when you walk into the test is simply go through the test once.

Just answer every question you can within the allotted time.

Read the questions as carefully as you can for now and don’t worry about potential mistakes at this point (even if they are there).

This is like a first draft of your test.

Now the magic comes in the 2^nd run-through of the test, which I’ll describe right now.

Let me start with this:

I am going to assume that you know what is correct in each question.

You know the steps, the concepts and you know what sign a particular part of a math problem needs to be if you are taking a math test.

Sometimes, you have what are called “typos” on a test where you write something by accident when you meant to write something else.

I am going to show you how to get rid of these errors right now.

In your 2^nd run-through of the test, make sure where you are on time.

This strategy only works if you have enough time on the test (I’ll talk about how to deal with a lack of time later in this section).

If you are good on time, you will read each question when you get to them very carefully and you will make sure you have every detail of what it’s asking understood.

After you’ve done this, you will answer the questions again and if you are doing problems, you will redo the problems.

Make sure to ask the testing proctor for extra sheets of paper to do this.

Once you have completed the problems and/or answered the questions again, compare both of your answers side by side and see if you there are any noticeable errors you know shouldn’t be in either of the answers.

Once you see errors, correct them ASAP on the first attempt you’ll turn in for grading without erasing the first solution.

Once your corrected solution is on the paper, you can go ahead and erase the first solution or cross it off.

You just keep doing this for every question you have until you are out of time or you are done.

Now let’s say you are done with the 1^st run-through of your test and you are absolutely certain you don’t have enough time to do the problems or questions again OR you finished checking the answers again as recommended.

What should you do now?

This is the next best thing to doing the problems again as proven in this testimony here.

You will look at the time that you have remaining to take the test. Divide your time by the amount of questions you have left.

Let’s say you have 20 minutes remaining on the test and you have 4 questions on the test and they are all complete. You take 20/4 and you have 5 minutes to check each question.

Once the five minutes are up, you must move on to the next question to not risk losing any points all because you forgot to correct an error.

The only exception to this is if you found an error and you are correcting it.

It’s fine to go over the limit for this. But you must redo the process of budgeting time once you are done.

I suggest you read the question carefully and think about it in as much of an in-depth fashion that you can.

Critically examine why you chose what you chose and make a decision on what to do when you have to move on.

In the worst case scenario, when you don’t know what to do in the question but you have a hunch, go with your gut and mark that as your final answer and move on.

So if you have a hunch about choosing B over C, go with B and get out of there.

You’ll have no regrets.

I promise.

And that’s it for the awesomest and most brilliant test taking plan.

This is all you need to know for how to take tests (and yes, I made up the word awesomest because it really is awesome).

Now here is the BIG secret of successful studying that those around you might not know.

7. Zzz 🙂

That’s right, sleepy time!

You must get 7-8 hours (preferably 8) of sleep per night every night of college.

No skipping or your habits will suffer.

I guarantee this is the most underrated tip of them all, but it is absolutely required in order to function well and to thrive as a college student (and as a person) in all areas of your life.

According to one study by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, if you do not get enough sleep, you are most likely going to do really bad on test day.

If you don’t believe this research, consider this:

When you wake up on less than 8 hours of sleep, have you ever noticed you get up, but immediately you want to go back to bed?

And have you ever noticed throughout the day, you are not performing like yourself?

And have you ever noticed your schedule getting pushed back and pushed back and pushed back even further into the day all because you woke up later than expected or you take way too many breaks that aren’t related to studying or your job or whatever you are doing?

This is what happens when you lose out on sleep.

It’s so easy to lose out on it if you are not disciplined in your habits.

If you are disciplined in your habits and you do these things every single day without succumbing to temptation, I guarantee without an inch of doubt you will not have this problem of staying up late.

Remember, the main thing is the main thing.

Don’t lose sight of that.

Focus on the primary task 1^st, do everything you need to do to take care of that main thing first and worry about the rest later.

You will come out on top if you do that.

Keep this as your game plan for taking tests in college and follow it religiously.

I promise, I promise, I PROMISE you will come out on top on the academic side of things if you follow this test taking plan.

If you got a lot out of this post and you want some more kick ass college and productivity content that’ll blast your potential through the roof, definitely subscribe below with your email below in the action box.

They’ll be sent straight to you right when they are published from the greatest blog in the world, Join the Island.

May the force be with you.

Until next time,

This is Evan signing off.

PS: If you want the full blown action plan to college that goes beyond academics, definitely read this monster 25000 word post I wrote on college tips right here.

You’ll find plenty more points that go beyond what any student will ever know.

There’s a free and exclusive bonus if you complete a secret challenge I throw in there for you.

Have at it!

Also, comment below with what you liked (or loved) about these hacks and any questions you have.

I’ll be more than ecstatic to help you out!