r/studytips

I am trying to enroll into a university study but i need to meet additional requirements first. the uni gave me very short notice before telling me what additional certifications i needed and those happen to be math and physics (my worst subjects in highschool). I did math ai hl in an ib school as well as physics sl, but its been like 1.5 years since my exams and now i have 2 weeks to study for both, with my main focus being on math atm. Any tips for studying these subjects would be appreciated as well as study methods for ppl with severe procrastination problems!!

I need help with taking notes. If notes are taken, I almost always write the entire page because I feel as if everything is important and I guess I don’t know how to prioritize? I feel if I don’t write everything I will miss something and I end up wasting major time, then I get overwhelmed with information I write and need a LONG break to refill the tank.

What can I do or learn to take efficient notes and not waste time? Do I have some disorder like ADHD or OCD?

Hi
Do anybody know good Quizlet Alternatives?

I have looked at Anki, knowt and found also some build with lovable stundry.lovable.com

Do you know this apps or have any other recommendations?

Thousands of students now using ChatGPT and other AI tools for their homework and studying. I tried this too, I thought it will be the best thing for learning because it can explain everything I ask, available 24/7, and can make quiz for me. WRONG. My test scores actually got worse.

When I evaluate myself, it is because the AI gives answer too fast with so-easy-go explanation that doesn't reach the actual understanding. I use this AI thinking it will help but the problem is where my brain is not getting the information and store what I've learned, it just gave me too much of a cozy feeling that I understand but I don't actually.

So I turn to using AI different now, I gave what I know first and it will give correction and find my mistakes. Got 78 in last physics test compared to 65 before.

Also I use NotebookLM for making flashcards from my notes and textbook, it is the best for me because I still do the reading first, the AI just helps organize it after. Got 78 in last physics test compared to 65 before.

There numerous people probably using AI wrong like I did. Have you encounter this kind of problems? What did you do with AI tools and more?

How to self study computer science ,business,geography,accounting,biology .give me your tips to self study in 3 months please

Crushed med school and law school and business school and every exam before and after by studying for each exam (even the most major licensing exams) only in the hours/days leading up to it. How? Because I can memorize. And everyone else can’t.

The most efficient and effective memorization technique involves creating a mental landscape of the subject that capture each concept in visual/cartoon form, maximizing connections between concepts through use of the same item to represent the same idea when it’s present in other concepts and through smart organization of the concepts in space. There can be some temporal play in the various images but don’t take that too far, such that you’d have to wait for a whole 10 second video to play out to see all the elements of a concept. Choose for the landscape a place from your past that you know well and that has many different areas within it so you can separate the ideas as needed. And only use one landscape/location per subject.

Happy to answer any questions.

Edit: more detailed breakdown in response to a comment below asking for more detail:
Well, there are two limiting factors: one’s ability to visualize (some people toward the aphantasia end of that spectrum simply won’t be able to see anything with their mind’s eye) and creativity. The most laborious process is just the mental energy of creatively coming up with mental images to represent things. It definitely is a challenge of creativity, but worth spending the time to come up with something good bc it’ll be locked in when you do. So, start at the beginning of the space (let’s say the driveway if you’re choosing your house for this subject) and come up with a mental image to represent the first concept to do with the subject (and different items to represent each element of that concept). Every time you add a concept, first walk past the one(s) you already created and call out each of the things the parts represent. This way, as you get deeper and deeper into the space, you’ll be reviewing everything so many times you won’t even have to write anything down bc you’ll have it all so locked in. As a quick example, say you wanted to create an image for the concept of “battery” in law (physical contact with the person of another; can be done by causing something to directly contact them; doesn’t have to result in any actual harm; any harm that occurs as a result of them being hypersensitive is still your fault) - I might imagine a guy holding a bat (BATtery) standing in front of a girl with blue hair (hypersensitive) and hitting her in the body with the bat (physical contact) and then hitting the ground with the bat which creates a crack that leads to her foot (indirect cause) but doesn’t actually do anything to her foot (no actual harm necessary). So that might be at the front of the driveway and then I might try to include all the rest of the “intentional torts,” of which battery is one, on the rest of the driveway so I have them all in one place. And I’d try to make as many connections as possible between the concepts. So for ex, any time I need to represent hypersensitivity after that I’d be sure to always use blue hair or any time battery comes up again it’d be a bat etc. the more connections the better. Eventually, when the space is mostly filled out, I’ll increase the connectivity (and my ability to manipulate the whole image and access all of it at once) by testing myself to, for example, find everywhere there’s hypersensitivity and then I’d have to fly around the space and find all instances of blue hair, which helps you make the whole thing way more accessible in your brain as you come to a problem and need to figure out where exactly to fly to to find the info to answer it. Notice that the concept I created had a little temporal play in it in that it was more of a video than an image. That can be good and make it stick more in your head, but you want to limit as much as possible how many seconds need to play out bc whatever is at the end of the video won’t be as immediately accessible as you can imagine. Mnemonics are okay to use to pack in a ton of items into one concept if it’s too overwhelming but limit the use of mnemonics bc they represent ideas with single letters rather than with full objects/people/actions, so each idea will be less memorable even if the complete set of the ideas will be easier to recall. But for example, if you’re doing “please excuse my dear aunt sally” for PEMDAS order of operations, you might have someone pushing someone else out of the way for a sweet old lady walking by with a name tag on that says “Sally” or even better might be to just have two pandas sitting there putting ABC blocks in order (pandas sounds like pemdas and they’re putting blocks in order to make you think of order of operations). Lastly, you want to use each location only once, not reuse it for multiple different subjects. So that means being efficient with space and putting as much as you can in each area to save space for other sub-subjects or other subjects altogether (hopefully related ones), and it also means being creative with your own past and finding new places from your past that you can use (always best if that place itself has some relation to the subject somehow, so when you want to access that subject it’s easy to remember what location it’s in). You can also create novel places to use that aren’t places from your past, but that should only be if you literally run out of places (which wont really happen if you’re being creative enough with your memories) and when doing that you should create a place that has a lot of separate areas to it. (I used an imaginary field in the wilderness once and that wasn’t very effective bc all the areas kinda blended together in my head bc they weren’t separate/distinct enough which made it hard to navigate them and fly around and link them.)

I can't think of questions for an assignment, and I feel like my writing skills suddenly lack an academic tone to it.

I genuinely don't know what happened. Just two weeks ago I was speeding through assignments with ease, and now I'm looking at my assignment like "how the hell do I come up with questions to build up the essay???"

Does anyone have any advice for how to stop feeling stupid? Quick hacks? Should I just go for a run or read a book or what?

For those who loves doing note taking (digital or paper and pen). I wanna know how do y'all make your notes proficient that you can understand what you write and you can memorize it on your own pace.

Do y'all use notetaking methods? do y'all shorten your words (like with -> w/ , and -> & , etc.) or sentences that you only can understand? do you highlight the words?

what is the best way to take a notes from a textbook, online videos, or lectures. what advice do y'all have.

I had enrolled for the classes on a learning platform but couldn't even start the courses due to mental health issues. Finally getting better and finished Scrum certification last week. My access to Prince2 foundation + practitioner courses end on July 31. I need absolutely rigorous ways to pass the exams before the access ends. Currently on a career break so I can invest my time promptly for this.

Have exam coming up, have learnt a fair bit but already becoming nervous wreck thinking how much more I need to study/learn in time I have left, days are just flying by too quickly. There's also practical element as it relates to coding/data structures, which takes up a lot of time studying and doesn't stick easily especially.

Looking for any study tips, but mainly need something efficient for quick memorising that won't take up many hours of my days. (since my memory is awful bit I can see the benefit in doing something quick repetitive like flash cards or quiz. Everything I find has very limited free features. Anything decent that's actually free or I can get a week free trial on, or very least has a very cheap monthly cost. (No annual subs)

I made a FREE website for spaced repetition because scheduling for it is tedious

Here is the link: https://revisio-revisio-jade.vercel.app

Please dm me if you need some help

Please share your feedback too.

Hey everyone,

I built a tool called StudyBuddi that generates study guides from whatever you feed it — lecture notes, slides, textbook chapters, training manuals, articles, anything.

It's not just for college students. It works for:

• Students (high school, college, grad) prepping for exams
• Anyone studying for certifications — nursing boards, IT certs, real estate license, bar prep, you name it
• Teachers and tutors who want ready-made guides for their classes
• Professionals learning new material for work

You give it the content, it gives you back a clean, organized study guide in a couple minutes. That's it.

It's fully functional and completely free right now. I'm looking for beta testers of any kind — the more varied, the better. All I ask for is honest feedback: what works, what's confusing, what's missing.

Drop a comment or DM me and I'll send you the link. Brutal honesty welcome — that's how it gets better.

Thanks 🙏

So, according to neuroscience, there are only 4 ways you can read and remember anything. Just 4, that’s it. Everything you have ever learned or remembered up to now was encoded because of one of the four specific methods in your brain.

These are exactly what those 4 ways are, and how you can engineer them to remember whatever you read.

1. Novelty (The Automatic Filter)

Your brain is constantly deciding what to keep and what to discard. By default, everything unusual or unexpected is flagged as not worthy of retention.

For example, if you encounter a strange creature that you have never seen before, you don't have to make flashcards to remember it. You automatically keep it.

The Problem: You don't really have control over it. Once you are familiar enough with a subject, most things become routine and do not surprise you anymore. This filter stops doing its job. We must rely on the next three.

2. Emotional Relevance (The Chemical Lock)

Your brain retains anything that evokes a response. Whenever you react to something emotionally or feel stress, your brain releases certain neurotransmitters like dopamine and epinephrine. These chemicals serve as a signal for you: This is important. Save it.

Remember the first time you touched the hot iron? You didn't have to revise that. It shocked you, and your brain made sure you won't repeat the mistake again.

How to engineer it:

• The Google News Trick: Prior to reading a boring chapter, spend two minutes searching for this topic on Google News. Browse the headlines and find out how this topic impacts the world. Look for something that's relevant and interesting to you and read about that. You are setting a chemical lock on it before even starting to read it.
• Trigger a neurochemical reaction AFTER reading it: Exercise, caffeine intake and cold shower are all natural sources of dopamine and epinephrine production. Rather than having a cup of coffee prior to studying, drink it after. The spike of these chemicals will lock in the newly formed neural paths in your brain.

3. Repetition (Application, not Rereading)

I am not suggesting you read the same page five times. This just creates the "illusion of competence". Your brain learns the layout of the text, but not the knowledge contained in it.

The only repetition that works is application. Every time you retrieve the information and apply it, you solidify the connection.

How to engineer it:
Do not wait until the end of the chapter. Do it at the end of each paragraph. Ask yourself:

• How would I apply this?
• What problem will this solve?
• When will I see this in action?

This simple technique is both active recall and spaced application at once.

4. Association (The Most Powerful Filter)

Your brain does not retain information alone. It retains it within networks. The more links a new piece of information has to the things that you already know, the stronger it becomes embedded.

If you just read a fact and it hovers somewhere in your brain, it will be forgotten soon. But if you associate it with three other concepts, it becomes much more solid.

How to engineer it:
While reading, you should constantly find these two things:

• How this is related to what I know about this topic?
• How this is connected to the other things I have read in this session?

The Trick: You cannot do it in your head efficiently. Attempting to keep the complex network of information in your working memory and process the new material at the same time results in cognitive overload.

The top 1% of learners solve this problem by Thinking on Paper. You have to externalize the network.

Unfortunately, I couldn't include the complete mechanical explanation of how to think on paper into a Reddit post without making it a novel, so I created a complete video explaining how to Think on Paper. You can watch it here - https://youtu.be/YCLwftvz3MQ

PS - If you want to improve your learning, subscribe to my YouTube Channel, I post videos about learning how to learn there.

When ai study the words never seem to make sense in my head unless I read it many times. I have chronic fatigue and ADHD along with a few other learning disabilities that make it very hard to study and concentrate.

If I try to fully focus on something my mind instead focuses on being focused which just keeps me in a loop of not understanding.

Does anybody have any suggestions for me please for how to fix this or manage it please thanks 🙌