With the Thanksgiving holiday behind us, the end of the semester and the start of the winter holiday are in sight. While it may be tempting to coast until Christmas break, the final weeks of the semester are a critical time for high school students to level up their semester grades, maintain a strong GPA, and demonstrate their academic skillset to potential recommenders. If you dream of attending an Ivy League and other top university, your end of semester performance can attest to your preparedness for the rigors of a top collegiate program—not only because a stellar GPA is foundational to success in the competitive admissions landscape, but also because you will need to rise to even higher academic demands when you arrive on your college campus.
Rather than checking out or allowing stress to get the better of them, students who aspire to attend the top schools in the nation should use the end of the semester as a training ground, an opportunity to practice their study skills, develop resilience, and deepen their knowledge. Whether you’re completing your first semester of high school or making your way through the challenges of junior year, here are five study habits that will prepare you to excel at the Ivy League and other top colleges:
1. Make a Schedule—and Stick With It
The foundation for success when juggling multiple responsibilities and deadlines is organization. As you prepare for final exams and end-of-semester papers, make a schedule, including the various subjects or topics you need to study for and the amount of time and effort you expect to devote to each. Keep in mind that studying consistently over a longer stretch of time is almost always more effective than last-minute cramming, so build in ample time to start writing or reviewing your materials well in advance of your exams and deadlines. Maybe you study chemistry for two hours every day for a week, then move on to calculus the next week—once you have a basic structure and organization, you can rearrange and alter the timetable as you re-assess your needs over time. This builds time management skills, and maybe even helps you realize you need to start studying sooner than you thought!
If you struggle to use a physical planner, digital tools can be a helpful resource for organizing your study schedule. Google Calendar allows you to set appointments and block off time to study or create tasks that you can mark completed once finished. Todoist is an app that allows you to create task lists for various projects or papers with sub-topics and “next action” items to break up each task into bite-sized pieces. If you’re a visual learner, iStudiez Pro provides a color-coded interface to organize your schedule in a visual format.
2. Eliminate Distractions
Distractions and interruptions can significantly impair the quality of your study. According to the National Institutes of Health, interferences and distractions negatively impact your ability to retrieve information from your long-term memory, as your attention is divided between the information you’re studying and the distraction that your brain is seeking to block out. In an age of social media, smart phones, and push notifications, the quickest way to eliminate distraction is by setting your phone on Do Not Disturb for the duration of your study time. This will allow you to devote your time and effort to the task at hand, without repeatedly diverting your mental attention to other things. Interestingly, the studies reported by the NIH found that medium specificity had an impact on the level of distraction—for instance, if you are trying to study using visual materials, audio stimuli might not have as much of a negative effect on your information retrieval. However, if you choose to study while listening to music, note that words will likely be a distraction; it is therefore best to listen to something without discernible lyrics that could divide your attention.
Finally, students should note that consistency is a critical factor in eliminating distractions. Try to identify a quiet, tidy place that you can consistently use as a study location—returning to the same place will ensure that there are fewer environmental variables to distract you.
3. Create a Concept Map
Students commonly procrastinate because they are intimidated by the amount of information they need to wade through. If you struggle to break down information to make it more digestible, a concept map could be a helpful tool. A concept map is a data visualization tool that allows students to group information in a way that makes it more meaningful and easier to remember. By synthesizing knowledge through a concept map, students can better structure information, interpret the relationships between ideas, and deepen their overall conceptual understanding. This tool is particularly beneficial for STEM fields and disciplines that require critical thinking and problem-solving.
4. Talk Through Your Ideas
For students who are writing final papers amidst exam prep, overstimulation and stress can quickly result in writer’s block. One helpful trick when facing writer’s block is to alternate the medium you are using to work through your ideas. Particularly for those who are audio learners or who benefit from dialogic learning, consider closing your laptop and putting away your notebook. Use the voice notes app on your phone to record yourself answering the following questions for two minutes—what is your paper about? What have others said about this issue? What unique contribution are you trying to make to the conversation? What do you want your reader to take away from your writing? After recording yourself, listen back and take notes on what you hear yourself saying—does your verbal description of the importance of your research align with what you’ve written? You can also use this methodology with a partner, speaking for two minutes and then having your partner narrate their assessment of your argument back to you.
5. Say “No” to Self-Doubt
Finally, the most important skill that a student with Ivy League ambitions can build is not cultivated in the classroom—it’s cultivated in their mind. Often, what separates students at the most competitive universities is not intrinsic intelligence, but instead a posture of self-motivation, patience, and resilience in the face of challenges. Students should approach this season of exams and tests with confidence in their own abilities and curiosity about their strengths and weaknesses. Rather than allowing the stress to get the better of you, remind yourself that you are capable and approach the challenge with a determination to excel.