A lot depends on what’s on them and HOW you use them. What’s crucial about any method of study is what mental processes the student engages in and how it fits into a multi-faceted approach to learning what is most important.

Practice at retrieval and self-assessing can be very powerful methods for learning and solidifying knowledge…

You can gain these cognitive benefits from as little as 10 minutes of exercise prior to your exam.

As learners we adjust our approaches to learning to the features of each course—and all the courses (and other things in our schedules)—we are taking. Much figuring out of expectations and ways of teaching and testing is done at the beginning of a course. But, actually, this process of adjustment, or alignment of our learning with how we are…

If you’re experiencing this you are not alone and perhaps the following explanation can help you understand the underlying reasons for your actions so that you can re-direct your efforts towards your top priorities.

Students (and others on campus, I might add) more frequently comment in the period after spring “break” that they are experiencing burn out. It seems people are feeling more depleted and less energized, and experience the ‘weight’ of their academic (and other) demands more powerfully and persistently. While some of the reasons for this are…

There are a number of factors that go into this and there are important differences among students. But, having said that, perhaps the most prevalent challenge, academically—and academics are for many the biggest challenge at Princeton—is adapting to the fact that what worked academically so well in the past as to get you to Princeton, once you…

Tests are not transparent measures of what students know, and performing well on them is not simply a matter of knowing the relevant course content. Therefore, how one practices is crucial; becoming fluent, and flexible with conceptual content, as well as methods of problem-solving, all while working under timed circumstances, is a necessity.

It’s useful to distinguish the act of ‘studying’ from the process of ‘exam prep’ in order to home in on how to do each of them optimally. In short, while they certainly overlap both in terms of methods and mental processes involved, they differ in that studying generally emphasizes ‘taking in’ information and organizing, synthesizing and…

McGraw can help you prepare for and excel on end-of-semester assignments and exams.

Q: Finals feel far away, but I know they will come quickly. What can I do to get ready for finals?

A: With all the disruption to academics (and our lives) many students have voiced concerns that they’ll be as prepared for Dean’s Date and Finals once classes end as they usually are, so this is an…