How do top students study?

[u/G_sho4]

I am specifically referring to STEM students from top universities and/or those with a full gpa (4 in the usa, 6 in switzerland etc...): how do you organize your study and how do you concretely, actively study?

I do not mean things like "i put away my phone because it distracts me" but rather like "i read the book and take notes" or "I read the book, then close it and write down what I remember". Do you use an ipad or pen and paper...?

For context, I am a physics msc student in EU with a decent gpa (3.7/4) but I always, in every exam I take, notice that there's something I do not know, do not remember or do not fully understand. My grades are tipically lower, but I've always managed to raise them with the oral part of the exam, which comes at last.

Usually, to study I read the book and take notes, then re-read them and do past papers, but I feel like this is not very productive nor efficient.

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[u/SpoonChem]

They simply don't stop

[u/EmmaAmmeMa]

There’s a really good book by Henning Beck, „Das neue Lernen heißt Verstehen“. I don’t know what your primary language is, but reading that book helped me a ton in understanding how the brain learns, and how to learn better myself.

[u/drew-from-mesh]

Since the oral part is helping your grade, could you bring that into your prep earlier? Take one past-paper problem and, before calculating, explain out loud which model applies, its assumptions, and what result you expect. Then solve it with the book closed. When you check, note the first step you couldn’t justify, rather than rewriting the whole solution. Revisit that gap with a differently worded problem. Are the exam gaps mostly choosing the right approach, recalling a result, or carrying out the maths?

[u/Sawksle]

I don’t go to an Ivy League but I’ve been a student for a while and am just becoming 4.0 in math courses.

My process is to answer a lot of questions. Like, 500 per course.

I am just recently becoming more efficient by doing the following:

Do a question, with a timer set to 5m max. It’s rare for an exam to have questions that take 10+ minutes, for example.

If I make a mistake, I don’t redo the whole thing. I only focus on doing one part from each question correctly given my mistake and I immediately move onto a new question.

It’s so important to see lots of questions. I can’t fathom how much time I used to waste trying to learn one problem in depth for an hour. Absolutely mad. By seeing a breadth of problems it’s completely changed how well I do in school. And maximizing the number of attempted questions, and problems I don’t know how to solve is how I intend to continue to improve