Tips for College Students – Improving College Study Skills
These tips for college students include five ways to improve college study skills – because the better the study skills, the higher the grades. And the higher the grades, the happier the college student!
Before the tips, a quip:
“Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind.” – Louis Pasteur.
The more prepared you are, my friends, the luckier you will be. For extra help with study habits, click on Becoming A Master Student, 12th edition. And, read on for five tips for college students and improving study skills…
Tips for College Students – Improving College Study Skills
1. Put a time limit on the hardest tasks. If you deplore a certain subject in school or hate working through formulas, promise yourself you’ll only do it for 30 minutes or an hour. Set aside just that amount of time, and reward yourself afterwards with something you love (with either a subject you enjoy, or a healthy activity). If you struggle with procrastination, read 5 Ways to End Procrastination for College Students.
2. Let yourself do a bad job. Go ahead: write a bad essay, create a boring power point presentation, or draw an ugly representational chart. To improve your college study skills, you have to let go of perfectionist tendencies. Lower the bar at the beginning, when you’re struggling to get the job done. Once you get the dreck out of your system, once you get the basics down, you can make the essay or project better.
3. Savor your past accomplishments. Remember that exam you aced, the speech you got an “A” on, or project that everyone loved? To improve your study skills, stop and savor those victorious feelings! Picture yourself feeling those same feelings same when you’re done studying for this exam or writing this essay. Simply savoring how great your past academic accomplishments were can motivate you to study now that you’re a college student.
3. Work with your natural rhythms. To improve your study skills as a college student, do the “hardest” work when you’re least tired. This can mean studying before lunch if you’re a morning person, or studying mid-afternoon if you’re a night owl. Studying or doing homework when you’re tired is much more difficult than when you’re fresh – especially if it’s for a class or subject you dread.
5. Break the big assignments down. If you have to write a 10 page essay, break it down into small subsections. If you have a huge final exam to study for, break it down into several mini-tests. Separating huge tasks into several smaller ones is a great way to improve your study skills as a college student – and it’ll boost your confidence, too!
If you’re a freshman, you might find Tips for Surviving College for New Students helpful. And if you’re an adult learner, read 7 Success Tips for Mature College Students.
Do you have questions or thoughts on these tips for college students – how to improve study skills? I welcome your thoughts below…
