Tips for getting an A on tests

My children are much too small to tell my little secret to just yet, but trust me, I have it locked tight in my vault of "things I want to tell my children as they get a little older." The topic came up last night as my husband was telling me how he wished he had made more of an effort to get good grades in college. "I guess I had too much fun," he said. I mentioned to him that I too had had fun in college, joined a sorority even, yet I managed to graduate with honors! I graduated with a 3.89 GPA (if they had counted my last semester of my Senior year it would be a 3.9...WHY DON'T THEY COUNT THAT SEMESTER?? Sorry..getting off track). Anyway, I was thinking about how I did that and what tips and tricks I will pass on to my children someday.

I have a little secret...I almost never read the text book. I know, crazy, right? Instead, I made the effort to go to every single class. I tried to never miss one, unless I was sick. The reason for this being that I took incredible notes. Miss a class, and you miss a whole lot of information that your teacher finds valuable. My theory was, if the teacher thought it important enough to talk about in class, they may also find it important enough to test you on it. The text book, to me, was back-up at best. Sometimes I would sift through looking for main points or definitions, but that was basically it.

Taking great notes was not my only secret. I also never stayed up all night studying, nor even spent more than a couple of hours studying for any one exam in one sitting. For me, this was mainly because I just couldn't stay focused that long on one thing before my mind started wandering off to other things I had going on...generally boy related. What I would do instead was, once I had most or all of the notes on a topic that was going to be tested (this was generally several days if not more before a test), I would consolidate them. I would go through and write really small and in neat handwriting, the main points, definitions, etc...that I thought had any potential of showing up on the test. I would use notebook paper and try to squeeze the information onto one or two sheets, front and back. That process alone was great for memory purposes, but I didn't stop there.

My third secret, and the one that made it possible to not study for hours on end in one sitting, was the repetitive reading over of my self-created study guide. I would sit down every day, maybe a few times a day and read over my study guide. It was much faster than reading chapter after chapter in a textbook or even reading through all of my original notes. The more often you go over it, the more your mind will remember it. Quiz yourself sometimes on them too. And viola! Unless the teacher taught a bunch of useless information during their lectures, you should ace your exam.

I studied in a similar way in High School, but didn't perfect it until I got into College. That doesn't mean that my kids, your kids, or anyone in school who hears of this trick can't start using it much much sooner. I can't wait to share this study method with my children as they get a little older!