Study Habits from the College EDge Team

We asked the College Edge team to share their favorite study tips with us. See their

responses below!

Interested in continuing this conversation? Email us at yeshiva.college.edge@gmail.com

Ilan Bocian, President:

Use the Pomodoro Technique. Study for 25 minutes, take a 5-minute break (away from where you are studying, preferably doing something active like stretching/pull-ups/push-ups, etc.), and take a 15-minute break after 4 cycles. The frequent breaks enable you to study across many hours and get tons of work and/or studying done.

Tara Shtern, President:

I find that even the ability to see my phone out of the corner of my eye leads to distracted studying. Lately, I’ve been leaving my phone in another room or sticking it inside a pencil case deep in my backpack in order to ensure that I’m as present as possible while studying.

Moshe Carroll, Vice-President:

Keep a list of upcoming assignments. Plan out ahead out the time when you're going to tackle them -- well in advance of their respective due dates.

Yisrael Wiener, Director of Outreach:

As you work through notes or a textbook, create mental images that represent various ideas, concepts, or terms, and imagine placing them along a path in your house (or any other location you know well). When you finish the given section, review this mental journey you created, and you’ll realize how clearly you can now recall the information. This is called the Method of Loci and is one of the most effective ways for absorbing and recalling information.

Nadav Heller, Director of Outreach:

I like to rewrite class notes and homework assignments by hand. It forces me to spend more time thinking about the material and gives me a more concise summary for future study.

Bella Weiner, Director of Programming:

When studying, it’s hard to completely disconnect from your phone and other distractions, and, sometimes, I find myself spending too much time on distractions rather than the material. Therefore, I find it helpful to set something I like to call “the procrastination alarm”. I set the alarm for 20 minutes at a time so I am conscious of the time passing and am able to evaluate at the end of the 20 minutes how productive my study session was. I also find it helpful when memorizing a lot of information for a test to recite the material out loud and to make up funny hints for specific terms.