Break Your “Good” GMAT Study Habits
Distractions are bad. Routine, concentration, and hard work are good.These all seem like common-sense rules for studying, right? Surprisingly (for many people, at least), learning science tells us that these good habits may actually behurtingyour learning process!
When you were in college, your study process probably looked something like this: for a given class, youd attend a lecture each week, do the readings (or at least most of them), and maybe turn in an assignment or problem set. Then, at the end of the semester, youd spend a week furiously cramming all of that information to prepare for the test.
Since this is the way youve always studied, its probably how youre approaching the GMAT, too. But I have bad news: this is not an effective approach for the GMAT!
Taking notes then cramming the night before the test is beneficial for tests that ask you to recite knowledge: what were the major consequences of the Hawley-Smoot tariff or explain Heisenbergs uncertainty principle. You can hold a lot of factsfor a brief timein your short-term memory when cramming. You memorize facts, you spit them out for the test and then, if youre like me, you find that youve forgotten half of what you memorized by the next semester.
Why the GMAT is Different
The GMAT doesnt reward this style of studying because its not simply a test of facts or knowledge. The GMAT requires you to know a lot of rules, of course, but the main thing that its testing is your ability to apply those concepts to new problems, to adapt familiar patterns, and to use strategic decision-making. Youll never see the same problem twice.
Shallow memorization is not nearly enough. You needdeepconceptual understanding.
InHow We Learn*, science writer Benedict Carey outlines decades of research about how this kind of learning happens. Many of the findings go against what you probably thought were good study habits.
Distractions are a Good Thing
Your teachers or your parents probably told you: always study in the same, quiet space. Create a ritual of studying, and keep it consistent. And of course, thats good advice to a point; if its too loud or distracting to think, you wont learn very much.
But Carey tells us that subtle variations in our routinegoing to a different room, or library, or coffee shop; alternating between light background music, silence, or the hum of people talkingcan actually improve our learning. When were studying, were also subconsciously registering clues from the world around us, and weaving them into what weve learned. Different subconscious markers create richer connections.
These connections are further strengthened if you review the material in a different context than you initially learned it. As Carey says, each alteration of the routine further enriches the skills being rehearsed, making them sharper and more accessible for a longer period of time.
Study Less More Often
Theres a good reason why you dont remember most of the material you spent long hours cramming before the final: long study sessions are bad for retention.
If you want to hang onto the information that youre working so hard to learn, you should try what learning scientists call the spacing effect. Dont try to learn a topic in one long sitting. Instead, study a little bit, then return to it a few days later. According to Carey, people learn at least as much, and retain it much longer, when they distributeor spacetheir study time than when they concentrate it.
If you plan to spend 90 minutes learning exponent rules, for example, its more effective to spend 45 minutes on it on Tuesday, then return to the topic for another 45 minutes on Thursday or Friday (or even better, three 30-min sessions) rather than just concentrating your learning into one long session.
Get Mixed Up
Stay organized and see it through until completion. Guess what? Those ideas are wrong, too.
Data suggests that instead of studying one topic until youve mastered it, then moving onto the next, you should mix up your studying. If youre quizzing yourself on quadratics, mix in a few questions from inequalities, weighted averages, etc. By throwing your brain some curve balls, youre training yourself to adapt and make strategic choices. It may seem more confusing at first, but forcing yourself to think more will cause you to learn and remember more.
The mixing of items, skills, or concepts during practice, over the long term, seems to help us not only see the distinctions between them but also to achieve a clearer grasp of each one individually, says Carey. So, mix it up!
TestingisLearning
The best way to learn is to study the material thoroughly, then test yourself at the end to prove that youve learned it, right? You guessed it wrong again.
The data shows us that youre more likely to retain information if you test yourselfbeforeyou learn it, or while youre in the middle of your learning process. By failing at particular questions the first time around, your brain will flag those concepts as more important when you do learn them, and youll be more likely to retain them for longer.
Testing yourself periodically throughout your study process (rather than waiting until youve learnedeverythingto take a practice test) will strengthen your recall. Its harder work to try to retrieve a memory when youre being tested than it is to passively read over your notes. Harder work means stronger neural connections, and a higher likelihood of remembering on test day.
Sleep on It
Its the week before the Big Test, and you have a choice: stay up until 2am and get a few extra hours of studying in, or go to bed and get a good nights sleep. Im going to give you the same advice your mother would give youget some rest!
Your brain actually does a lot of work offline while youre sleeping. As Carey reminds us, brain scientists have published an array of findings suggesting that sleep plays a critical role in flagging and storing important memories, intellectual and physical. If you rob yourself of sleep, your brain might not actually store those extra facts that you stayed up late to cram!
Think of yourself as an athlete in trainingyour brain needs exercise, but it also needs rest. Exhaustion is very bad for performance.
Breaking Good Habits for the GMAT
So, what should you take away from all of this? Here are some bad habits that are actually very good for your GMAT studying!
- Vary your routine.Study in different places, at different times of day, with different backgrounds.
- Dont study hard in one sitting, that is. Study in smaller intervals of time, but go back and review the material several days later. Space it out.
- Mix it up.Dont just practice one concept or skill at a time. Weave in some practice problems from other areas to make your brain work harder.
- Quiz yourselfoften. Try quizzing yourself with the problem setbeforeyou read the chapter in your strategy guide. Take practice tests periodically throughout your process.
- Sleep on it. If youre struggling with a concept, sleep on it. Sleep is an important part of memory building.
Good luck with these bad habits!
*Carey, Benedict.How We Learn. New York: Random House, 2014.