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As a Psychologist, I was always interested in how people learn.
During my degree, I became fascinated by the psychology of top-class students from the top universities of the world.
During that time, I observed classmates and other students and always found a big difference between top-class and non-top-class students.
Let me tell you more about it.
Before we begin, an important note
This is a very subjective opinion made from years of observations of many students.
I will not bring scientific evidence as I normally do in my articles.
Note that every person has a different perspective on what study techniques are more effective or not.
This doesn't mean that they are more or less capable than others.
Everyone is smart and capable of amazing things!
The Main Differences Between Top-Class and Non-Top-Class Students
So during my degree, I met thousands of college students (I was also a teaching assistant in Neurophysiology, Research Methods, and other subjects).
In all of them, I found students that had great, satisfactory, and low grades.
Additionally, some students got more stressed than others during the exam period.
I found that their behaviors differ significantly: some of them studied a few days or weeks before the exam, whereas others dedicated more time per day, etc.
And overall, some behaviors were more correlated with top-class students:
1. Organization
Top-class students didn't study days before an exam.
They organized the class schedule and content per week from the beginning.
Almost in every lecture, top-class students already read the text that corresponded to that class.
From the beginning, they had an idea into how the lectures will be and what texts and topics will be covered.
This gave them a huge advantage over others.
2. Habits
Top-class students had weekly habits where they studied what they learned during the class.
In other words, they took a brief time during the week to study.
These habits allowed them to get ready for the exam even a week before it.
So instead of studying days before, a few hours per week were more than enough to cover all the topics they needed to study for the exams.
3. Note Taking
Top-class students didn't copy and paste what was already in the PowerPoint.
They took smart notes based on the analogies or extra concepts that the professor gave in the lecture.
They knew that the presentation and text from books would always be there for them, so they focused on the extra information from the lectures.
4. Summaries
Top-class students did their summaries based on the resources they had, analogies and explanations from the professor, and more.
In several cases, I saw them making mind or concept maps, allowing them to store the information more organized.
Non-top-class students studied from their highlights or other summaries that another person made.
Note: an interesting case was a bright student that never wrote summaries, as he said that they took them too many time!
5. Active vs Passive Review
Finally, top-class students didn't study passively.
Even during lectures, they tried to keep motivated by asking interesting questions that were not in the books.
And when studying for the exam, they didn't read their notes or resources passively.
They did free recall and retrieval to test their knowledge actively.
Additionally, motivation and curiosity were always 2 behaviors that improved their grades compared to others.
Conclusion
As I said before, this observation is pretty subjective as it is based on all the students I've met during my degree.
But please remember:
Everyone is brilliant and has their own methods.
However, in almost every case, top-class students showed similar behaviors to what I shared with you in this article.
Do you know any other top-class students' behaviors?
Follow me for more tips to be a top class student!
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Thanks for reading!