[Music] ladies and gentlemen if you clicked on this video chances are you have a test or exam coming up and you want to get an A+ well you've come to the right spot my name is Colin and I'm a student at Yale University studying computer science and in this video I'll teach you how to Ace your exams with ease whether you have an exam in 2 weeks in 7 days or even tomorrow this video is for you listen I've probably aced over 100 exams throughout my life math English science you name it and along the way I've help hundreds of students do the same and what I can tell you is that acing your exams doesn't have to be that hard it can actually be simple easy and quite fun so whether you're in high school or college I'm going to share a no BS practical guide on how to Ace your exams with ease without all the stress so let's get started now look I know exactly how you feel you study for 5 hours you text your friends I can't go out because I need to go lock in but when exam day comes out you choke you get worried and you panic and you're like I studied so much what even was that exam look I'm not going to lie with you I've been in group chats where my boys be stressing about the exam but I'm the guy asking if they want to play pingpong look there are people who put less time than you people who may even be dumber than you who get better results it's not because they have crazy guessing skills it's because the way you've been studying has been wrong I don't care if you study for 10 hours in a day none of that studying matters if you don't absorb that information if you study for 10 hours but you only remember 10% of that information that's the same as studying for 2 hours but you remember 50% of it due to math what am I trying to say stop studying like a nerd start studying like an academic weapon because it's not about the number of hours you study it's about how you study so first let's talk about three of the most common mistakes students make the first mistake students make is spending too much time on consumption not digestion so consumption looks like reading the textbook watching lectures and trying to absorb information whereas digestion means actually understanding that information it looks like doing practice exams answering questions and being able to teach others what you know you want to prioritize digestion over consumption most students think they're being so productive by watching the lectures at 2x speed or trying to read super fast chill out if you don't digest and actually understand what you're consuming that time spent is wasted now the second common mistake students make is trying to remember every single small detail from the book or from lecture they think they need to remember like 100% of everything they read and so they panic and just start trying to brute force all the information to their head look if you're trying to Ace your exam it's not about how many details or definitions you can remember it's about how many questions you can predict will come out on the exam it's about whether or not you can actually solve those questions that will come out so you want to reframe your mindset now the third common mistake students make which by far is the most common is they cram before an exam I'm talking about studying the night before or morning of the test where usually don't really have a study strategy you just try to read as many notes as you can go over like lecture slides and try to do everything at once once look if that works for you fine but if you want to Ace your exams without all the stress and if you actually want to study effectively where you can chill out and have fun you need a better strategy so let me introduce you to the learning pyramid the learning pyramid is a science-based approach to study more effectively if you take a look at the graph here on the top it says the least effective learning method is lectures and reading where the average retention rates are super low and then on the bottom the most effective learning method is practice by doing and teaching others what this means is that not all study techniques are built the same so you want to prioritize the study methods in the bottom of the pyramid if you prioritize active recall and actually try to practice what you learn you'll be so much more productive but knowing this is not enough now before you start studying for exam you want to First organize your study material that way you have a system and some clear goals that you can set for yourself so what you want to do is open a Google doc or take a paper or whatever note-taking system you use and write down three important things first you want to list out all the res ources you have to study so maybe you have three practice exams maybe you have all the class slides your notes your past quizzes or homework you want to list out everything you have that will help you study for your exam now once you've done that the next thing you want to do is list down all the topics that will be tested on your exam chances are your teacher will tell you to exam topics so you want to list everything down all the chapters and all the concepts that will be tested in your exam if you can't find the topics list just ask your teacher third you want to list out how much time you have to study and create a small timetable where you're going to plan out what what you're going to do so for example maybe on Monday you're going to do one practice paper and then on Tuesday you're going to redo all your quizzes and homework etc etc if you actually organize your study material you'll feel so much more in control because you can actually see that if you do everything in this document you're ready so organize your study material this step is super crucial now once you've organized everything it's time to do active recall and space repetition this is by far the most effective study method in my opinion because you can do it yourself and it's also the most easy and straight forward so you want to take a look at all your resources and grind through all the practice questions that you feel like will come out in your exam I'm talking about doing practice papers from your teacher redoing your past homework and quizzes and maybe if you're feeling a bit extra you can try search up more practice questions online now the reason why learning through active recall is so much more effective is because we learn better when we're trying to retrieve information so when you make a mistake and you go back to look at the answers or you try to solve it again that's when your brain actually remembers that information much more compared to just reading or passive listening also when you're solving questions like mcqs while you're studying and there are a couple of questions where you kind of guessed and got correct you want to assume you got them wrong and actually fully understand how to solve it most students just make educated guesses while they're studying and if they got it right they don't even bother checking it out again that's a big mistake you want to make sure you can actually solve that question in case it comes out in your real test now if you want to have a bit more fun and make sure you actually have complete Mastery of your material there's this one hack that you can do go to chat gbt and up upload all your class nodes and then ask it to ask you questions you can even ask it to act like an Asian genius teacher that way if you need more questions you can get them it also makes studying much more fun now when it comes to active recall there's a way you can make it even more powerful and that is through spaced repetition where basically you want to test yourself over an interval of a couple of days so when you answer a question it becomes muscle memory so maybe you do a practice paper on Monday and then maybe it took you like 2 hours to solve all the questions you want to do that same paper on Tuesday and maybe even on Thursday and each time you do it try to time yourself and get all the questions right as fast as possible so Colin How will I know once I'm ready well you're ready when you can solve any question without any hesitation where if you see it on the exam it's almost like pattern recognition oh it's this type of question I've done it a million times before light work that's the level you want to Aspire to be at now if we take a look at the learning pyramid again actually in the bottom of the list the most effective study method is teaching others so if you have a friend who has cooked and you teach him you can actually gain more Mastery over your material personally I treat a study method as a bonus and optional I like studying in the morning and getting things done early before my friends are even awake so I don't really do it sometimes I do it the day before the exam but even then I'd recommend studying yourself first with active Recall now another alternative you can do to teaching others is the blurting method where basically what you want to do is get a piece of paper or open a Google Docs and write down everything you remember about a certain topic without looking at your notes so like literally an empty page where you maybe write down a couple of big topics and ideas and you try to write down all the concepts you remember in your head head and maybe some examples if you have any the bluring method is super effective it almost works like you're teaching others and you can do it yourself now what should you do on the day of your exam three things first things first chill out if you do all the things in this video and you finish everything in your study document you will Ace your exam look if you're not willing to implement this system within 24 hours this channel isn't for you but what I can guarantee is that if you use the study system and you actually do the work you will Ace your exam with ease because action cures fear and if you've done the work you're good second don't eat too much if you have an exam at 1: p.m. don't eat too big of a lunch because you're going to be sleepy and your brain is not going to function as fast don't overload your body because your brain needs energy to process that food also no processed foods please try to eat clean personally I love eating healthy foods it keeps me focused sharp and energized lastly try to relax your brain for me I really enjoy listening to binar beats meditation music jazz and even house music to put me in that zone and if you can get some natural sunlight it's a very underrated but powerful thing you can do to increase your energy and focus and if you follow all these steps in this video I have no doubt you will Ace your exams so I hope you guys found this video helpful if you did share this video and help a friend out as always God bless the hustle we're all going to win one day and I'll see you in the next one [Music]