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Last Minute Study Tips, Flashcards, Essays & Maths - Exam Revision Q&A with Cambridge students

2018-04-14 · Q&A video · Ali, Paul, Katherine · recording, 24:15 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Learning and studying · mode: Answering questions · tags: Aimed at students, Evidence-based framing

Ali and his fellow Cambridge medical students Paul and Katherine answer viewers' revision questions: learning starts with understanding and retrieval, a month before exams is plenty of time if you scope the subject, active recall needs no app ("a way of life"), and Ali prefers his spreadsheet to Anki because it has less friction. For essays they advise memorising paragraphs and introductions with flashcards and improving handwriting; for maths, interleaving and attempting past papers before reading the answers.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Second part of the revision Q&A with Paul and Katherine, and the plan of the video

00:00:55 — How to learn material in the first place: understanding, retrieval, teaching each other

  • ★★ Katherine says you only learn material by doing active recall, so be willing to try the practice paper even if you feel horrendously underprepared. — 00:00:55 · active recall, Katherine
  • ★★ Ali says he will make a video, with the evidence, on how to learn material in the first place. — 00:01:40
  • ★★★ Ali says understanding a topic comes first, and its litmus test is whether you could explain it to a friend or a five-year-old; trying to explain it is already active recall. — 00:02:12 · active recall
  • ★★ Once he can explain a topic, Ali writes questions for himself, such as the causes of hypothyroidism, and answers them again later with spaced repetition. — 00:02:41 · active recall, spaced repetition
  • ★★ Citing chapter two of Make It Stick, "To Learn, Retrieve", Ali says retrieval drives learning, so learning and revising should not be thought of as separate things. — 00:03:16 · active recall
  • ★★ Paul advises trying questions, maths questions especially, before reading the answer: don't be afraid to crash and burn, then look at the answer. — 00:03:45 · Paul
  • ★★ Katherine and her friends each learn a topic in self-study and then teach it to each other, which checks their understanding. — 00:04:14 · Katherine
  • ★★ On placement Ali's friends ask Paul, their cardiology guru, to explain heart topics such as tricuspid regurgitation; Paul first asks what they already know, which forces them to recall. — 00:05:03 · Paul, active recall
  • ★★★ Ali treats school exams as a team effort: you and your friends work together against the rest of the world, not as individuals competing with each other. — 00:05:38
  • ★★ Some students on Ali's BMAT crash course do not want their friends to know they took it, because they see themselves as competing. — 00:05:38 · 6med, BMAT (exam)
  • ★★ Paul says that even from a selfish point of view, the morale of studying with friends outweighs the tiny advantage over a few friends among thousands taking the exam. — 00:06:23 · Paul

00:06:56 — A month before exams: not last minute; scoping your subject

  • ★★ Answering students who asked on Instagram for last-minute tips a month before their exams, Ali says a month is not last minute but plenty of time. — 00:06:56
  • ★★ In his third year Ali started his spaced repetition system about five and a half weeks before the exam. — 00:06:56 · spaced repetition
  • ★★ Katherine: With a month left and much uncovered, Katherine advises stepping back, taking stock of what is covered and where the big holes are, covering those topics in overview, and having a plan. — 00:07:25 · Katherine
  • ★ Ali says he learned the phrase "scoping your subject" from Paul. — 00:07:55 · scoping the subject, Paul
  • ★★★ Paul: To scope a subject, Paul says, face the mountain of work and write down everything you need to do, then split it into manageable chunks, instead of drifting through the month out of fear. — 00:08:24 · scoping the subject, Paul
  • ★★★ Ali calls listing every topic of the syllabus on one page, as a spider diagram or numbered list, the most useful hour you can spend: with 15 topics and a month left, one a day covers each twice. — 00:09:43 · scoping the subject

00:10:41 — How to learn content quickly: broad brush strokes and past papers

  • ★★ Katherine: To learn content quickly, Katherine advises broad brush strokes: skip the nitty-gritty detail and work out what is testable and what comes up in past papers. — 00:10:41 · Katherine
  • ★★ Ali advises an 80-20 analysis of past papers, finding which 20% of the content gets 80% of the marks, and basing revision on past papers. — 00:10:41

00:11:26 — How techniques change in the last weeks before an exam

  • ★★ Katherine: Closer to an exam, Katherine goes back over what she has covered and reminds herself of the mistakes she commonly makes, such as forgetting to get down to the patient's level in the abdominal exam. — 00:11:58 · Katherine
  • ★★★ Before each study session Ali asks which topic he would be most scared of if the exam were now, and studies it; nearer the exam he asks more often. — 00:11:58

00:12:31 — Making active recall questions: from your own notes or from revision guides

  • ★★★ Ali says active recall is no set formula, only actively retrieving from the brain: make questions from your own notes or from a revision guide, whichever works for you. — 00:12:57 · active recall
  • ★★ Ali does not like making notes; he loves CGP and Letts revision guides and uses them exclusively, writing questions from them or using their end-of-chapter questions. — 00:12:57 · CGP
  • ★★ Katherine says many people take comfort in copying material out into their own notes without any active recall; they should use the good revision guides and online resources and do the hard recall sooner. — 00:13:27 · active recall, Katherine
  • ★★★ Ali advises avoiding making your own notes completely if you can. — 00:14:07
  • ★★ Paul sees making notes as part of processing and understanding: if you are struggling with a topic, making notes can really help. — 00:14:07 · Paul
  • ★★ Ali says past papers count as active recall, but attempt each question before looking at the mark scheme: reading the mark scheme and thinking you would have known it is a myth. — 00:14:07 · active recall

00:14:21 — Do past papers count as active recall

00:14:45 — Anki or the spreadsheet method; active recall as a way of life

  • ★★★ Ali prefers his spreadsheet method to Anki for much of his revision because spreadsheets are easy and Anki takes effort to set up: anything that reduces friction between wanting to do something and doing it is worth doing. — 00:14:45 · Anki, friction
  • ★★ Ali spends a lot on camera equipment that reduces the friction of sitting down to make a video: a tripod is worth £50 rather than stacking books to hold the camera. — 00:15:14 · friction
  • ★★ Katherine agrees Ali's spreadsheet method is more intuitive than Anki: it sorts by category easily, without Anki's tags, decks and filtered decks. — 00:15:14 · Anki, Katherine
  • ★★ Ali can rarely be bothered to use Anki properly, skipping features such as cloze deletions and image occlusion, and keeps it simple with Google Sheets. — 00:15:43 · Anki
  • ★★★ Katherine says if you are not willing to use Anki properly, don't use it at all: use paper flashcards or the spreadsheet method instead. — 00:16:11 · Anki, Katherine
  • ★★ Katherine says a common Anki problem is spending something like 18 hours making flashcards, then having so many that you can't be bothered to go through them. — 00:16:11 · Anki, Katherine
  • ★★ In his first year Ali had more than 4,000 Anki cards, covering niche details he did not need, and never got through them. — 00:16:38 · Anki
  • ★ Ali says Paul does not use any flashcards. — 00:16:38 · Paul

  • ★★★ Paul says active recall needs neither Anki nor Google Sheets: it is a way of life, trying to think about things every time before you look up the answer. — 00:17:02 · active recall, Anki, Paul

    “active recall doesn't require you to have Anki or to use a Google Sheets. It's a way of life.”

  • ★ Ali jokes that Paul is very old: he is from Singapore and spent three years in the army. (playful) — 00:17:26 · Paul, Singapore

  • ★★ Paul: With practice papers, Paul advises reasoning from first principles and dredging up what you know before looking at the answer, so that the answer sticks better. — 00:17:55 · active recall, Paul

00:18:24 — Flashcards for essay subjects such as history and English literature

  • ★★★ For essay subjects Ali uses Anki to memorise building-block paragraphs, with quotes, dates and evidence, that fit many essays: a point on Romeo and Juliet, or Hodgkin and Huxley's giant squid axon experiments for essays on the sodium pump. — 00:19:29 · Anki
  • ★★ For his psychology essays Ali memorised entire paragraphs, references included, word for word with Anki, introductions above all. — 00:20:04 · Anki
  • ★★ Ali advises memorising essay introductions with flashcards: a killer introduction primes the examiner to give a decent mark. — 00:20:33
  • ★ Ali says Paul is a Cambridge supervisor who marks students' essays. — 00:20:33 · Paul, University of Cambridge
  • ★★★ Paul, who marks essays, says that by the fourth essay they all blur into one, so the introduction should catch the marker and outline the argument: from it a marker can tell whether it will get a first, a 2:1 or a 2:2. — 00:20:33 · Paul

00:21:02 — Tips for A-level maths and past papers

  • ★★★ Ali says studies of maths students found that interleaving different problem types improves performance by quite a lot, so a maths revision day should mix a bit of trigonometry, Pythagoras, algebra and shapes. — 00:21:02 · interleaving
  • ★★ Paul: For maths past papers Paul advises attempting each question even if you think you can't, then working out why you failed; worked solutions help more than answers, as maths is about practice. — 00:22:16 · Paul

00:22:29 — Exam essay technique and handwriting

  • ★★ Paul thinks handwriting is worth 3 to 5% in Cambridge Tripos essays; the introduction, the conclusion and how an essay looks all really matter. (hedged) — 00:22:49 · Paul
  • ★★★ Ali reckons the single biggest thing you can do to improve your marks in an essay exam is improve your handwriting, which anyone can do with practice and YouTube videos. — 00:22:49

00:23:37 — Closing remarks and the next video

  • ★★ Ali says the next video will answer study questions sent in by university students: lectures, essays and managing the workload. — 00:23:37
  • ★ Ali sums up the video as him, Paul and Katherine answering 10 viewer questions about specific study techniques. — 00:23:37 · Paul, Katherine

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Mentioned

Central: active recall · Anki · scoping the subject

Also: 6med · BMAT (exam) · CGP · friction · interleaving · Singapore · spaced repetition · University of Cambridge

Taking part: Katherine · Paul

Only in the description or credits: Emmanuel College

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