As students, you certainly know what to study and when to study. Aren’t these lessons imparted in every school? But do teachers and school authorities teach you how to study? It is surprising that during our entire school time, we are never taught how to ‘learn’ effectively. Every day, new research is being conducted on education, teaching skills and learning methods, which we can use to learn scientific ways for note taking, textbook reading, memorizing and effective reviewing, which will come in handy for cracking competitive entrance exams.

India has an extremely competitive environment, especially when it comes to admissions at the undergraduate level. In the science stream, be it engineering, medical, or pharmacy, students struggle for admissions in the top institutes. This year, 11.5 lakh students appeared for JEE Main, while there are over 11,300 seats in the IITs. With NEET, 13.5 lakh students aimed at receiving admission in government colleges which have a capacity of approximately 26,000 students. Not just science, commerce, arts and social science related courses in top colleges or professions like CA and civil services (UPSC) have become extremely difficult to crack.

Get into the right mood with the help of Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov’s experiment 


The classical conditioning experiment by Pavlov made dogs salivate as soon as they heard the bell ring – in anticipation of food. The logic is—if you study the same subject at the same time and the same place, your brain makes the association and gets trained accordingly. Over a period of time, you just need to follow the clock, and you will automatically get in the mood to study the subject within 10 minutes. Whether you like the subject or hate it, this trick does wonders! And make no mistake, this is a necessity as far as the competitive entrance exams you’re aiming at are concerned.

Start as early as you can

The biggest factor that makes a difference to your entire journey of preparation, is how early you start. This will decide how much time you have for learning new concepts and practicing complex questions. Experts at Toppr suggest starting during or after grade 10 are optimal for an undergraduate course. You will have a fair understanding of basic concepts with enough time to learn the advanced ones. Starting 2-3 years before your final exam provides you enough preparation time..

However, don’t be disheartened if you have missed the grade 10 bus. There are many engineers, working in Toppr itself, who had started preparing much later, but still made it into the IITs. If you have started after all your friends, you may need to simply put in more intensive and longer study hours to make up for lost time.

Sync your school timetable and home study schedule


Study the topic taught by the teacher as soon as you come home from school, revise the topic and prepare revision notes. When there is a test in class, use the time before school to quickly memorize questions, brush up facts and learn diagrams.

Planning and strategizing is essential

Before you start preparing for any competitive exam, you must design a plan and strategy that suits your needs. The first step is to get yourself completely familiar with difficulty level of the tests that you are targeting. Evaluate where you are and what should be your approach to acquire the required skills. Number of hours you should spend for self study and practice. Ensure your plan is not aggressive that you feel overburdened and are not able to keep up, and not so relaxed that you end up with a lot of free time.

Ensure that you have also considered subjects that you find difficultand allot more time to these. If necessary, develop a high level plan and a low level plan which is a break up of the high level plan. Your high level plan is an overall plan which divides the entire syllabus into 3 phases - learning, practicing, and revising. Your low level plan considers individual subjects, modules, and chapters, and allots time to each of them.  You can start with a month long low level plan and then create one every month, ensuring that it is in line with the high level plan.

 

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