Do you want to know the research-backed secrets to note taking that can send your grades to the top of the class in a flash?

If that’s you, this is the post for you.

Read that last sentence again because it’s the truth.

And not just the post, the one and only post you need to be reading right now.

I will tell you the 3 most effective note-taking methods for college so you can take notes like a rock star genius that’ll make academics the least of your worries when it comes to college.

Are you down for that?

If you are, get out a pen/pencil and a sheet of paper and write down everything that I’ll tell you.

Let’s get to it.

Secret #1: Writing Notes In Your Own Words

This is the thing that separates the great students from the mediocre ones.

Writing notes down in your own words is proven to increase retention and it’s proven to improve your overall conceptual understanding of the material.

In fact, this was demonstrated with research from 2 researchers at Princeton University and UCLA respectively.

They studied students who took notes with a laptop and students who hand wrote their notes.

The researchers gave 2 groups a video to watch and were told to take notes on the video via hand writing notes or typing notes, depending on which group they were in.

Each group took a test on this video and their scores on the test were compared.

There was a memorization component and a conceptual component where they had to understand the concepts behind what was presented instead of jotting down figures and facts and memorizing them.

After the test results were assembled, the researchers found that the group who hand wrote their notes outperformed the group who typed their notes.

It was so big that the handwritten group averaged 0.39 standard deviations better than the group who typed their notes.

As for what standard deviation means, the standard deviation is the average distance away from the mean of a data set.

With respect to this data, the average score for the handwritten group was 0.28 standard deviation higher than the average for both groups combined.

For the typing group, their average score was 0.11 standard deviations lower than the average for both groups combined.

I attached a graphic in the article here for you to see what I mean. Notice that the normal distribution bell curves are separated. Look at the graphics titled exam performance and conceptual recall.

Are they convincing?

You know those students in the lecture hall with their laptops out?

Unless they wake up themselves, you are already ahead of them provided you implement this one trick.

And that’s not the only trick in this post.

Stick around to know the other note-taking secrets used by the top students to get the best grades in the world and how YOU can get them to.

Secret #2: Active Recall

This is when you take a quiz on what you know before the actual quiz or test happens.

Let me explain what I mean.

Throughout your time studying for anything, there will be times where you have a gut feeling that you need to review what you had learned so you don’t forget it or to see if you need to relearn it.

The best way to approach this is to orally quiz yourself out loud what you need to review (or everything you had learned up to that point).

I’ll give you an example to show you how this works and I encourage you to write notes down with a pen/pencil and paper so you can feel how your learning improves, right on this post.

Let’s say you are studying, say, each of the 45 US Presidents and some significant facts about what they did in office.

The first thing you do is put your notes away.

Keep them nearby so you can access them when you are done or you need to see the answers on the fly if you get the answers wrong.

The second thing you do is one of two things:

1. Close your eyes and ask the questions out loud along with the answers (this is research backed, which I’ll talk about later in the post)

2. See the questions and say out loud the answer or explain your way of approaching the answer if the question involves a conceptual response.

In action, close your eyes and ask something like this:

“What number president was Abraham Lincoln and what significant thing did he do in office?”

With your eyes closed, you will answer this question.

Hopefully, you say out the correct answer, which should be 16^th and any significant event he did like issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.

After doing this, check to solution to see if you got the correct answer.

If you get the correct answer, move on to the next and repeat the process I just outlined (feel free to ask me a question if this sounds confusing. I’m more than happy to help).

If you get it wrong, read the solution, close your eyes and say it in your own words out loud.

And on that note, I personally experienced more retention when you say your answers really loud, more like screaming, rather than just saying it silently.

I highly recommend saying the questions and answers as loud as you can (like you are at a rock concert; really) or as the worst case, in conversational tone like a teacher would in a class.

I have more studies that prove this point.

According to a 2011 study, researchers tested 4 different groups with 4 different learning techniques.

One group was instructed to read the material once and then recall as much as possible without their notes.

The results:

They outperformed the group that performed the 2^nd best on the test by 50%. Other studies done before the 2011 study confirm this result.

That is a considerable number.

Would you like an extra 50% on every test?

Active recall along with consistency is the start.

And the reason why these results are so is because your mind is actively engaging with the material in trying to find what it knows and what it doesn’t know.

It’s going into every neural pathway possible to retrieve the information it needs.

You are in essence finding your knowledge gaps and addressing them on the spot without leaving it to chance like most students.

This is why students come into the exam stressed and needing to pull in all-nighters.

Sure, they might’ve been consistent with their studying, but they did not take the time to see what actually works and what doesn’t work and as you can see in the average exam scores of most classes, they are not so good.

If you are just reading, the mind doesn’t have the same level of engagement and hence, you do not retain as much information as you’d like.

This is why the library is the WORST place to study because you simply can’t do your job given all of the constraints of having to be quiet and being surrounded by a lot of people.

In fact, active recall works better when you are alone and you have no sounds on because you can focus solely on yourself and not worry about the environment around you.

You only use your classmates when you’ve exhausted all other resources like the internet, your books and professors.

Focus is extremely important and as the article that I’ve attached suggests, being in a group, for the most part, lends itself to this small talk that sets most people back and wastes time.

As far as closing your eyes is concerned, there was a study done by the University of Surrey where they split participants in two groups. One group was told to recall information with their eyes open and the other group was told to recall information with their eyes closed.

Afterwards, they were both quizzed on their ability to recall information from a video they watched.

After performing the tests, the researchers concluded that the group who had their eyes closed had an average score of 71% answers correct, whereas the group who had their eyes open averaged 48% answers correct.

That’s a 23% difference and for purposes of taking exams, that could mean the difference between a 95% and a 72%.

You can see a summary of the research here.

Trust me, you don’t want the last number.

That’s a bad score.

And the fact that there is proof of this should make you reconsider what you are doing.

Of course, these are extremely out of the box techniques and people will think you are crazy and look at you like you are weird, but the research is there to prove otherwise.

And also from experience, I implemented all of these techniques when I was in college and when I did, I noticed a BIG jump in my exam scores.

Towards the beginning of college, I was averaging in the mid to high 80s on my exams, which resulted in B+ – A- grades.

When I implemented everything in this post, my averages went up to the mid to high 90s. And I was earning these grades on a consistent basis, not a here and there thing.

It got to the point where people were coming up to me and asking me how I was getting these grades consistently.

Now I don’t say this to promote myself, but to show you that these strategies work and that when you implement them, you will see considerable changes in your grades for the better.

Combining all of this research together, you might start to realize why the classroom doesn’t work.

Well, it doesn’t work for learning something the first time. The most efficient way to use the classroom is to read the material beforehand, grasp it as much as you can with questions and discuss this with the professor during the class session.

This way, you’ll understand what the professor is saying without being confused and you can control the lecture this way since most students will not read before class, giving you the opportunity to shape the lecture how you want it to be instead of someone else shaping the lecture.

You can read more specifics as to how to execute this in class strategy in my blog post about it here.

So that’s a little rant about active recall plus some tricks to deal with a professor in class.

Now here’s a trick that if you are a binder fanatic, you might initially be disappointed with what I am going to tell you to do, but it actually might be one of the most beneficial things you do in your college career.

Trust me with what I will tell you.

Secret #3: Underlining Notes and Circling Them The Messy Way

You read that right.

This strategy does not involve the pretty notepads that you see on Pinterest and the cute highlighting designs to fancy it up.

I’d like to call this “The Man’s Way To Take Notes.”

Listen closely to what I’m about to tell you.

I want you to look at this graphic below and tell me what you think:

They look disgusting, don’t they?

Anyone who saw my notes said “Those are your notes? How the heck are you organized?’

But after the test I took involving the content in these notes (and a lot more than this particular set), I got this random email from the professor:

Results speak for themselves.

The reason they worked is because with this method, you get to shape the content the way you need to so you can understand it for yourself.

Unlike highlighting, you are engaging your mind with what you are doing and rephrasing everything with your own effort instead of going with the wordings that the book provided you.

When you highlight, you are trying to signal to your brain what is important, but the reality is that it doesn’t take it in that way and it needs to go through its own “weight training” to get the information it needs.

From my experience in studying, the best way to use underlining and circling notes is to quiz yourself first with active recall.

You want to see if you can get the answer(s) by yourself before consulting any other sources, be it a professor, the internet or your books.

After you’ve tried to answer the questions, you’ll go back to your notes and you will circle and/or underline the correct answer(s) and you will close your eyes and recite the correct answer in your own words.

As you keep repeating to yourself the answer over time, your brain will strengthen the neural pathway going to that piece of knowledge.

As a result, your brain will get the correct answer easier than the previous times since it’s accustomed to the routine of getting that piece of knowledge from your head.

And writing your notes again helps as well because you are repeating what you are doing and reinforcing to your mind what needs to be remembered and executed.

This is why redoing your homework, particularly in STEM classes, is extremely effective because you get used to the process and the more times you do your homework, the easier is to make those critical transitions so that the concepts flow flawlessly.

And on that note, flow is what you want to achieve.

What I mean by that is you just know why everything is working and you let that conceptual understanding do the directing for you and your brain actively selects to go that route instead of just doing what the book says to do or what another classmate says to do without critically thinking about the problem at hand.

You just know what you have to do and all of these study techniques, combined with your effort, consistency and vision, will achieve this flow for you.

Think of it like lifting weights.

You see people in the gym who keep lifting these small weights and not raising the amount of weight each time they lift.

Over time, they become disappointed with the results.

The reason is because the muscles are not becoming exposed to heavier weights and as a result, there’s little damage in the muscle tissues from the workout and hence, the body doesn’t see the need to build the muscle.

Highlighting works the same way in that you are not forcing the mind to be exposed to more and hence, it doesn’t develop enough neural pathways to take on this knowledge and hence, you don’t retain the information.

On the flip side, if you were to progressively lift heavier and heavier weights over time, combined with the other facets of bodybuilding going correctly, you will see your body become stronger because the body is being exposed to more and hence, there’s a need to make it stronger in order to withstand what’s being exposed to it.

With the brain, it’s the same thing.

You are forced to develop the neural pathways every time you test yourself since you must retrieve the knowledge without any support or you will not learn it.

See that now there’s a need to do it and hence, the mind becomes stronger?

That’s why it is WAY easier to sell a need than a want.

Humans respond to needs with sense of urgency and because the methods I outline arouse a need in the mind, it responds accordingly.

Highlighting doesn’t arouse the need. Your brain thinks that it’s there and that it doesn’t need to be learned.

And this is why the learning secrets and pitfalls work and don’t work respectively.

Hopefully, if you are going to college and you need to do great academically, you take this knowledge and implement it starting right now.

Which lends me to the final secret.

Secret #4: Take Action

I am not scamming you.

I have provided you the research behind what I am saying and my experience with it along with how you can do it starting today.

Understand that the ball is in your court now.

I have shown you what you need to do when it comes to note taking to not only pass your classes, but thrive in them as well.

Now note that I said note taking; I didn’t mention the other secret (but not so secret) strategies you need to implement to be successful in any college class you take in any major, even the hardest.

The other strategies I talk about that bulletproof your academic experience can be seen in these posts here, here and here.

I personally walk you through each strategy you must implement to get A’s in all of your classes (or close to all A’s; I guarantee a minimum of a 3.9 if you follow my strategies, regardless of your major).

I talk about the research-backed studying and break pattern so you can maximize your performance on exam day and get the best grades, how to take your test and what to do to avoid getting penalized for something you know and time-tested productivity strategies guaranteed to reduce your stress and to get the great grades I am preaching in this post.

If you implement the information in this post and in the 3 posts I attached consistently, your grades will never suffer and you will have a chance to fulfill your ambitions that require college since you have the academic side taken care of.

I hope you got a lot out of this post.

Take it, run with it and don’t look back.

Remember, you have to prove it in the world.

The world owes you nothing until you deliver value.

Let this be a start in that direction for you.

If you got a lot out of this post and you want more content about how you can not only just thrive in college, but become insanely productive and reach your absolute fullest potential so you can take over your own world, subscribe to Join the Island below, the world’s greatest blog, where every new post will be sent to your inbox right when they are published!

Happy Studying!

Until next time,

This is Evan signing off.

PS: Comment below with any questions and comments you have about the post. I’d be glad to hear from you!

PPS: If you want to win college and not just the academic side, read this 25000+ word post here. You’ll be glad that you did. Make it count.

PPPS: If you want to become an unstoppable test taking ninja, make sure to read this super guide about how to study for a test with research backed secrets to study better so you never have to worry about failing a class and to shoot your GPA through the roof!