Students Postmortem

In her recent book, Mindset, Stanford Psychologist Carol Dweck describes a study that followed a group of college students through a difficult pre-med chemistry course. As is common with pre-med courses, most of the students did poorly on the first exam. The real division occurred after those first low grades were returned. Some students got spooked. They assumed the low grade indicated lack of ability. As the semester continued they compensated by increasing their study hours, but not changing how they studied. Their resentment for the subject grew. Their grades, alas, did not.

The second group had a more optimistic mindset. They went back and examined what went wrong on the first exam, made some fixes to their study habits, and then continued with their improved strategy. Not only did they score better on the subsequent exams, but they were all around more happy with the pre-med program in general.

The Rosetta Stone

If you look past the big-”c” Conclusions of this study, you’ll find a tactical gem buried in the narrative — a piece of study advice I’ve been promoting for years: the best guide for how to study for a class is the first exam.

Think about this for a moment. The first exam reveals the exact relationship between the material presented in class and the type of questions that you’ll be asked to answer about it. After your get your first exam back, you have, in essence, been granted the Rosetta Stone for your class. You now know exactly how to study for the exams that follow.

The details work as follows…

The Post-Exam Post-Mortem

After you get back your first exam, set aside 15 or 20 minutes to soak up its lessons and adjust your habits accordingly. Begin by asking yourself the following questions:

1. What did I do right? What note-taking and study strategies served you well on the exam?
2. What was a waste of time? Which strategies took up time but did not help?
3. What did I miss? Where were you caught off guard? What type of question were you not prepared for? What type of material did you miss in your review?

Next, lay out, in detail, the rules for the study system that you’ll follow for the remainder of the semester. Make sure this system includes the tactics you listed in your answer to (1) and excludes the tactics mentioned in your answer to (2). (This sounds obvious, but many students get so comfortable with certain study rituals that they have a hard time abandoning them, even after they’ve identified them as not helping.)

Most important, think hard about your answer for (3). Then ask yourself what’s the most efficient habit you could add to your study arsenal that would fill in those gaps. Add this to your system.