How do top students study?

How Do Top Students Study?

how-do-top-students-study | He had quite unorthodox methods of study and an attitude towards schooling at all levels, from elementary school to graduate school. Fortunately I was not born in the West or they would have medicated the shit of a child like me!

While I do not intend to disrespect you or any sense of false modesty (which I simply cannot bear), these below may be of limited use to others. Keep reading if you're curious anyway. Or careless

The results, although delivered for the most part.

I qualified as the best student in my class (~ 50–60 students) for all grade levels # 2–10, except for one year. I developed a ruthless appetite and determination to win from an early age, even when I was a small child. 

Winning becomes very addictive, it's like a drug once you've tried it and was very bitter about losing, which persists to this day.

How Do Top Students Study?

Then I went to medical school, where for two of three years I was ranked number 1 among the five schools in the district / county.

A 2400/2400 qualification in the GRE along with my academic history offered me scholarship offers for doctoral programs from several prestigious US universities. UU., Including two Ivy Leagues.

I chose one of those two (Penn’s School of Medicine) where I studied and researched molecular biophysics. After a hard first semester where my grade point average was just 3.0, I quickly accelerated and accelerated all my courses after that.

He took the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) exam and completed the six sections.

How Do Top Students Study?

My last academic period was a full-time MBA in finance completed three years ago at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). My grades were decidedly low and I graduated in the bottom 5% of my MBA class.

 The irony of killing him in possibly the most difficult of all professional schools (medicine) and then at the bottom of the barrel in possibly the easiest of them (business).

Well, now because of the way I studied.

I did not like teaching in the classroom. Absolutely.

This was correct since I was a child. It wasn't that my teachers were terrible or something, most of them in my Jesuit school were competent and attentive. 

The fault was inside me, as I can't concentrate for more than 15-20 minutes in a row. My attention starts to wander, I start to scribble and all that. So the first time I could skip classes, I started doing it (medical school).

Do not try, it will not work for most. My physiology professor had said that in medical school while I skipped another lecture and studied alone in the library. How in the story of my classmates I had told the whole class about 100 students.

"I know that Wolf is not here in class, he is sitting somewhere reading alone. But please, do not try to do what he is doing. You do not understand that he will skip all these conferences and will still succeed in the exam. But if you try the same, you will go crazy. ”

I really wasn't exaggerating, that year I ranked first among all the schools. My teachers rarely like me, but I am deeply grateful that they have always respected me and some like him understood me, that I was not missing classes for lack of respect.

How Do Top Students Study?

I started memorizing unusually large amounts of information.

I got tired of wasting time with this notebook, that list of "possible questions" and what not. Then, confused and annoyed in equal parts, I said to myself "I am going to memorize the whole textbook from end to end. 

Really, why run drinking from all these small multiple streams when you can go to the fountain and swallow river below to stock them?

Again, I would worry about trying. This was a classic and quite fortuitous case of being able to achieve something that others think is almost impossible because you are too "fucking dumb" to realize that it cannot be done.

To say that it was laborious would be an understatement of some proportions! It really took me two years of painful repetition to develop my ability to memorize entire chapters and textbooks. 

I would memorize one sentence, then two, then repeat both, then repeat the paragraph, then the page and so on. You understand the idea, it was very slow at first. 

But I did very well after several thousand hours of doing it for a couple of years and then it turned out to be a great advantage. You spend that amount of time and master everything.

The irony was that the two subjects that I most emphasized in mathematics and physics were also those in which memorization is of little use.



 But that laborious experiment of unbearably developing a prodigious memory is still worth it to this day because it is not as if I read much more than other voracious readers, it is that I retain much larger amounts. 

I do not know, is that what I see or read sticks like a second nature. It is a gift that keeps on giving.

I was focused as if you just didn't believe it.

How Do Top Students Study?

The first two points can give the impression that I was doing all this effortlessly. Barely. He was so focused that he manifested himself as hostility to any disturbance or distraction while studying. 

It was well known in my family that you didn't want to visit or call me when I was at work. I would fire you or get angry. No one was exempt, not even the closest ones.

My closest friend still remembers how he came to see me one night, I half opened the door and said, "I'm busy. Go now and come another time. 

Then close the door. I didn't even do it for spite, it was just routine. How that level of intensity that I had was possibly unhealthy to the point that my parents took me to the child psychologist to really reject him because they feared he would crash and burn me.

I didn't reduce the intensity and I didn't fall.

All for the clock.

I used to tell my mother that it was the "tyranny of my watch." I had a schedule that controlled every hour of the day, planned every week to the smallest detail. 



It turned out in a lot of heartburn because obviously you can't control everything! But I kept doing it anyway, correctly assessing that if I even reached 80% of my time goals, I would lick the goal.

Again, my routine was very unorthodox. The best time of day for my study was morning. And I don't mean at 7 or 8 in the morning. 

When I was a school boy, I usually woke up around 5 a.m., but in medical school I started at 2 or 3 in the morning during the most intense periods, like the two months before the exams.

(Edit: Based on some comments here, people seem to have the impression that I say I woke up at 2 every day. It would be crazy. It was not conventional, but not a weirdo. No. qualified, this was reserved for the most intense periods).

But during those last 6-8 weeks before the big finals, I would return from school around 6, then I would have dinner at that time even before a retiree and go to bed at 8 p.m.

 Wake up around 2 or 3 a.m. and then continue until 8 a.m. 25–30 minutes at a time, then a five-minute break, then continue and so on.

Review, review, review

All the things I've mentioned so far would be largely useless for most people who read it, but this is an exception.

I discovered that rapid reinforcement was very powerful. What I mean by that is what you study during the week, check it first that weekend. Then, review everything done the previous three weekends on the last weekend of the month.



 It sticks like glue. Otherwise, it will not matter much what you study if you do not touch it at all for weeks or even months, you will not retain much. And focus less on trying to do it all the first time, instead of trying to finish the beast with a blow, it is much more effective to give several hits at intervals.

How Do Top Students Study?

I know that many of those who read this probably think that, for any interesting value, these "techniques" that I used will not be very replicable or useful. And they would be right.

But with all due respect, I didn't ask anyone how to do any of the above.

And although I can explain even complex concepts with elegance, a man like me is a poor teacher due to the lack of patience and a virtual inability to empathize or identify with the methods (and, therefore, the associated difficulties) of others.

My stupid clueless response used to be: "Why not memorize all those pages? ... And what do you mean you can't sleep four or five hours or wake up at 3 am? ... I did it, and you can and you will and you will! "

And I was not above psychologically demoralizing my opponents. In fact, I enjoyed it. It was fun for me to play with their heads.

I would freely give you all my carefully made notes in the sense of saying "Here you can have them. Then I know I will beat you anyway." In a world where everyone fiercely kept their shit, this son of a bitch who openly gave away his things was an expression of arrogance that confused them to the point of intimidating them.

Then, appear an hour before the exam and do nothing, since my competitors crowded like crazy. Approach them and ask them if they wanted coffee. It's not nice to see your opponent look so free to be bored while you're sweating bullets in those last minutes.

During the end of the second year of medical school, a child from another school told a friend of mine: "This guy wastes so much time that he will fail."

My friend had laughed and said, "He's going to sort first. He did it last time. And when it happens, remember that you heard it from me here first." I filed first and it appeared in the local newspaper.

From an early stage of life I realized that it was not conventional in more ways than one, how I would have to explore, discover and then forge my own methods.

And as extravagant or even crazy as my methods could be for many, they worked. At least for me.

Thanks For Reading

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How Do Top Students Study?