Uni Study Tips

[kenhung123]

Hey guys,

Lots of people on here including myself would soon start school in a completely new environment. In order to get myself prepared I hope I can get some advice as to how to get organised with assignments, tests and the exam. As in VCE I personally learnt the basic theory and then went straight into questions from textbooks, study guides or exams. However, I am not sure if that is the case for uni anymore. If anyone has some advice as to how to prepare your help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

[Russ]

What course and/or subjects because I can only speak for science

[Eriny]

Studying for uni is necessarily very different from studying in high school because in high school you can realistically learn the entire syllabus by heart if you want. Yet, sometimes a whole semester of high school will be covered in greater detail in the first two weeks in the course at university. You can't possibly memorise every figure or entire definitions of everything. I find it helpful to make sure I understand all the concepts and everything that was covered in class and then pick out what seems to be the main themes of the course and study what is most relevant to that. Sometimes examiners do surprise you and have an exam question about some footnote from the lecture of week three, but this is really quite rare, usually they'll test on what seems to be the main points of the class.

[kenhung123]

What course and/or subjects because I can only speak for science

I guess any science subjects in general in particular chemistry

[kenhung123]

Studying for uni is necessarily very different from studying in high school because in high school you can realistically learn the entire syllabus by heart if you want. Yet, sometimes a whole semester of high school will be covered in greater detail in the first two weeks in the course at university. You can't possibly memorise every figure or entire definitions of everything. I find it helpful to make sure I understand all the concepts and everything that was covered in class and then pick out what seems to be the main themes of the course and study what is most relevant to that. Sometimes examiners do surprise you and have an exam question about some footnote from the lecture of week three, but this is really quite rare, usually they'll test on what seems to be the main points of the class.

So Uni is more about learning the key concepts and not every fine detail in the course?
And does that mean there is no longer practice exams and questions as much and mainly understanding concepts only?

[transgression]

cram a week before exams

[Eriny]

Studying for uni is necessarily very different from studying in high school because in high school you can realistically learn the entire syllabus by heart if you want. Yet, sometimes a whole semester of high school will be covered in greater detail in the first two weeks in the course at university. You can't possibly memorise every figure or entire definitions of everything. I find it helpful to make sure I understand all the concepts and everything that was covered in class and then pick out what seems to be the main themes of the course and study what is most relevant to that. Sometimes examiners do surprise you and have an exam question about some footnote from the lecture of week three, but this is really quite rare, usually they'll test on what seems to be the main points of the class.

So Uni is more about learning the key concepts and not every fine detail in the course?
And does that mean there is no longer practice exams and questions as much and mainly understanding concepts only?

It depends on the subject, but by and large, examiners seem to be more interested in seeing that you understand key concepts rather than you've memorised everything the lecturer has ever said. In any case, because the latter would be very difficult if not impossible, the best you can do to prepare is really understanding those key concepts.

[IntoTheNewWorld]

I've found that the biggest difference from VCE is that the exams are pretty much the same as the tute questions, and match the lecture material almost exactly, whereas in VCE if you were pretty good at doing textbook questions, it didn't mean that you could do well in the exam, but in my uni subjects if you knew how to do all the tute qns the exam is pretty much the same.

[kenhung123]

Oh so the study material is mainly in lecture/tute notes and not in the textbook.

[TrueLight]

yep^... sometimes you get prac exams but yeah exam is whats covered in lectures but if you want to impress the examiners then maybe the more detailed textbook explanation would be good to know

[Russ]

Oh so the study material is mainly in lecture/tute notes and not in the textbook.

Lecture notes, there generally aren't tute notes as such. The textbook is basically for finding out something that isn't explained in a lecture or for checking material etc.

The way I studied for my subjects was as follows: print off the lecture notes and take them to lectures to annotate. I annotated really heavily when it was required, it depends on the sort of lecture notes you get (I attached examples of the two extremes). That's just to make sure that I had all of the information required. Nobody can just turn up to a lecture, listen and then get good marks on the exam because there's just too much detail being presented too fast.

So I'd take the notes home and start writing them up in an A4 book. Heading (lecture one etc.) and then go through each slide writing out the information on it, making notes of what was important for the exam etc. It was really important that I did this during semester, starting straight away. That way, when I had a mid semester exam I was prepared and already had revision material. At the end of semester, in SWOTVAC, I'd finish those books because I invariably fell behind. For my 6 lecture a week subject I was playing catchup by about 7 or 8 lectures.

Usually took me ~90 minutes to get down all the detail I needed for a single 1 hour lecture (some are way shorter, some way longer). So if I have 9 lectures a week, that's about 13 hours outside uni studying, which is perfectly manageable.

[rustic_metal]

2 days before an exam I go through all of the lecture slides and make detailed notes in a book. The day before the exam I do practise questions. 10 minutes after an exam I'm in the pub.

[Russ]

2 days before an exam I go through all of the lecture slides and make detailed notes in a book. The day before the exam I do practise questions. 10 minutes after an exam I'm in the pub.

I managed to get to end of exams celebration before the finish time of my final exam last semester

[gemgem49]

Is there a program that allows you to make lecture notes available on blackboard into that sheet print outs that have spaces next to the slides to write notes? I hope someone knows what I mean...

I'd like to change my ~learning style~ this semester. Previously I would download the lecture slides so I could refer to them during the lecture in case the lecturer went too quickly or I missed a detail like a name or something, but write my own notes on my macbook during lectures, then condense them in a book each week as a summary. I think it might be easier to work with my notes AND the lecture slides at once rather than two different things.... bah I don't know if I am making sense but yes program that does this? (free and available for mac)?

[rustic_metal]

You can print out slides with lines next to them on powerpoint.

As for all that...don't bother. You'll probably be way too busy to make annotations AND take notes AND make summaries every week AND make them into a book.

(to nobody in particular:)

Uni study guide:

DURING SEMESTER:
- Go to as many classes as you can
- Make sure you understand the content so that when you read back over the slides come exam time, you won't be completely lost.
- Do practise questions regularly (as you cover the relevant content).
SWOTVAC:
- Go through all of your lecture notes for the next subject and make a detailed summary from start to finish
- Do practise questions up to the afternoon before your exam
- Do last year's exam in the evening.
- Rinse and repeat for each exam.

If you do all that you'll be well ahead of most students and tearing it up. You'll be that busy in uni that you won't have time for anything more and will just mess yourself up by wasting time at the start trying to hold yourself to strict study techniques/routines.