The Key to Your Academic Comeback: Top Three Self-Studying Strategies For Success

There are many students who often lose their minds wondering why despite going to so many tuitions or formal coaching classes, they are unable to score good marks - and that’s because the secret to scoring marks does not lie on the quantity of classes you attend, but on the quality of self-studying you do. No amount of tuitions can compensate for the hours you put in studying a subject matter by yourself, however, it is important to understand how to self-study in order to maximise your productivity and achieve the best outcomes in minimum time. So, after one entire year of self-studying and trying out different strategies, here are the three best methods which helped me score in the top percentile without any formal coaching or classes. 

The Question Bank Strategy

I’ve always been the student with the most meticulous and detailed notes for every chapter and I remember at the start of year, I would spend two to three days just finishing my notes for each chapter. And while those notes did help me a lot throughout the year, this strategy, as I soon realised, wasn’t sustainable because eventually, the speed of teaching increased and my notes and I started lagging behind. 

In such a case, it’s important to change strategies as soon as possible and try to cover up without compromising the quality of your studying. So, instead of making long, handwritten notes, I started creating question banks. I would divide a chapter into a few topics and just skim through them once after which I would start writing questions of my own. This strategy is not only very time-effective, but it is also very, very useful when you are completely burned out and the topic is really theoretical. Plus, it helps you to indirectly incorporate the active recall method in your studying which is scientifically proven to be one of the best strategies. For instance, after finishing a question bank for one topic, I would look at five questions, read their answers and then go through them again while trying to actively recall the answers that I read. 

The Gen-Z Strategy

Ninety-percent of my studying this year has been through YouTube. There was a point when my entire feed was filled with Physics Wallah videos and Khan Academy recommendations. Most people think that studying from videos is a waste of time as sometimes there is either excessive information or not enough information but that’s because you don’t know how to search for the right video. But if you, like me, do know about the best channels for each subject then you need to start utilising them now. 

I remember, the night before my maths final exam, I had been studying for nine hours almost without a break and I was completely drained out, but I still had two more chapters left to do which were worth eight marks in total. They were pretty insignificant chapters and were easy enough except a few questions here and there, but I needed to study them at least once. So, what I did is that I found a one-shot video which not only covered the major content but also solved all the important questions and that is the only reason why I was able to score those eight marks. Believe me, watching a video and trusting that at least some information is going into your brain is way better than staring at a book when you are completely burned out and then skipping the topic altogether.

The Physics Teacher Strategy

On the day of my finals result, my Physics teacher told us something that I will never forget. 

“In the future, you will solve thousands of questions from different sources and reference books, but when the time comes, in the Physics paper, you will always see a question which you’ve never seen before.”

This despressingly motivating statement helped me understand that studying the theory and understanding the concept will only take you so far because honestly, you will never fully understand a concept unless you solve questions on it. I’ve always been a fan of theory; I can study a chapter endless times but tell me to solve the numericals instead and suddenly I’ll start hating the subject. But you can only reach a certain level of marks unless and until you solve as many questions as you can - whether that be theoretical or numerical questions. Even if you don’t have enough time to solve them, at least look at their answer once and try to understand it. This strategy might not work for your Physics paper, but it will work for all other subjects (especially Maths).