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Cramming Doesn't Work: How To Optimize Study Time
It's exam season...so what's a research-backed way to study?
Almost every student has tried cramming at least once: staying up until 2 a.m. the night before a big test, fueled by caffeine and anxiety, trying to take in as much information as possible.
Unfortunately, the research is clear: cramming doesn't work.
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Unfortunately, the research is clear: cramming doesn't work.
Sure, you might pass the test tomorrow. But if you try to recall the material a week later, you'll probably find most of it has vanished, because the neural pathways you threw together during your study binge were never built to stick. The goal of school should be to build learning that lasts. So how can you do that?
Know Your Brain's Limits
Know Your Brain's Limits
Let's start with a key concept called cognitive load theory, developed by educational psychologist John Sweller in the late 1980s. The basic idea of CLT is simple: your working memory—the part of your brain that temporarily holds information while you're actively using it—has limited capacity.
When students are hit with too much new or complex information at once, their working memory gets overwhelmed. As a result, they can't process the information deeply enough to transfer it into long-term storage.
Brains in pain cannot retain.
This is why cramming doesn't translate to true long-term understanding, and it's also why mountains of homework and information-dense lectures often fail to ingrain new information. These educational practices are working against the brain's natural architecture.
These strategies work with the brain's natural processes rather than against them, unlike cramming.
Final Thoughts & Key Takeaways
- Cramming for an exam is not an optimal strategy for long-term understanding.
- Stress is a major obstacle to learning, so keep that in mind when considering your study strategy and learning environment. A brain in pain cannot retain.
- Studying in small amounts, spaced out at regular intervals, is more effective than one long binge.
- Every time you pull out information you've learned, the more you are ingraining it into your mind. Push yourself to study with practice problems and other tools that force you to retrieve information rather than just passively reading notes or watching a YouTube video.
There's still time to come up with a strong, research-backed study strategy and ace that exam...good luck!
Want to learn more about how to hack your brain for optimal learning? Curious about what a school devoted to mind-brain education looks like? Check out our free ebook: Academic Rigor: The MVS Way.
Brains in pain cannot retain.
This is why cramming doesn't translate to true long-term understanding, and it's also why mountains of homework and information-dense lectures often fail to ingrain new information. These educational practices are working against the brain's natural architecture.
So, what works?
Neuroscience and cognitive psychology gives clear guidance on what actually promotes lasting learning. Two strategies stand out:
Spaced Repetition
Instead of studying everything once in a massive session, research shows that revisiting material over increasing intervals (say one day, then three days, then a week, and so on) creates far stronger memories. Each time you return to the material, you reactivate those neural pathways and make them more robust.
Retrieval Practice
Testing yourself—actually pulling information out of your memory rather than passively reviewing it—is one of the most powerful learning strategies there is. Every time you successfully retrieve information, you strengthen the pathway to that knowledge. This is why doing practice tests s often works better than rereading notes.
These strategies work with the brain's natural processes rather than against them, unlike cramming.
Final Thoughts & Key Takeaways
- Cramming for an exam is not an optimal strategy for long-term understanding.
- Stress is a major obstacle to learning, so keep that in mind when considering your study strategy and learning environment. A brain in pain cannot retain.
- Studying in small amounts, spaced out at regular intervals, is more effective than one long binge.
- Every time you pull out information you've learned, the more you are ingraining it into your mind. Push yourself to study with practice problems and other tools that force you to retrieve information rather than just passively reading notes or watching a YouTube video.
There's still time to come up with a strong, research-backed study strategy and ace that exam...good luck!
Want to learn more about how to hack your brain for optimal learning? Curious about what a school devoted to mind-brain education looks like? Check out our free ebook: Academic Rigor: The MVS Way.
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