The study tip they’re NOT telling you | How I went from a 2:2 to 80% at Cambridge University

Hey guys! This video explains the changes I made to dramatically improve my grade at university, I studied Chemical Engineering and so my way of working was mainly suited to a mathematical based subject, but many points still stand for all subjects. I hope you find this video helpful. As always, let me know if you have any questions x

Some links to interesting reads regarding work hours:
How many hours a day can you effectively study?
Active vs Passive learning
4 Hours of Deep Work Each Day

Time Stamps:
00:00 Intro
00:52 Working Less
05:52 How much should you be doing?
07:49 Are notes really for you? (passive vs active learning)
09:46 How can you implement active learning?
13:30 How I used past papers effectively
16:26 Outro

My notion as a template (completely FREE) with some guidance on how to use it! Just click the link below, then click ‘duplicate’ in the top right hand corner- you can then edit the page as your own! Enjoy 🫶🏼

Who am I?
Hello, my name is Abbey, I'm 22 and have just graduated from the University of Cambridge after 4 years of studying Chemical Engineering. Join me as I navigate grad life, move to London and start my first corporate role.

Find me on:
Instagram: abbeyrobinss
TikTok: abbeyrobins

[llleiea]

My best tip (top of my class in Uni) would be to only write notes after the topic is understood. I needed some sort of notes to review from. But those where very concise, and only the bare minimum. (Studied mathematics) If for whatever reason I wrote notes before I understood smth, they where easily 10 times as long, and usually not very helpful. I was so bored writing them, and usually did not gain much insight

[justaname]

I hope many students hear this. I am a lecturer and there are so many students who are just focused on studying for its own sake, for the sake of passing exams. They completely forget that they're doing this to learn something new and develop their skills in a particular field.
The benefit of doing all that you said is that it turns you into a well-rounded person with deepened knowledge in Chemical Engineering. University is not about being a top studier and doing more hours than anybody else. It's about developing a true understanding of the matter.

[jazzeem]

I use a similar method, learning about 4 hours a day. As I'm learning programming, most of my learning comes hand-on. But I do forget what I learned a few days later. So I started doing active recalls. Before I start learning, I would go through what I learned the day before. This helps me a lot remembering that concept. Also, I do a weekly recall (on Sunday) to go through what I learned throughout the week. And, a monthly recall as well (last Sunday of the month). It's a really beneficial method.

[beamerz]

Active recall is key. When exams come around, you should not be rewriting your notes. Start answering questions and then you can use your notes to see if you might've missed getting full marks

[jaketogba]

Time balance: work vs study
Schedule Fun Activities/ Social life
Stop Note Taking
Active Learning: Attain massive resources, Derive, use, build links.
Writing Portion: Hight important parts. Write questions.
Continually review notes: reflect, compare, contrast, etc.
Past Papers: negate timed constraints. Spent hours thinking. Think deeply
Do not try to be perfect sturdier
Active recall
Have a social life
Create balance. Do not over work self.

[shrishtisingh]

I DID NOT EXPECT THIS VIDEO TO BE SO DETAILED. It's so analytical, and literally helps any and every type of student struggling with concentration and focus.
FIRST PERSON TO USE THE WORD "CHAOTIC" RATHER THAN "ORGANIZED" FOR A STUDY VIDEO ON THE INTERNET.
I feel so good hearing that I can be chaotic while learning and still score the grades I want. cause yall, ORGANIZED STUDYING is hella time consuming, it's so exhausting that, half of the time I avoid studying just to avoid making notes.

[adMR]

It’s very rare I comment on YouTube videos, despite being an avid user since 2013.

It’s even rarer that I find an individual’s channel wherein they take an honest and straightforward approach to “success”. No BS, no 14 hour study-with-me, no trying to tell you they are amazing and special because they work hard.

Just useful, accessible and healthy advice, a breath of fresh air far removed from the already bloated toxic productivity YouTube.

[Baraa.K.Mohammad]

I'm a medical graduate & I think that your tips are similar to ones I give to juniors and even myself when I lose my way during studying... Spending long time on "studying" is wrong, spending much more time processing what you've studied is ABSOLUTELY GAME-CHANGING.

When I study a topic I start with a technique: "expose" yourself to the material. Don't go gulping info all at once. Start just by quickly going over it. I've always found my brain to behave like a toddler or even a dog or a cat, lol! It LOVES tricks!
I gotta be honest, I'm someone who's easy to impress and who appreciates beauty and quality in anything.. but at the same time I lose interest just as fast! What happens is, when I go over the info that first time, I stumble upon some VERY CATCHY bits of info! These are the first to settle in inside my mind.. till this day I still think that most of the info I can easily recall are from this first pass. How do I know that these were definitely from that first pass. These are the bits which I can always remember even without any context! They just got stuck in!

Also, after that first pass, my mind still falls for even more tricks! This first quick read gives a boost to your confidence that the second time you go over it, It's like.. oh yeah I know this info.. I have been "exposed" to it! This confidence by itself tricks your mind into focusing more which is absolutely the reason this first quick pass was worth it even if you gained only a handful of concepts! You see, the biggest problem that makes studying a difficult task is that in your first read is: You are not focusing! You don't know what to focus on, because you don't know what's what and where to pay more attention and when you just need to skim through! You are "vulnerable"... You are sailing through rough seas. The only thing to ease this process is having some familiarity! It works tremendously! Even if it's a mere trick! And it's perfect for someone who's a junkie for sparkly impressive nuggets and at the same time gets bored quickly (You'll get them as soon as you could, and not much time spent digging).

I said that processing what you've studied is more important than studying... When I finish a topic I always grab a pen and write a short summary of that topic, always trying to subdivide it into many concepts. Then immediately I start taking every concept and trying to flip it around in my head and imagine a representative case scenario (clinical presentation / complication or whatever according to what fits with the concept) that I could face in practice or in tests!
Then I go solving questions, butchering concepts right and left... but acing much more in the process! The questions I get wrong I can now use to remember weak spots when I get back to study the material, and again just go over it without digging so deep! Try to summarize it or imagine it in suitable but DIFFERENT case scenario. Always modify the info and process it rather than go over it passively!

This helped me a lot in medschool! Spend more time on playing with your prototypes than collecting other people's artifacts! You'll spend less time reading and more time understanding and creating!



Now to be fair, Medicine is unique in that we can always learn using just one method that all medical exams around the world adopts: Clinical case scenarios... and we have an enormous amount of Qbanks to solve, so this method works best with medschool, but I believe the core concepts could be used with modifications in any other field as long as you have enough questions to keep solving, and a really good imagination to create problems and scenarios when these questions are not suitably structured for such method!

[audreystammers]

Metacognition is one of the most valuable learning strategies any student can develop. Abbey has described in a simple and concise way her tried and tested…and successful strategies for learning and retaining and retrieving information. This video will be invaluable for any student studying at any level. Thank you for sharing this.

[banepus]

Last semester, i sat almost every single day studying, but only 3-5 hours. I couldn’t do more, i felt ashamed sitting so little.
But i got almost straight A’s.
Point is, i did it often and looking back, effectively.
Thanks for great video, made me reflect on my own studying techniques!

[lilcoochievert]

THANK U FOR THIS a TikTok recommended this and I’m so glad I saw it

[bayleer]

I currently do this in medical school, learned the lesson about overstudying from the first semester. I am in a routine of waking up everyday to study/watch lectures in the morning. When I start to feel unproductive or fully saturated with information I stop, do anki review then enjoy the rest of my evening ~5 pm but depends on when I wake up. Some days I can study until late into the night, other days I barely study two hours. I assess how I feel and base how long I work on my capabilities for the day. You will learn the cues that your mind is drained. On those days I try to do something active :)

[totientquotient]

Second year mathmo here, also got 2:2 in first year.

You're right about note taking. I wasted so much time last year taking and maintaining a good set of notes - having realised that, I stopped doing so entirely this year. Most of our lecturers share their lecture notes with us. For those that don't, we could always find online notes shared by students and/or lecturers from the past couple of years (kudos to them for doing the hard work). I even stopped going to lectures entirely because most lecturers don't do much beyond regurgitating the lecture notes on the board, which I could instead just read them in 1/4 of the time. Saves me >10 hours a week.

Re: throwing yourself at questions with no time limit, I agree that it has its merits. However, I believe that this is also something that is way too romanticised. There are definitely far better things to do than wasting hours trying to figure things out on your own (often to no avail), especially if it's your first time tackling questions of a certain type. I personally found it more useful to look up hints and/or solutions the first few times I do a certain type of problem in order to familiarise myself with the kinds of techniques I am expected to employ. Then, and only then, do I stop looking things up and proceed to throw myself at questions. You don't have to reinvent the wheel - and indeed you shouldn't if time is of the essence; simply learning about how the wheel was invented and getting used to reproducing the process suffices for exam purposes.

I was all too guilty for buying into the faculty narrative last year. Cambridge is especially nasty in this regard because they barely teach any worked examples or problem-solving techniques - they like leaving them as exercises for the student to figure out on their own because we're supposedly "bright enough to do so given that we're at Cambridge". It took renowned mathematicians their life's work for the results we learn in lectures to come into fruition; why should we be expected to reproduce something of a similar calibre in the limited hours we have to do an example sheet? The faculty wouldn't stop stressing about how it's imperative that we try to figure everything out on our own, and they love making us feel guilty for not doing so. Yet none of the high-flying mathmo peers I know of has figured out substantial amounts of stuff on their own - their levels of skill are mostly built upon having seen plenty of similar solutions before. Having realised this, my life became so much easier in second year. At the very least, I'm not pointlessly wasting as much time as I did in first year.

[noortaiyeba]

note-taking is definitely effective for a lot of people especially from lectures. Even if i understand what the teacher is saying i am gonna forget it, and their will be no place to review and i will end up forgetting it

[oliviaj]

I did art at university and would always feel terrible that I generally only did 3-5 hours of work a day averaging 4. It felt and sounded unproductive, even a flatmate of mine complained to my friend how little work I did yet doing well. I did graduate with a first. Deep focus work being something you can only really do for 4 ish hours makes A LOT of sense to me. Art is so full on, every second has to be full focus and figuring out how best to do the piece of art is like a puzzle with no exact end. I agree with this video!

[katieoconnor]

I do 4 hours and that’s it!! I work from 6am-10am and then I stop!!! Even if I feel like I can do more I do not do it! I know personally that if I push it I will be unable to attain the same focus and interest the next day. It also helps me feel free for the rest of the day.

Sometimes (like yesterday) I’m not into it, I’m stressed or upset or overwhelmed etc. so I only worked two hours and I refuse to feel bad about it !!!! Refuse !!!!

[farid]

Another tip for successful learning is team work: find classmates who are just as dedicated as you are and study together (including challenging each other on respective premises for example).

[danthemaninapan]

I followed a very similar path! Did three years of Maths then a fourth year in Systems Biology at Cambridge (graduated in 2021).
1st year: 3
2nd year: 2:2
3rd year: 2:1
4th year: 1

For me, the lifesaver was Anki. It took me ages to figure things out, but by fourth year I was making flashcards every day during/after each lecture and studying them daily throughout the year so that by the time it came to exam season I already knew all the stuff and just had to practise the exam questions. (Trying to write a flashcard is a very good way of working out whether you actually understood what you just learned so it helps in the short term too!) Sounds intense but required fewer hours than what a lot of others might do

[soilgrasswaterair]

I’m studying law and the one thing many do not speak of is when you don’t pass a course, and have to keep up with the current course *while* you prepare yourself to do the failed course exam one more time (double the workload). Sometimes people might fail 2-3 exams, and have to keep up while preparing for the re-exams. Most study suggestions rely on everything working with zero bumps on the road. I failed myself and trying to work harder to not fail everything was the most tough thing I’ve ever done at university. My suggestion to get a hold of a situation like that is to make a new schedule so you can see clearly how to divide your time for the added tasks, contact the student counselor + the student health at your campus due to them being able to guide you so you don’t ruin your mental health. Physical activity is key to not feel too overwhelmed and to get an extra energy boost and a better focus.

*These tips in this video are great!* ❤ / Scandinavian

[TheSouthIsHot]

When I was studying for a professional exam, I quickly discovered that 5.5 hours of uninterrupted study was the limit for me. Any studying after 5.5 hours was causing unnecessary stress and brain death. I could tell my brain was just DONE for the day. Learning isn't the same as doing something hour after hour that we already know. We can't force our brains to "keep going" when we are learning. Once we reach our limit, it's time to switch to something that's fun and refreshing for our brains. Be kind to your brain!