Throughout your college career, you’ll be responsible for completing a lot of different types of “assessments”: pre-quizzes, essays, group projects, tests, exams, etc. Teachers assign these in order to mark your learning. In order to prepare for these assessments, it’s important that you study—and study effectively.

Marcel is just starting his freshman year of college. He knows he has to study in order to get good grades, but he finds himself pushing off his homework until the last minute. Marcel rarely completes his reading assignments—even when he doesn’t understand the material discussed in class. As the semester goes on, he finds himself doing multi-hour cram session right before each test starts, hoping he’ll retain the material at least as long as it takes to complete the test.

Can you identify the problems in Marcel’s study habits? More importantly, can you identify any more effective strategies he might implement?

In this section, we’ll learn how to effectively prepare for different assignments as they come, as well as how to use your results to shape your later studies.