Now that the school year is only a week or so away, I’d thought I’d let you in on a few studying secrets that I’ve come across to help you during the year. Do you have trouble studying? If so, this is the post for you.

Anki

I’ve mentioned Anki before in a prior post about learning languages. Not only is Anki great for that, but it’s also great for studying for the alphabet soup of tests (SAT, ACT, LSAT, GMAT, etc.) you may be taking soon. There’s an app available for the Android (Free) and Iphone (24.99). While there’s a similar app in the Apple App store which is free, it won’t sync your decks across your devices. Other than that. it works just as well.

Like a brand new Xbox, it’s great and exciting but kind of useless without games.

Anki calls their flashcards ‘Decks’. Want to know where they are? Click here to take a look. And search with the search bar on the top right-hand corner. You should be able to find what you’re looking for.

Studying for the SATs? Click here to look and see what’s available. Also helpful for students taking the SAT: PWNtheSAT for Math and Khan Academy’s free interactive tests on the SAT. Erikthered is a Physics and Math Teacher in New Jersey that has a great list of resources for the Math SATs.

These apps are effective because they use spaced repetition to help you study better. Have you ever crammed all night, only to sit for the test and remember barely anything you just studied? I have, and it’s not a great feeling. Anki helps avoid that…assuming you use it, of course.

Memrise

Don’t like the bare-bones minimalism of Anki? Memrise has a nicer layout and a different community of contributors. It’s handy for people in Nursing School who need to memorize human anatomy and physiology.

Forest

Do you constantly check your Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. while studying? There’s an app called Forest (.99 in the app store): By keeping the app open, a tree will start to grow every half hour. If you leave the app, the tree dies and you have to start over. The more trees you plant, the bigger your forest is. It’s supposed to help you stay productive and off your phone while studying: It’s currently the top app in productivity in over 85 countries.

Pro Tip (Not an app. This is an actual tip)

When you get a new notebook, leave the first few pages blank. Name the first page “Table of Contents”. As you fill your notebook, go back to your table of contents and begin to fill it out according to what you were learning and what page it’s on. Simple way to refer back to your notes for a test!

How to take notes:

If you are a Tumblr person, this is a post on how to take notes from a Textbook.

If you can take notes electronically, Boston College has a nice page on how to do so and a few apps you can use to annotate pdfs. 

Interactive Group Studying:

Aside from the Reddit MCAT Skype Study Group, I didn’t find any established and/or ongoing Skype study groups. Maybe you know of some? I’d love to know! Here are just a few tips for better online collaborative learning:

• Using Dropbox with a group of your friends/co-workers to look over each other’s work.
• Google Hangouts can hold a 10-person video hangout. So no need to worry about transportation if you want to study together.

Good luck!