What Separates the Top 1% of Students and What You can Learn from Them

What Separates the Top 1% of Students and What You can Learn from Them

Picture this. You’re in college. You’ve been working hard, putting in the hours, and studying until your eyes fall out – and yet, you’re still getting average marks on all your exams. Meanwhile, Einstein over there is getting near-perfect scores. How is he doing it? Does he have some sort of X factor that you don’t? Or maybe he was just born smart.

Not quite, and here’s why.

A common misconception is that to be a top student, you must be inherently smart. While intelligence does help, most people have the potential to become top students – it’s just a matter of applying themselves in the right ways. Here’s what separates the top students from the rest of the pack, and what you can do to become a top student yourself.

1 | Ability to Reflect and Adapt

First, top students are able to reflect and adapt their approach to studying depending on the class or type of material they’re learning.

We’ve all heard the saying, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” That being said, it can often be difficult to realize when you’re making the same mistakes over and over again in your own life.

When students don’t do as well as they want to on an exam, they often conclude that they just didn’t study enough. So what do they do next time? They study longer and try to brute force their way through. Although this might work for a while, there will eventually come a time when it stops working – and when that happens, these students plateau.

What makes top students different is that they don’t try to force their way through by studying longer and longer. They reflect on their study strategies and adapt.

Top students understand that you have to refine your approach on a subject-by-subject, class-by-class basis. For example, subjects like history and biology tend to be more memorization-heavy, so strategies such as flashcards and spaced repetition work well. For subjects like chemistry or physics, however, it is often better to work through practice problems instead.

2 | Time Management & Efficiency

Next, top students are better at managing their time.

People often think that to be at the top of your class you need to be a slave to your schedule and spend 12 hours a day, 7 days a week studying – never taking time to relax or enjoy yourself. It’s actually quite the contrary. There are diminishing returns the longer you work on a given day.

Paradoxically, to achieve the highest degrees of productivity, you must plan time away from your work – and the top students know this.

Top students understand that sustainability is the name of the game. Studying 12 hours a day, every day, and prioritizing school over all else in your life is a sure-fire way to burn out. To get straight A’s and crush your exams, your mind has to be operating at full capacity. This simply isn’t possible if you never give yourself the chance to recharge. The question then, is how do you balance studying and relaxation? The answer is by being intentional with your time.

If you set aside two hours to study, be sure to focus and study. But if you set aside two hours to spend time with family or friends, be fully present and enjoy yourself. There’s no point in trying to combine work and play. You end up not getting much done and not feeling refreshed in the end.

In addition to being intentional with their time, top students are also more efficient with their time. They understand that the goal of studying isn’t to see who can spend the longest time staring into a textbook, it’s to learn.

If you want to be efficient with your time, your goal should be to squeeze the most amount of learning into the least amount of time. You do this by focusing on active instead of passive learning strategies.

The default strategy that nearly all students employ is passive learning. This includes reading through notes, highlighting textbooks, and listening to lectures on repeat. The issue with these strategies isn’t that it’s impossible to learn by doing them, it’s that they are highly inefficient. The reason that we default to them, however, is that they are often easier, require less effort, and overall feel more comfortable.

Active learning, on the other hand, is more challenging, less comfortable, but much more effective. Active learning strategies include things like active recall in the form of flashcards, condensing notes into summary sheets, or going through practice questions.

The key takeaway is that you shouldn’t just look at how many hours you’re studying. You need to also consider how much you’re learning in those hours and try to get the most bang for your buck with your study strategies.

 

3 | Willingness to Invest in Themselves

Lastly, top students know the importance of investing in themselves – both in terms of their time and their money.

Just as people invest in the stock market to get a return on their investment, investing in yourself can have a significantly higher ROI (Return on Investment).

Let’s start with investing in yourself from a time perspective. Top students know that in order to perform optimally, you need to start by taking care of your body and your mind – and the only way to do this is to make your health a priority and actively set aside time for it. 95% of your performance comes down to three pillars: sleep, nutrition, and exercise. If any one of these is out of balance, then you won’t be able to function at the top of your game.

Top students make their health a priority. They make time for sleep, exercise, and nutrition to ensure they’re functioning optimally. Skipping meals, opting for convenient but unhealthy foods, skipping exercise, and not sleeping enough are all habits that may work in the short term, but long term they will severely limit your potential. Schedule time for exercise daily – make it a routine. Plan out your meals to make sure you always have healthy food accessible to you. And make sure you get enough sleep.

In terms of investing in yourself from a financial perspective, top students aren’t afraid to invest extra money into their education. I am a strong believer in that your finances should reflect your priorities. If I look at your bank statements, I should be able to clearly see what your priorities are.

In today’s day and age, education is absurdly expensive, and it can be difficult to bring yourself to spend a dime more on your education. I get it. I didn’t come from a privileged background. But even still, my family always reminded me that my education is a priority not to be taken lightly.

Whether it is spending the extra money to live closer to school so you don’t burden yourself with a long commute, purchasing extra study materials, or hiring a tutor, spending a little bit more on your education can be one of the best investments you ever make.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check my article on Why You’re Not a Straight-A Student (& How to Become One) Click here 👉 : http://novakidhs.blogspot.com/2022/09/why-youre-not-straight-student-how-to.html

Or, check out the whole series on tips and tricks to be the best version of yourself! Click here 👉: https://novakidhs.blogspot.com/p/be-best-version-of-yourself.html

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