The first step towards excelling in academics is taking clear and extensive notes. Taking notes properly and strategically can be an important step in scoring well on your exams. Here are the note taking tips I find the most helpful.

Handwritten vs. Typed

Hand-written notes can be more effective than typing them on your laptop or tablet. Students tend to retain more if they handwrite their notes. Try handwriting notes in class and then organizing and typing them as a follow-up. Properly organized and maintained notes will definitely reduce the amount of time you require to prepare for your exams.

Maintain Notes

Scoring well on your exams is not hard at all if you maintain your notes well throughout the semester. I really like to keep my notes in an organized fashion. I always date my notes so that I can easily look back on them and find out what was taught on that day. After I am done with one chapter I leave one-page blank so that when I read the textbook and find something important I can jot it down easily with my notes.

Highlight examples

Professors tend to give a lot of examples to help illustrate concepts. I highlight all of them in circles or boxes. This really helps me to recall how the professor explained that particular topic. Moreover, those examples usually appear in a few questions on the exam. This is one of the most important note taking pieces of advice I firmly believe.

Pool notes with a study group

And finally when the exams are round the corner, I make a study group with my friends. We all pool our notes together and see if there is anything we have missed. We discuss the notes in detail. That helps everyone prepare.

I believe using a very organized fashion to note taking correlates with higher exam scores. What do you think? Is handwritten better than typing notes? Do you have study groups to help prepare for exams? What about including the professors examples  – is that helpful to you? Please share your note taking advice, when retweeting my blog!