Get the latest in advice and commentary regarding how best to prepare for standardized tests from the learning experts at Brainscape!
Guest Post by Robert Blakey:
Take a sugar capsule which is labelled and marketed as a proven treatment and you may recover from an illness – that’s the traditional placebo effect. Take on the belief that a test’s answers are being displayed subliminally and your test score may improve – that’s the new drug-free placebo effect demonstrated by Ulrich Weger and Stephen Loughnan in a paper published this March. (more…)
You may think your planned-down-to-the-second study schedule and a 4-pack of energy drink are all you need to ace your finals, but have you considered how you can optimize your body just as well? In fact, if you’re not preparing your body for final exams, your brain isn’t going to perform as well as it should!
To get your body and mind on the right path to optimized final exam performance, here are three things you can start doing NOW: (more…)
The nearer a deadline looms or the closer we get to the date of an important exam (finals week, anyone?), the higher our stress levels rise. Instead of channeling this stress into any kind of productivity, we often only stress more by worrying about possible failure. Not what we need.
There are many tips and tricks out there to help you increase your productivity, learn more efficiently and manage your time. Some can prove successful once you find out what suits your needs and your situation. However, no method will ever help in the long run if you are stressed out while working.
Step 1 towards creating an ideal environment for effective learning should therefore always be detecting and eliminating stress factors. (more…)
As a student or teacher using our platform, you may already know that Brainscape has some great new content / apps available for the coming AP exams. What you may not know is that we’re looking for your expert help as we work to complete other AP subjects and enhance existing ones quickly before May!
While no review book or app can replace a year of solid effort in your AP class (even ours that we are very proud of!), we can be a great supplement to students’ final preparation for the exam. And expert eyes from the best AP teachers and students will help us make some final adjustments to our content before test day. If you think you could help — or just want to try a free demo of our content, read on! (more…)
Guest Post from Sam Seidenberg:
Have your finals week dreams of being caught pantless in the classroom of the one exam you forgot to study for have finally been replaced by dreams of reindeer-meat latkes sizzling in the kitchen and sugar plum rabbis doing the hora around a dreidel-adorned Christmas tree?
Then it would seem that winter break has arrived.
Guest Post from Sam Seidenberg:
Alain de Botton is a Swiss writer, entrepreneur, and longtime proponent of the relevance and practical benefits of philosophy. He is the author of several bestsellers, including How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy, Status Anxiety, and The Architecture of Happiness. In his latest work, Religion for Atheists, de Botton argues that while the mystical aspects of religion may be false, religions still have useful features that secular society would benefit from appropriating.
Why, you ask, is this book being featured on a blog about brains and studying? Well, here at Brainscape, we’re also very interested in the future of education, and de Botton renders an intriguing portrayal of a University of the future in the Education chapter of Religion for Atheists.
Guest post by Edward Haines:
Preparing for the SAT is tough, not only because of the test itself, but because most students are over scheduled with classwork, activities, maybe music, work and/or sports as well.
Those who are involved in sports realize the value of good coaching and advice on how to train. When it comes to training to improve SAT skills, a little of the right advice goes a long way. (more…)
Where has the summer gone? It’s already time to head back to school! Some of you might not be ready to start school again, but it’s never too early to prepare yourself for the upcoming school year. Before you’re overwhelmed by class assignments and extracurricular activities, take a look at these 4 Back to School Tips so you can return to school organized and prepared to excel. (more…)
I can’t begin to tell you how many emails I’ve gotten this summer inviting me to a meeting at, say, “3pm EST.” WTF? Our education system has failed us! At what point in the first grade did we forget to teach kids proper time-zone terminology? (Don’t worry, it happened to me, too.)
For those of you who, like me, were never taught the proper difference, let me indulge you: EST stands for Eastern Standard Time, while EDT stands for Eastern Daylight Time. BOOM. You say EST for six months of the year, and EDT for six months of the year. During the months of Daylight Savings Time, the abbreviation EST does not even exist.
Please stop making this mistake. Or, if you want to make life even simpler, just say ET (Eastern Time). This, too, is perfectly acceptable.
Thanks. Rant over.
There is much to be said on the topic of how to create strong and efficient flashcards. After all, that is the whole point of this website. But we need to start somewhere, and what better way to begin than by giving you the ultimate guide to creating something truly useful and valuable.
So without further ado, here are 5 golden rules to help you get the most out of your flashcards. (more…)
