Learn how to be a straight-A student in 4 minutes2 min read

The launch of the Straight-A Student Operating System (​Straight-A OS​), is coming up!

I was a B/C student in high school, but after implementing these strategies, I got straight A’s, scored in the top 3% of my peers (in medical school), matched into a top residency program, and have never gotten less than 90% on exams.

Today, I will show you how to get easy A’s in less than 4 minutes.

In a world of fancy study techniques, paid resources, and constant subscriptions, it seems you have to constantly follow what’s “new” to study correctly.

However, the fads never work in the long run.

There are really only three major steps to getting better grades (forever) and it will:

• Save you 10+ hours per week
• Usually increase your grades by 10%
• Build the tools to succeed at anything in life

1 study method executed correctly is better than 100 study methods executed poorly.

This issue will have zero hacks or brand-new tricks, just the stuff that actually works.

Step 1: Eliminate low-efficiency strategies.

There are strategies that the evidence doesn’t support. Simply put, 10s of studies, looking at 1000s of people, have shown that these techniques are wasting time and lowering your score:

• Highlighting
• Underlining
• Summarizing
• Rereading

Eliminate these and you will find yourself with some new time to start a new (better) studying method.

Step 2: Use Evidence-Based Techniques

I am going to dive very deep into this on the SA-OS, but for now, there are methods tried and tested that help people score better.

However, you need to understand the content before using it. That’s where most people mess up.

1. Understand the content (through 3rd party videos, reading only once, lecture materials, or having a friend teach you).
2. STOP, don’t move until you understand it; practice the Feynman Technique. Could you explain it to a 10-year-old so they would understand it?
3. Now, when you smash that info into your brain, always use active recall which is something like flashcards or practice questions.
4. Practice questions are the best bang for your buck. The more practice questions you do, the higher you will score.
5. Make sure you review information at even intervals. Spaced repetition is how to do this.
6. PLAN your studying. Without it, you will be studying like a chicken with its head cut off. That means no brain.

Step 3: Improve Your Health (or all of the above will fail)

This is the most commonly skipped out step.

Guess what, it’s the most important.

Sleep, exercise, environment, and mindset will help you beat 99% of people.

People who don’t sleep properly perform similarly to drunk people.

They always score lower.

They retain information worse than anyone else.

That’s it!

Hope you enjoyed it! I wish someone told me this at the beginning of high school.