The Cornell system was developed at Cornell University in the 1950s and it is still the best all-purpose note format I know, because it builds the review right into the page. Set up each sheet of paper like this:

How to use it:

1. Record. During the lecture, write in the notes column. Get the ideas down; don't try to write every word.
2. Reduce. As soon as you can afterward (same day, ideally), read your notes and write cues in the left column: key terms, and questions the notes answer. This is the step that separates students who remember from students who don't.
3. Recite. Cover the notes column with a sheet of paper and, looking only at the cues, say the answers out loud. Then uncover and check.
4. Reflect. Write the summary. Ask how this connects to last week.
5. Review. Spend ten minutes a week going through the cue columns of all your notes. Ten minutes. Weekly. By exam time you have already reviewed everything several times and you're not starting from zero.

Take notes on paper, by hand. Writing by hand is slower, which forces you to condense, and condensing is thinking.

Reading a textbook chapter the way you'd read a novel, front to back, once, is nearly useless; you reach the end and can't say what it was about. SQ3R is a method from the 1940s that turns reading into studying. The letters stand for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review.

It's slower than plain reading. It is much faster than reading a chapter three times because nothing stuck.

Every student who comes to the center convinced they "don't have time" gets the same assignment: fill out a week. A week has 168 hours. Here is how a typical one comes out when we actually count.

Twenty-seven free hours, with eight hours of sleep and thirty hours of studying. The time is there. What's missing is a plan for it, and the plan is the planner:

• Sunday night, fifteen minutes. Get a week-at-a-glance calendar (paper is fine; the bookstore sells them for $4). Write in every class, work shift, practice and meeting. These are fixed.
• Now schedule study blocks around them, and treat them like class: a 1-2 hour block has a course name on it and a place. "Tuesday 2-4, chemistry, 3rd floor library." Not "study sometime."
• Use the gaps. The hour between a 10:00 class and an 11:00 class is the most-wasted hour in college. That's your cue-column review time.
• Study the hard subject first, when you're fresh, and study a subject as soon as possible after its class, when the lecture is still warm.
• Fifty minutes on, ten off. Set a timer. Attention fades after about an hour, and the break is part of the method, not cheating on it.
• Write the due dates in, then work backward. A paper due the 20th gets "outline" on the 10th and "draft" on the 15th. Now there's no such thing as a surprise.
• Schedule the fun too. Friday night is Friday night. A planner that's all work gets abandoned by Wednesday.

The all-nighter is a college tradition and a terrible idea. Memory is consolidated during sleep; the night you stay up is the night you throw away most of what you crammed. Students who sleep before an exam outscore students who don't, and that is about as well-established a finding as we have. Here is what to do instead.

1. Start two weeks out. Make a list of every exam, its date, and what it covers. Put review blocks in the planner for every day of those two weeks, spread across courses. Spreading study out over days beats the same hours in one lump, every time; psychologists have known this for a century.
2. Review from your cue columns and your SQ3R questions, not by re-reading. Re-reading feels productive because the material looks familiar. Familiar is not the same as known. Cover, recite, check.
3. Get old exams if the professor makes them available, and take them under time pressure. Nothing predicts a test like a test.
4. Teach it. Explain the hardest topic to a roommate, a study partner, or the wall. If you can't explain it, you don't have it yet.
5. Study groups of three or four, once or twice a week, with a job for the meeting ("chapters 8-10, everyone brings five questions"). Larger than four, it's a party.
6. The night before: a light review of the cues, an early dinner, and eight hours of sleep. Lay out the pencils, calculator and ID. Set two alarms.
7. The morning of: eat breakfast. Arrive ten minutes early. Don't stand in the hall quizzing each other; that's where anxiety is caught.

And one caution from someone who has seen it every December: caffeine pills, ephedra and the rest do not make you smarter. They make you jittery, awake and sure you're doing well. Two out of three isn't good enough.

Some nervousness before a test is normal and even useful. Test anxiety is the version where your mind goes blank, your hands sweat, you read the same question four times and then remember all the answers in the hallway afterward. It is common, it is real, and it is manageable.

• The best cure is preparation. Most test anxiety is a reasonable response to not being ready. Everything above this section is the treatment.
• Breathe. Before you turn the test over: four slow breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth, counting to four each way. Your heart rate comes down and your thinking comes back. Do it again any time you feel the panic rising.
• Read every direction and every question all the way through before answering. Then do the easy ones first. Each answered question is evidence you know things, and evidence calms you down. Mark the hard ones and come back.
• If you blank, put your pencil down, breathe, and write anything you remember about the topic on scratch paper. Memory is a chain; one link pulls up the next.
• Watch your self-talk. "I'm going to fail" is not information, it's noise. Replace it with something true: "I studied this. I'll start with what I know."
• Afterward, don't compare answers in the hall. It never helps and it makes the next test worse.
• If it's severe, meaning it happens every time, it's affecting your grades, and preparation doesn't touch it, please go to your campus counseling center. They see this every week and have short, practical programs for it. There is no shame in it whatsoever.

The single biggest difference between the students who make it and those who don't is not intelligence. It's that the ones who make it ask for help early. Here is the rule: if you have been confused about something for a week, that's the signal. Not a month. Not after the midterm. A week.

• Office hours. Every professor posts hours each week when they sit in their office waiting for students, and most of that time they sit alone. Go. Bring a specific question ("I don't understand problem 14" beats "I don't get it"). Professors remember the students who come to office hours, and it matters in April when you need a letter or a break.
• Tutoring. Most campuses offer free tutoring, usually through a learning center like mine, in math, science, languages and writing. Tutors are students who did well in the course. It's not remedial; our strongest students use it most.
• The writing center. Bring any paper at any stage, from "I have a topic and dread" to a finished draft. They won't fix it for you; they'll show you how to fix it, which is better.
• Your academic advisor for anything about your schedule, your major, dropping a course (there is a deadline, and it matters), or whether you're on track.
• The counseling center for anything that isn't about the coursework: homesickness, sleep, anxiety, a roommate situation, anything. It's confidential and usually free.
• The disability services office if you have or suspect a learning disability, attention deficit, or anything else that affects how you learn. Accommodations such as extended test time are your right, but you must ask.

Parents reading this: you can't make the appointment for them, but you can ask, every phone call, "Have you been to office hours yet?"

For students at our university: all workshops are free, 50 minutes, in the Learning Center on the lower level of the library. No sign-up needed; just come. Bring your planner and a pen.

The center's regular hours are Monday-Thursday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday 9 to 5, and Sunday 2 to 9 p.m. Walk-in tutoring in math and writing is available all of those hours. We'll be open extra hours during finals week, December 13-17.