11 Biggest Mistakes Students Make | Tips for Students

This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one of them, I will receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). I only ever recommend products that I have personally used and loved. Thank you for your support!

Being a student is all about growing, both yourself and your knowledge. Here are 11 mistakes students make that you should avoid. 

Most of us spend the majority of the first few decades of our life being students. The following tips and my other content will help you to make the most out of that time. 

Read also: 11 Tips to Study Effectively | How I Study for Law Exams

Read also: How to Stay Calm During Finals | 11 Tips to Confidently Ace your Exams

1. Attending lectures that don’t help you out of FOMO

I get it; group pressure is powerful. It is even worse when people outside that group encourage you to follow along. 

Of course, teachers and students are right when they say that lectures and classes are valuable. 

However, the question you should ask yourself is whether they are more valuable than alternative study methods. 

Say you have a lecturer that is just terrible at interestingly conveying the material. Consequently, you always dose off 10 minutes into the lecture, and between daydreaming, you can’t remember what it even was about. 

In that case, you might save yourself time by ditching the lecture and using a podcast or just reading the material in a book. 

In my experience, there rarely is a lack of information at hand. You can learn the same topic from countless sources, so why force yourself to rely on an ineffective one?

Of course, sometimes the classes require attendance. In that case, you simply have to try and make the best out of it.

2. Creating aesthetic summaries without actually using them

I know, study inspo is awesome. 

Nothing is quite as motivating as seeing aesthetic notes and café study sessions on Instagram and Pinterest. 

I also know many students that swear by learning through making summaries of the material. 

Personally, I’ve discovered that the effort/results ratio of creating these summaries is not worth it for me. 

I don’t learn much through copying or rearranging information. 

Instead, I learned to make this preparational phase of studying as quick as possible to get into the real study phase faster. 

Nowadays, I don’t even bother copying the relevant information onto my flashcards. Instead, I simply reference the place where I can find the information. 

3. Studying through reading instead of creating

Many A-students swear that using active recall is the most effective study technique while reading and highlighting are fairly ineffective. 

Think of it as a workout. If you want to grow strong biceps, what kind of exercise would you choose? 

a. lifting a 1kg weight 200 times while watching Netflix

or

b. lifting a 5kg weight 40 times with the utmost focus on your posture. 

The exercise that makes you break out in a sweat and shake will bring results much quicker than what feels comfortable to do. 

Similarly, the comfortable reading and highlighting are much less effective than the mentally exhausting and frustrating remembering of the answer before checking the solution. 

If you have all the time in the world, you can go for what’s comfortable. 

But if you are on a time limit with a bunch of information to get into your brain and want better grades by studying less, you need to increase the intensity of your study sessions. 

4. Not taking advantage of former tests and exams

One of the best ways to prepare for a test is by analyzing and solving the tests of the previous years/semesters. 

I’ve made the experience that this can be valuable even if you don’t have the solutions for the questions. 

It already helps to see which questions you are struggling to answer and what kind of information your teacher/professor is quizzing you on. 

Always try to get hold of these tests. Sometimes, the professor even offers them freely; other times, maybe a friend of yours has an older sibling who took the test a year ago. 

5. Thinking quantity equals quality

This applies to your studying just as much as to the actual test. 

Just because you got the most study time doesn’t guarantee you will get the best grade in the class. 

Study hours and grades are not connected linearly, despite what some teachers want to make you believe. 

Yes, of course, you need to put in a certain baseline of hours studying but especially in the range of the highest grades, effectivity counts more than quantity. 

The same goes for when you have to write an essay or answer any question for the exam. 

The length of your answer doesn’t equal the quality of it. Lots of good answers are concise and on the point. 

6. Vomiting irrelevant knowledge onto the paper

Many students who write lengthy answers don’t score that well because they mindlessly vomit their knowledge out of context onto the paper. 

Yes, you’ve studied a lot, and yes, you know a whole bunch of information about the topic. 

But there is always just so much a professor can quiz you about. He or she doesn’t want you to give them a complete summary of everything they’ve taught you. 

They don’t want to search for the relevant information among a sea of irrelevant ones. 

Even if everything important was included in that novel of an answer, you probably wouldn’t score full points on it. 

7. Not talking to older students

Talking to older students, more in university than in school, has helped me immensely!

They’ve been in your shoes at one point and therefore know exactly what you have to expect. 

They can make you aware of important deadlines coming up. 

Older students can also give you practical information about certain classes and what to expect in them. 

I know it’s not always easy to get a hold of these older students. But maybe some nice students from your year occasionally talk to older students, and they can pass on the information.

Just keep a lookout for these opportunities. 

8. Only relying on exercises from your school/college

It is great if your school or college provides you with practice tests. They are most likely very similar to what your teachers or professors ask of you in the actual test. 

However, if you have more time on hand and need more practice, you shouldn’t limit yourself to these exercises. 

There is a whole market out there with excellent study material to help you ace your tests. 

Back in school, these additional books really helped me to prepare myself for math exams, and nowadays, I purchase case books for every law class I have. 

9. Thinking short-term

Sometimes students take the lack of importance of a test as permission to just do the bare minimum. 

They say they’ll work harder once it’s actually important. 

This is dangerous for two reasons: 

a. excellence and slacking are both habits. Every time you pick one of them, you increase the likeliness of picking them again next time. 

So if you are not used to putting in much effort into studying, you will have a harder time doing so when it counts. 

b. Every test gives you a chance to refine and improve your study technique. When you do your best and get a disappointing grade you know you have to do something differently. 

If you don’t give it your all, you will always tell yourself that you would have scored better had you actually tried. The bad awakening will then come with the important tests. 

So just do your best and try to score high even if it isn’t important for your end grade. 

10. Clinging to old plans despite new interests

What are you interested in today? What are your passions and goals? 

Do you think ten years ago, you would have been able to anticipate these things? 

For me, the answer is a clear ‘NO.’ 

I’m a very different person with very different goals and interests than I would have expected even four years ago. 

Even though the same is true for many people, they still think they should cling to a plan they made in their teens for the rest of their working life. 

During your school time, you might have always dreamed of being a doctor, and you’ve worked hard to get into medical school. 

But maybe now that you have studied medicine for a few semesters, you realize this isn’t your thing at all. 

It’s important to always allow yourself to think again and change the direction of your aim. 

Of course, it sucks having spend all this time and effort walking in the wrong direction. But it won’t get better by staying on course for the next few decades. 

If this is really not your thing, allow yourself to pursue something else. 

Read also: Think Again Book Review | 19 Lessons + Actionable Ideas + Quotes

11. Giving up once boredom or difficulty hits and jumping to the next shiny object

On the other side of the spectrum are students that enroll in a class to get a certain degree, but once the inevitable excitement fades, they drop out and start something new. 

Even the most successful people are often bored and annoyed by their passion. 

The key to their success is that they are consistent and work through the boredom. 

You are never going to find something that will 100% excite you all the time. There are always going to be ups and downs. 

The question is whether or not you can see yourself having a job in this field. If you are not sure, consider doing an internship to get more real-life experience. 

What about you? What are you studying currently? Are you in school or college?

Comment down below. I’d love to hear from you!

Sophie