[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130404071259/https://cs.stanfo...

You don't need a 50 point list to learn anything even to a proficient level. Exams are bullshit.

I personally rarely joined group study sessions, but thinking back, I should have joined more of them.

To expand on one of the points listed here: do a first pass through questions before writing a single thing and mark which you feel are easy vs. hard (this evaluation may change once you start working on them!). Your prioritization should be: easier + higher points, easier + lower points, then hard in order of perceived difficulty weighted by points.

Oh, and if your course requires memorizing a set of known formulas, write them down first thing on the very last page :)

Tests are all bullshit. They are just some arbitrary questions, trying to figure out whether you understood the material, which were made up by some guy who has much more important things to do.

If you want to spend your time well, either do networking or try to understand the material. If you are there trying to game the system (which hilariously Karpathy is suggesting you do, in a very mild way) then you should seriously consider why you are there in the first place.

Also consider that when you are tested outside of school you will always be tested to face to face.

Is there a way to enforce non-thin fonts on web pages in the browser?

As you follow along with the speaker, try to predict what they will say next. These can be either local or global predictions. Guess what they will write next, or what will be on the next slide. With some practice (and exposure to the subject area) you can usually get it right. Also try to keep track of how things fit into the big picture. For example in a math class, there may be a big theorem that they're working towards using lots of smaller lemmas. How will it all come together?

When you get it right, it will feel like you are figuring out the material on your own, rather than having it explained to you. This is the most important part.

If you can manage to stay one step ahead of the lecturer, it will keep you way more engaged than trying to write everything down. Writing puts you one step behind what the speaker is saying. Because of this, I usually don't take any notes at all. It obviously works better when lecture notes are made available, but you can always look at the textbook.

People often assume that I have read the material or otherwise prepared for lectures, seminars, etc., because of how closely I follow what the speaker is saying. But really most talks are quite logical, and if you stay engaged it's easy to follow along. The key is to not zone out or break your concentration, and I find this method helps me immensely.

>Your time is a precious, limited resource. Get to a point where you don't screw up on a test and then switch your attention to much more important endeavors. [...] Other than research projects, get involved with some group of people on side projects or better, start your own from scratch. Contribute to Open Source, make/improve a library. Get out there and create (or help create) something cool. Document it well. Blog about it. These are the things people will care about a few years down the road. Your grades? They are an annoyance you have to deal with along the way. Use your time well and good luck.

While probably 90% of undergrads undershoot in terms of time spent on their courses, the other 10% "Goodhardt" their grades and misallocate their time and abilities.

1. Follow actively the lessons.

2. Study and exercise every day what you covered in the previous lessons

Every one of us has been given these age old platitudes, but, as spaced repetition, testing, and active recall prove, they are actually tman excellent starting point for good performance

I was always told NOT to study right before the test because it hinder retrieval of long term memory.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/current/teach/general/...

There were several courses that were considered easy, and as a consequence were well attended. You had to do significantly better in those classes to get a high grade, versus a low-attendance hard course where 50% in the test was curved up to 75%.

> Undergrads tend to have tunnel vision about their classes. They want to get good grades, etc. The crucial fact to realize is that noone will care about your grades, unless they are bad. For example, I always used to say that the smartest student will get 85% in all of his courses. This way, you end up with somewhere around 4.0 score, but you did not over-study, and you did not under-study.

It’s difficult to escape tunnel vision when your most urgent and highest priority task tends to be the required homework and studying you have right in front of you, and you directly get feedback on that work.

> Other than research projects, get involved with some group of people on side projects or better, start your own from scratch. Contribute to Open Source, make/improve a library. Get out there and create (or help create) something cool. Document it well. Blog about it. These are the things people will care about a few years down the road. Your grades? They are an annoyance you have to deal with along the way. Use your time well and good luck.

I agree with all the advice here, but in hindsight, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to realistically do this. These things are all something you can do away from school, so while in school, it felt like a waste to not make use of the school to do things on my own.

Overall the advice is much easier said than done, even if it is something I completely agree with.

My favorite pieces that I agree with 100%:

> Reading and understanding IS NOT the same as replicating the content.

This happens to me all the time. It's really important to try and replicate everything that you learn. I would go even further and constantly reaffirm that you still know how to prove facts that you take for granted.

> NEVER. EVER. EVER. Leave a test early.

Every time I find a mistake.

Some pieces that I really disagree with:

> Study very intensely RIGHT before the test.

I don't think this works, at least for me, it doesn’t. I never studied on test day unless the test was in the evening. Even in cases where I had ample time to study, I focused on preparing for my later tests. By the time test day rolls around, you either know the material or you don’t. I don’t think short-term memory is as valuable as the writer is making it out to be. I also worry that the added stress may cause you to confuse yourself when trying to frantically read through your notes or textbooks.

> If things are going badly and you get too tired, in emergency situations, chug an energy drink.

Your health is more important than the tests you take. These energy drinks are terrible for you and your brain, in my opinion. After hours of sitting, drinking such a high concentration of sugar and caffeine is terrible for you. Just go out for a walk, take a shower, and if that doesn't help, go to sleep. Trying to cram in as much knowledge as possible when your brain is fried isn't going to help you all that much.

I disagree. I made some of my best friends through all nighters and continue to occasionally pull them because they reinvigorate meaning into my work as they did my coursework.

If your only metric for success in school is your GPA, then yes all nighters aren’t worth it. But climbing a metric leaderboard isn’t the only measure of doing well in a course.

It is curious because Andrej recognizes this with his comments concerning coffee.

That’s basically it.