Greetings,
By coming to this page you have shown curiosity and a desire to do well in the course. Those two qualities are wonderful aspects to have as a student. I am confident that none of the items listed is new to you, but you may not know exactly why you need to adapt these methods in order to keep improving as scholars.
There exists a powerful set of strategies for dealing with complex information. They were used successfully for over ten years at UCSDís premiere student success course, Methods of Inquiry. I can only offer a brief overview of these proven techniques. For more information on the MOI course I refer you to the MOI course website. There is strong statistical evidence that these methods work! If anyone wants to discuss any of these points further I invite you to visit me in my office.
This will be admittedly brief and overly simplistic, but the essential components to high performance in a challenging academic environment can be summarized as follows:

Attitude
Questions
Class Text
Class Notes
Spaced Repetition

Attitude: Your attitude has a profound effect on your performance. Optimists tend to outperform pessimists. However, optimism is often misunderstood. Optimism is not saying 'everything will be fine' and hoping things will work out. Optimism is saying 'I can influence the situation in a positive way' and taking steps to ensure that everything will work out. As you become proactive instead of reactive, you gain the power to accomplish great things.
However, taking control of your destiny means giving up excuses. By making excuses for your own non-performance, you diminish your power and surrender control to external factors. The cornerstone of excellence is self-motivation, the inner drive to perform. Self-motivation comes from the interplay of goals, values and a life mission. Once clear on what they want and why they want it, an optimist is unstoppable!
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Questions: Questions are the foundation of learning. You will do better by developing questions of your own rather than waiting for someone to tell you what is important. The only truly dumb question is the one that you don't ask but then see on the exam.
Having said that, it is true that not all questions are equal. Questions can be generally categorized into four types that progress from type A to type D, from simplest to most complex. If you go into an exam prepared to answer type B and C questions, you will do well in any course.

Type A questions are very simple, factual questions: "How many centimeters equal one inch?"í, "What is the distance from the Earth to the Moon?", "Who wrote the Iliad?", etc. You are unlikely to find many type A questions on exams, but they are the basis for all other questions.

Type B questions are a bit more involved and require synthesis of type A material: "Describe the causes of the Great Depression", "How does the asymmetry of the hydrogen bond affect chemical properties", "Discuss the connection between the constant speed of light and time dilation effects?", and so on.

Type C questions are hypothetical questions. To answer these questions requires a firm foundation of A and B type questions on which to base your response: "What effect would reducing the period of earthís rotation have on the length of the day?", "How would atomic structure change if fermions were not described by asymmetric wave functions?" are examples.

Type D questions are evaluation or judgment questions. In order to properly answer this type of question, you must be able to answer type C questions about the options. An example of this type of question might be "Which has a lesser impact on the environment, nuclear or hydroelectric power?", or "Should the US adopt a system of universal health care?'. These are complex questions that require more effort to answer. Entire books may be written in order to completely answer a type D question.

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Textbook: The text needs to be used properly in order to be most effective. Before you go to a lecture you should skim the chapter title and section headings, and try to develop some questions about the material to be covered. It is hard to become bored or lost when you are trying to get your questions answered.
Do not try and read the entire chapter at one sitting. Break it up into sections. Reading before lecture takes advantage of spaced repetition and improves recall. You should read the sections again after the lecture to help reinforce the central points and to make sure you really understand.
There is a particular way to read the textbook in a problem-solving course that will improve your ability to solve problems. It also takes advantage of spaced repetition by breaking the homework into small chunks. As you read the sections after lecture, solve each example problem as you come to it, then immediately work several related homework problems from the text to reinforce the information you have just learned.
Work as many problems as it takes for you to understand the material. Familiarity and understanding are not the same. After working problems, return to reading the text. In this way you make sure you have understood each piece of information before you move on to the next.
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Notetaking: Taking notes in class has at least three advantages over not taking them. Your retention of the material is vastly improved when you write it down. When you are trying to write everything down, it is difficult to let your thoughts wander so you tend to pay closer attention. When you take notes, it becomes easier to identify the material that is causing you difficulty.
You should be producing a lot of written material, and one page every ten minutes is a good rule of thumb. However, taking copious notes is not enough. You must review them within 24 hours of taking them and fill in missing pieces by using the book, or asking questions in class or office hours.
Every week you should look back over your notes and try to identify the main points you have covered. Continuously revisiting material improves recall and helps you to see the 'big picture'.
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Repetition and Learning: The best way to learn something is by taking advantage of spaced repetition. Psychologists all agree on this point. That means youíll get the best retention by studying the same material several times over several days rather than trying to cram it all in at the last minute. If you follow these suggestions you will be maximizing your study time and taking advantage of this phenomenon.
Your first exposure is reading before lecture. Then you hear the lecture and take notes for a second interaction with the material. You re-read the sections and fix your notes giving you a third chance to understand. Finally, as you solve problems you interact with the information yet one more time.
Just remember that learning takes time. A little bit of study every day is far better then trying to fit it all into a single session. I encourage you to adopt any of these strategies that you are not currently using.
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