Hi and welcome or welcome back. It's issue #48 of The B-School Hub

Read time: ~6 minutes

So apparently my plan to send out a previous newsletter last week was foiled by the fact that I forgot to set it up before leaving for Japan.

Apologies for the error.

Japan was really interesting though. It was a work trip to meet companies there and was my first trip to the Land of the Rising Sun.

I was struck by just how clean everything is. It was incredible.

A colleague and I had breakfast at the Tsukiji Fish Market most days. It's not a restaurant but a collection of tightly packed stalls selling different kinds of food.

We had everything from a delicious omelet to outstanding sushi (of course).

The hands down favorite though was a Wagyu that was so tender it practically melted in your mouth.

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We also did a delicious tasting menu for dinner one night. It included a sake tasting as well - which was delightful.

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What's on the menu for this week?

I kicked around a variety of ideas to discuss this week.

I've been writing a lot recently about job search and public speaking so today we're going to hit on a topic that covers learning skills that can be applied to get higher grades and to prepare for interviews.

The inspiration for this came from an Ali Abdaal video I watched a couple of years ago.

What Do Written Exams And Job Interview Answers Have In Common

A few things it turns out. Both

1. require you prepare in advance but don't lend themselves to flashcard type memorization.
2. are best prepared for using smaller modular pieces that are then combined and expanded on based on the test or interview question.

So if they don't lend themselves to flashcard memorization, how do you learn them. We'll get to that soon, but first...

Steps To Use

1. Create a list of possible questions
2. Create bullet point versions of those answers
3. Memorize those bullet point versions

Step 1 - Prepare A List Possible Questions

Essay Exams

When it comes to essay or written answer prep, the first step is to generate possible test questions.

Come up with them yourself or review past exams.

It's also a useful idea to do this exercise with classmates who might come up with different questions.

Once you have a list, rank them in terms of likelihood you'll see them.

You can help figure this one out by talking to peers and thinking about it yourself. Cross off the lowest probability ones. Then you can further refine your list by meeting with your prof during office hours to see if they can give you some guidance if you're on the right track.

Now you have a list to start of possible exam questions.

Interview Questions

For interview prep, the process is similar.

Using various resources, your intuition, the internet and peers, create a list of questions. Prioritize them based on your experience, recommendations from more senior students who've done interviews before and guidance from the career office.

Now you have a prioritized list of possible interview questions.

Step 2- Answer The Questions

The strategy for exams and interviews overlaps here as well.

In both cases combine 1 or more small modular answers into full answers.

Aim to prepare the exact right answer for the question you created but recognize that you may need to grab a module from a different question if they ask you something slightly off what you've anticipated.

This takes a narrow preparation and makes it broadly applicable.

I'm going to get into more detail of how to do this in future emails so I'm just going to focus on today's topic at the moment.

Memorize The Bullet Points

So now that you've developed answers to the questions you've prepared it's time to memorize the answers.

You're not going to memorize them verbatim, just the bullet points.

You can then expand on those bullets either in the exam or interview.

There are three reasons you want to memorize bullets.

1. You want to sound as natural as possible. If you've memorized the entire answer it will sound canned. That's not the end of the world in an essay exam but is not good in an interview.
2. You want to be able to mix and match. As I mentioned, being able to grab one piece of one answer and combine it with a piece of another lets you handle a much greater variety of questions.
3. There's less risk of memory catastrophe. Imagine you've memorized the entire answer and you forget something in the middle. You're stuck. Instead if you've memorized the bullets, you're recounting the rest of the answer because you know it, even if the exact words you use are slightly different each time.

Bottom line - don't memorize the answers, just the bullet points.

The Power of Paper

One of my pet peeves about the modern education system is that we've gone too far in digitizing everything.

For goodness sake, my kids are doing math on a touchscreen with a digital pencil instead of pencil and paper

Why am I bringing this up besides just to rant?

Well, it turns out there's a really effective memorization technique for situations like this that relies on a pen and paper.

Here's how you do it.

Let's say you're trying to memorize this newsletter up 'til now (I know, pretty meta huh?).

You might memorize

Japan

• Fish market
  • food
  • sake

Commonalities between exams and interviews

Steps

• Questions
• Answers
• Memorize - paper trick

That's not a ton to remember but that captures the gist of today's newsletter. You can do the same for exam questions or interview questions.

This is how you memorize it.

Obviously start as soon as possible before the exam because there's tons of evidence that spaced repetition is a very powerful tool you can use.

Let's say you have 5 questions to memorize and 5 days.

On the morning of day 1, write out as much as you can of the outline of the first question from memory. Really try hard and don't give up right away.

Once you've given it a good attempt, fill in what you're missing.

At that point, say out loud the full answer using the outline to guide you. If you don't remember all of it, go review it.

Do this for all 5 questions. Think of this as one rep.

That evening, do it again. You should notice that it's easier and you remember more of the outline. The full answer should also come easier.

The following morning do another rep.

It should be coming quicker now with fewer and fewer parts that you need help to fill in.

Do one more rep in the evening.

At this point, you can diagnose what you know well and what you don't know as well.

On the morning of day 3, if you're starting to feel confident, maybe do 3 in the morning and 3 in the evening, doubling up on the one you know the least well.

See how well you do.

If you're really cruising then keep that up for the last 2 days before the exam. If not, increase the amount you do each morning and evening.

This is roughly the same idea for interviews and interview questions. You'll also get lots of practice with these in mock interviews, interviews where you record yourself and finally in informational interviews.

I promise, you'll be shocked at how effective this is.

Why Does This Work?

What makes this approach so powerful is that you're combining two of the most effective evidence based learning techniques, active recall and spaced repetition.

There are legions of research that support these two techniques.

Unfortunately most people don't use them. They're a little harder up front but ironically take less time and help you learn the material better.

This approach works well when the information you need to remember is part of a larger body that follows sequentially.

For instance, flashcards, another highly effective way to learn, wouldn't work as well in this instance because they're better used when you have small pieces of info to commit to memory.

Closing Thoughts

That's it for this week. Hope you found this helpful.

I've been thinking about doing something like this for awhile and now felt like a good time to write it.

Have a great week!

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How Can I Help You?

• If you want higher grades - check out my FREE email course 7 Days to Higher Grades...Without the Grind​

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• I have a very small number of coaching slots open at the moment. This is focused on 1 of 3 areas in particular - getting higher grades, job search and interview success and career progression. Please email me if you're ready for that.

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• I'm always looking for topics to write about that people are interested in/struggling with in these areas so feel free to email me or connect on Twitter if there's a topic you'd like me to explore.

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Growing this newsletter

As you might imagine I'm hoping to grow this newsletter. If you know anyone who'd benefit from it, please forward them THIS LINK.

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That's it for this week...don't be shy to reply if you have any questions.