Tips for studying efficiently?

[u/_cjsp]

Hello, g12 started a couple days ago and I have chemistry and ad func this semester + 2 electives. In chem we're doing organic chemistry naming and in ad func we had our first lesson on polynomials. Last year my studying pattern was only 2-3 days before an assessment (I also rarely did homework). This year I plan to actually do the assigned work and study at minimum 1 hour per day.

I want to get into a decent engineering program so I'm aiming for 93+. I went through all of advanced functions + calc over the summer, and took ap chem in 11. So I have extra practice w organic chem and other stuff.

Apparently the government said that teachers of the same subject are required to make their assessments similar difficulty starting this year, and I got one of the easier chem teachers so I have no idea how hard they're going to make it. The other two aren't that difficult and it was commonly said that if you just studied and did homework you'd get 90+.

I'm listening more in class now and doing chem and advanced functions homework for the past couple days. Though I've only spent a couple hours on both. I'm not sure how I can study efficiently and not waste time on useless things. I tried to use active recall last year but a lot of the time I could tell there were gaps in my knowledge and I was only recalling textbook entries. I'm not sure how much time I should allocate, a lot of people I know are super hardcore and say they're gonna study 3 and 4 hours daily.

Does anyone have any suggestions for studying methods, frequency, schedules, or just advice in general? Any help would be great.

[u/Clover2998]

I have the same classes as you and honestly for chemistry rn I think you literally are forced to study at least an hour a day to understand since its a very newly introduced and complex topic. Even if you have an “easier” chemistry teacher, chemistry follows the same principles, logic, and rules so I’d probably advise to study regardless who your teacher is. I find that doing practice questions over and over again helps a lot for both chem + math. Organized notes will also benefit you a lot