What Study Tools Do Top Students Actually Use?

Search for "what top students use" and you'll find lists of apps: Notion templates, flashcard apps, focus timers. Copy the toolkit, the idea goes, and you'll get the grades.

It rarely works, because the toolkit isn't what sets those students apart.

What the research found

In a 2012 study, psychologists Marissa Hartwig and John Dunlosky surveyed college students about how they study and compared the answers with their GPAs. Students who tested themselves tended to have higher GPAs, and so did students who planned when they'd study. (Hartwig & Dunlosky, 2012)

Later surveys found similar patterns. Higher-performing students were more likely to test themselves, less likely to cram, and more likely to plan a study schedule ahead of time.

That's the shortlist: test yourself, plan your study, and spread it out. None of those are apps. They're habits that apps can support.

One caveat: these are correlations. Top students may also be more motivated or have more free time. But the habits match what controlled experiments show works, so they're worth copying either way.

Habit 1: They test themselves, and not just to check

Most students who test themselves do it to find out how much they know. That's useful, but recall also strengthens memory in its own right. Testing is studying, not just a check-up.

In practice, that looks like this:

• Starting each session by answering questions on the previous one.
• Doing past papers weeks before the exam, not the night before.
• Closing the notes and explaining a topic out loud, then checking what was missed. If your study time is mostly reading and very little answering, this is the first habit to change.

A simple way to start: at the end of every reading session, close the material and write down five questions you think the exam could ask about it. Answer them at the start of your next session, before you open anything. You've just turned passive reading into a self-testing loop, without any new tools.

Habit 2: They plan their study, and don't cram

In these surveys, lower performers were more often driven by deadlines: studying happened when something was due. Top performers decided ahead of time.

For working students, that means:

• Fixed weekly slots in your calendar, chosen once a week rather than each evening.
• A specific topic attached to each slot, so you're not deciding what to do at 8pm.
• Short sessions over long ones. A 25-minute session you actually do beats a three-hour block you skip. The same planning is what keeps top students out of cramming. They spread the hours over weeks and save the final days before an exam for practice tests and fixing mistakes, not first-time learning.

A week built on both habits

Here's how a working student could put the two habits together in about three hours a week:

1. Sunday (10 minutes): Pick five slots for the week and attach a topic to each one.
2. Each weekday slot (25–30 minutes): Spend 5 minutes answering questions on the last session, 15 minutes on new material, and 5 minutes writing questions on what you just covered.
3. Saturday (45 minutes): Do a mixed question set across everything from the past two weeks, then add your misses to a mistakes list.
4. Every third week: Swap the Saturday set for a timed past paper. Nothing in that plan is clever. It just puts testing and planning at the centre, which is exactly where the research says they belong.

The tools that support these habits

Once the habits are in place, tools can make them easier:

• For self-testing: flashcards, question banks, past papers and practice exam generators.
• For planning: a calendar with recurring study slots and reminders.
• For avoiding the cram: material broken into session-sized pieces, so progress happens every week. Notice what's not on the list: note templates, highlighters and aesthetic setups. They're fine, but they're not what top students have in common.

A quick self-audit: look at your last week of study. Roughly how much time went to answering questions, and how much to reading or organising? If answering is under half, that's your biggest opportunity.

Where Kora fits

Kora supports the first two habits directly. Upload your course PDFs and it builds study cards and practice exams for self-testing. It also breaks material into 25–30 minute chunks that slot into a planned weekly schedule. Cheat sheets cover your final review, and Ask Kora answers questions from your own notes when you get stuck.

Recap

• Top students share habits, not apps.
• Self-testing and planned study are linked to higher grades; deadline-driven cramming isn't.
• Treat testing as studying, not just checking, and spend at least half your time answering questions.
• Pick tools that make self-testing and short, planned sessions easier. If you want to build the self-testing habit from your own course material, try Kora free.