<p>What a student learned in the second grade of elementary school could sometimes be useful when he is in college.</p>
<p>DS’s second grade teacher told her students that if there are more than 5 words that are new to you on a page of a book you read, this book is not at the proper level for you.</p>
<p>My point is that the real reason why some students can learn some materials presented by the professor seemingly faster is that the proportion of completely new materials is less for them. Also, these students may have been “hardened” in their study skills due to their more extensive/intensive learning experience in the past.</p>
<p>DS was a biology major. After he had taken many classes in his major, he once memtioned that many concepts in different classes are closely related if not the same. He could read the textbook or the class nottes much faster than he could when he was a freshman.</p>
<p>On another bio subject (cell bio) he took relatively early in his college career, I think he mostly relied on his hardened study skill to get through that course. This is because he really had not taken many bio related classes before that relatively challenging class at his school (Unlike most premeds at his school, he even did not take AP bio in high school!) He did mention a point that is interesting for this class, if you keep studying very hard on this extremely dense textbook, everything you learn but could not fully understand will start to make sense toward the end of the semester. But I do not understand how he could still manage to ace all of his weekly tests even when he claimed he did not fully understand it at that time.</p>
<p>For his chemistry class, I think he had very solid preparation in high school. The high school he attended helped him a lot (but he also needed to be an excellent student in his AP chem class. It was rumored that he was the “curve breaker” in his AP chem class. He was more a “gunner” in high school as it was easier to stand out back then.)</p>