My Self-Study Preparation Method for the College Entrance Examination

Since I wrote that I am preparing for next year's college entrance examination (gaokao), many parents have messaged me asking how I prepare and hoping I would share my revision experience for their children to learn from. Because such requests are numerous, today I write to introduce my own self-study and exam-preparation method.

But before I begin, I must state one thing: my personal self-study method is not at all suitable for today's high-school students to copy wholesale. There may be occasional points worth borrowing, but in practice there are not many. The reason is simply that today's high-school students already have far too much schoolwork; adding a whole new learning routine would overwhelm them. It is no exaggeration to say that if a high-school student really imitated my method, their mental health would be at serious risk. So I hope that, when educating your children, or when students read this article, you will not mechanically copy my experience.

I am an adult, currently studying on a partly released (half-time) basis, with about 6–9 hours a day reviewing high-school material. Calling it review is generous; it is actually re-learning, because I graduated from high school in 1998 and have by now handed back almost everything I learned then to my teachers. In 2024 I took the national unified gaokao as a social candidate, sitting it cold (no preparation), choosing Chinese, mathematics, English, physics, chemistry and biology, and scored 350: Chinese 99, English 70, mathematics 27, physics 21, chemistry 70, biology 63.

Because I have studied medicine for years and read a fair amount of medical and biology books, I had a certain foundation in chemistry and biology, so even cold I could pass them. In my twenties I did international trade for several years, dealing with clients in over a hundred countries in English; though I later stopped and set English aside for nearly twenty years, I still had some base. On top of that, I have kept reading and writing continuously, so I could still score some points on Chinese. These were my "family savings" before I began reviewing. I cannot say I was starting from nothing, but my starting point was genuinely low.

I have given myself nine months of half-time review—the reason it can only be half-time is that I still have a good deal of work I must do; my work concerns other people's lives and there are many things I cannot help.

During the first three months of review I kept feeling out the right method for me and adjusting my psychological state to achieve the most efficient revision. The hardest hurdle is actually taking the first step: an adult must put aside most work and leisure and settle into a learning state, and at first it feels as uncomfortable as an addict going through withdrawal. Because the old life has formed inertia, breaking out of that inertia and returning to a student-like, study-centered state requires overcoming many mental habits.

To solve this, I forced myself to spend nearly two months in the library, entering when it opened in the morning and leaving at five in the afternoon, sometimes staying until closing at night. Living in the library all day gradually distanced me from many old habits and at last settled my mind so I could focus on study. I am especially grateful to the National Library of China for providing such a comfortable, study-friendly space. People's self-discipline is limited; no matter how disciplined an adult is, they cannot help but fail to focus the way young students do. The National Library has a wonderful study atmosphere; once inside, the environment itself helps constrain us.

Once I entered a focused study mode, the library began to feel a bit noisy—after all, so many people are there. Moreover, gaokao revision needs a great many reference materials, impossible to carry all along; hauling a big bag of review materials to the library every day, they still were not handy when needed. In the library one must wear headphones to watch online courses so as not to disturb other readers, which is also hard on the ears. So later, once I had successfully gathered my focus, I gradually shifted to reviewing mainly at home.

I must admit that preparing for the gaokao is highly stressful. So whoever wants to take it must first get their mental state right. I had been out of high school so long, and had not used math and physics for so many years, that in the 2024 exam room I no longer even recognized logarithm and trigonometric symbols, let alone remembered the formulas.

The gaokao tests a great many knowledge points; the task is heavy and time is tight, so stress easily arises, causing anxiety and insomnia. As an adult, for my first two months I could not keep my peace of mind; I grew anxious from time to time and sometimes lost sleep at night—to say nothing of underage high-school students. So I actually oppose parents who, hoping their children will become outstanding, pile more and more on the children regardless of their capacity. Many students emerge from senior year psychologically unhealthy. The gaokao is both important and unimportant; compared with health, it is worth next to nothing. Parents must get their priorities straight.

At first I set a fairly high target for the 2025 gaokao, but after studying for a while I found that, given the difficulty of today's exam and my atrophied memory, even a year of review would make scoring above 600 quite hard. Later I lowered my psychological expectations and stopped beating myself up. After all, having lived and struggled in society for so many years, I know that a diploma and a famous-school halo mean little in themselves; I do not set much store by them. As long as next year I can get into a public medical college and study the major I want, that is enough.

Opening the textbooks, I found much that seemed as if I had never studied it—partly from forgetting, partly because I truly never had. Education has kept reforming; many things today's high-school students learn I genuinely never studied. Biology was not even tested on the old gaokao; back then we took biology as casually as PE, art and music. I remember our biology teacher had even transferred over from being a workshop director at a machinery factory; he did not understand biology himself, got the job through connections, crammed the textbook at the last minute, and read aloud from it to us as if that were teaching. Later on, biology classes were even taken over by the main-subject teachers.

So basically I had to start math, physics, chemistry and biology from scratch, especially math and physics. I could not enroll in an outside cram school: partly because I felt it a waste of money, partly because time did not allow, as I had to keep up with work. I could only take online courses; fortunately, in this era online resources are truly abundant. Many courses on Bilibili are far better than most of my teachers back then; the online teachers who become well-known up creators on Bilibili have already beaten many competitors in the contest, so their courses really are excellent.

For math I chose to follow "Yishu Mathematics"; the lecturer Zhang Yi is a math competition talent from my home province of Hubei, and the other Yishu lecturer, "Shenqi Xiaozhu," is also a competition talent, sounding like a Northeasterner. I myself was a competition student in math, physics and chemistry in high school, so listening to these competition people teach had a familiar feel and we hit it off.

But judging from some comments in the danmaku, many students cannot keep up with these teachers' logic, especially in some of Zhang Yi's very hard lessons. To finish in minimum time he lectures very fast, and many students cannot follow. Such classes can easily damage students' confidence, leaving them deflated and weakening their motivation. For most ordinary students, following a sharp-minded competition person is highly stressful; not understanding the class makes one feel inferior and restless.

So I do not advise parents to blindly push their children to follow these online teachers. In fact, the later the courses, the fewer viewers; often even on weekends or in the evenings only one or two people are online for the later lessons, unlike the crowded early ones. This shows many students who started the online courses gave up halfway; after all, their schoolwork is already heavy, and spending large amounts of time and effort fully following one online teacher is unrealistic.

For physics I chose Teacher Huang Junkun (the Bilibili up creator "huangfuren"). Teacher Huang's lectures are logically clear and easy to understand, a pleasure to listen to. But on some hard points, such as problems involving related velocities, he can only speak vaguely. His verbal expression sometimes falls short; at times he would rather students not think deeply about the principle but merely memorize the problem-solving approach. This is a shortcoming; one needs supplementary teaching materials (such as the high-school knowledge-list series published by Qu Yixian) to deepen understanding, otherwise blind spots easily remain and become obstacles later.

Physics is the stumbling block for many high-school students; for those whose logical thinking is not well developed it is very difficult. Physics teachers who can make such a hard subject this accessible are rare; to be fair, he is among the finest high-school physics teachers.

For math and physics, it is best to do some problems right after a lecture to consolidate the knowledge points. I myself chose the "5 Years of Gaokao, 3 Years of Simulation" exercise series as my after-class problem set. But my time is not ample; I cannot do all those problems, so I do them selectively. In chapters where I felt weak after the lecture, I do a careful set of exercises; the rest I pass through quickly.

This method is only a stopgap when time is short; after all, I have to finish three years of high-school coursework in nine months while also handling part of my work, so I cannot study and practice that finely. If I were redoing high school, I would carefully do exercises in every chapter, but that is impossible now—and not very necessary either, because in chapters I felt I understood thoroughly, I work the problems quickly with an accuracy above 90%; spending already-tight time to gain slightly more speed and accuracy is not very meaningful.

I listen to the lectures very closely, striving to understand every point thoroughly, and replaying anything I do not understand. These online teachers work through a certain number of problems tied closely to the theory and techniques they teach. I usually hit pause during the worked problems and try them myself first; this partly makes up for doing few after-class exercises.

For chemistry I chose the Bilibili up creators "Yihua'er" and "Jiege." "Jiege" is a Tsinghua graduate; he teaches superbly, in a humorous, engaging style, and listening to him one learns chemistry almost without noticing. My chemistry foundation is good; I won an award in the chemistry competition back in high school. Reviewing now, I found my early training was solid—I can still recite the periodic table and the metal activity series—so chemistry lectures are easy for me. I do not plan to do many chemistry problems, because limited time can be allocated to chemistry. But I do plan to finish Jiege's course, and to listen twice: the first time carefully, the second time quickly.

For biology I chose three teachers: the Bilibili up creator "Hanshui Chousheng," Teacher Hou Wei; also "Yishenger," Teacher Miaomiao; and Teacher Wan Meng. They are all well-known biology teachers on Bilibili.

Teacher Hou Wei (Hanshui Chousheng) is a biology teacher at a key middle school in Urumqi; he has recorded a complete, high-quality set of high-school biology lectures plus a full set of problem classes. I personally like listening to him best. He is broadly knowledgeable and can weave math, chemistry, physics and biology together; the quality of his lectures is high, and listening to him is a pleasure.

But biology is fragmented and miscellaneous; after hearing one teacher, you find that teacher has raised many new points others did not. So biology suits listening to several teachers at once; you gain more that way. Should one do biology problems? I actually feel doing problems matters little for biology; listening matters more.

Someone like me, with a very weak high-school biology base, always feels my mind goes offline when doing exercises, but listening to Teachers Wan Meng and Hou Wei work problems yields a lot. So while studying biology, apart from writing out the molecular structures of polymers, I rarely pick up a pen; for now I mainly listen with my ears, look with my eyes, and think with my heart. Of course I do take notes; I have covered my biology textbook with dense notes.

Chemistry and biology differ from math and physics, and the study method should differ. Math and physics require strengthening problem practice on the basis of understanding, especially in weak chapters. Chemistry and biology require moderate memorization on the basis of understanding. I chose two ways to consolidate memory: first, repeatedly reading—the textbook and the Qu Yixian knowledge lists; second, using the "Maimemory Cards" (Momo Memory Cards) app to memorize the scattered knowledge points of chemistry and biology.

Maimemory Cards is a phone app that designs a whole memory workflow around the human forgetting curve; as a memory aid it is truly excellent. In August, my older brother strongly recommended the app "Momo Vocabulary" to me. At the time I was still memorizing words from pocket books, and found it crushing, because what I memorized one day seemed forgotten the next.

Later I switched to Momo Vocabulary, and still found it strenuous—probably because after years of not studying languages, the brain regions for language learning had gone quiet. But no matter what, having chosen this road I could not give up halfway; I gritted my teeth, followed my brother's advice, and used Momo Vocabulary to memorize, one by one, the 3,600+ words on the gaokao vocabulary list.

After memorizing for fifty-plus days, I felt my memory had improved a lot, and my mood had gradually settled too. Now, after 76 days, I have memorized over 1,800 words—half the list—and my listening has improved along with it. I plan to keep using this app after the gaokao; after the exam I will spend more time on the TEM-8 (English major grade 8) word list. To raise English reading ability, a large vocabulary is essential.

After using Momo Vocabulary, I realized my old mechanical memorization was indeed unscientific, so I started experimenting with Maimemory Cards to memorize the points of biology, chemistry and Chinese that need memorizing. Using an app to memorize is indeed more efficient than my old rough methods. I think these two apps may be universally useful; whether high-school students or adults, if they need to memorize certain knowledge points, they can consider this method. Maimemory Cards can memorize anything worth memorizing; after the gaokao I also plan to keep using it to memorize foundational medical knowledge.

For English and Chinese I rarely take lectures. I bought some reference materials for English—pocket books and the like—because my English foundation is actually decent; it is just that years of disuse made me forget too much. Now that I am finishing the words and flipping through books to review, I can simply pick courses on Bilibili from up creators like "Free Gaokao English" who specialize in working through gaokao English problems.

The gaokao Chinese paper is full of traps and requires certain answering techniques; otherwise, even with strong Chinese literacy, one cannot score high. For now I occasionally listen to the Bilibili up creators "Guojia Wei" and "The Chinese Teacher Who Studied Petroleum"; I have not yet listened systematically, let alone done exercises. I plan to, after finishing math, physics, chemistry and biology, then take the online courses for English and Chinese.

Because I arrange and control all my own time, my revision method is very different from that of school students. I use a continuous-study method: spending a week or even longer studying only one subject—math, physics, biology or chemistry—and then another large block of time on the next. I easily become absorbed in study; once inside it, I dislike having my train of thought interrupted, and must chase through the block of knowledge that fascinates me until I understand it thoroughly, studying until I feel fatigued before switching subjects. This is a more focused mode of study, though unfortunately it is not valued in the normal educational system.

This method does not suit the great majority of people, and is even less suitable for students in school, who must follow the school's pace. But I used this method as early as age seventeen or eighteen, and my teachers gave me the privilege of not following the routine lectures and lessons. Back then I still achieved excellent results—first in the school in every subject, with no weak subject—showing that for me personally this is a highly efficient method.

After all these years, I find the high-school course I still love most is mathematics. In the past three months I have finished reviewing the first two-thirds of high-school math, while physics, chemistry and biology are only about one-third to one-half done. Now I understand very well why my son refused to follow me into medicine and chose to study mathematics instead. Perhaps our family genes carry a bias toward math; math exerts a great pull on us, and once we touch it we easily become obsessed.

I may finish math, physics, chemistry and biology in the next 1–2 months. Then, over the remaining four or five months, I will keep doing problems, using them to find my weak points, and then do targeted second-round study and exercises to consolidate. In between, I will work through some online courses for English and Chinese—I basically listen to English and Chinese courses, which need little mental effort and little writing on scratch paper, while lying in bed or running.

Whoever is preparing for the gaokao must use exam-taking strategies in moderation, and these strategies must suit them; I am no exception. I hope first to learn through the knowledge points once, so that at least on next year's exam I will no longer fail to recognize symbols and questions, and can secure the basic points on the paper—the basic points on the gaokao are at least 450. In our province, 450 basically qualifies one for any public medical junior college; a few more points gives hope of a bachelor-level medical school. I no longer set any score target; I will let nature take its course and accept whatever next year brings.

Since my school days I have been a bit of a nonconformist, ill at ease with the standardized education system; my older brother and I are alike in this. We focus and obsess easily and find it hard to study like ordinary students. I am grateful that every good teacher I met along the way was willing to give me a green light, letting me arrange my own studies like a lone rider.

Though readers always hope I will share my study experience for their children, I know very well that little in my experience is worth borrowing. Studying by my method may be a risk for most students, and not many are willing to take it. Most educators also disapprove of my method and revision approach, and I have no wish to debate who is right; you may simply take me as a curiosity.

What I hope more is that parents respect their children's gifts and nature, do not make decisions for them, and do not direct them into excessive extracurricular study. An acorn grows into an oak, a willow seed into a willow; forcing seedlings upward usually backfires. Children's physical and mental health is ten thousand times more important than grades. Do not lose the greater for the lesser; rather than forcing children into high-load study, give them more love and happy experiences. When people experience love and happiness, their potential naturally springs forth.