By life stage · 10 tips
How to study in less time, which "part-time jobs" and loans to avoid, and what to think about before a master's or PhD.
Closing the book and testing yourself works better than reading something a second time. Adding quizzes in class raised grades by a medium amount. In a ranking of ten common study methods, self-testing sits in the top tier. After finishing a section, write out the main points from memory first, then flip back to check.
The same amount of study time spread over several days is remembered better than the same time done at one sitting. There is also a practical rule: the longer you need to remember something, the longer the gap between reviews should be. The further away the test, the longer the gap, but the research gives no general number of days.
Doing a long string of the same type of problem goes smoothly at the time. Practicing several types mixed together works better in the long run, by a medium amount. But it depends on the material: it works best for visual material such as recognizing a painter's style, a bit less for math problems, and for memorizing vocabulary, practicing in blocks is actually better.
What students use most are highlighting and rereading, yet in the ranking of ten common study methods both sit in the lowest tier. Writing summaries, the keyword mnemonic and picturing images for a text are in the lowest tier too. They are not completely useless, only that the conditions under which they work are too narrow, and the same time is better spent on self-testing.
These part-time jobs earn a few hundred CNY, and the price is a criminal record. One person took his ID card and 1 bank card to a designated place, helped with transfers and withdrawals, and earned more than 500 CNY. The procuratorate did not prosecute him, but the police still detained him for 10 days and fined him 1,000 CNY. Another person handed his own and other people's bank cards and SIM cards to a gang to receive and withdraw money, and was sentenced to 2 years and 3 months and fined 22,000 CNY (2.2万).
Lending, renting or transferring your ID card to someone else brings a warning and a fine of up to 200 CNY. Using someone else's ID card, or using one obtained by deception, brings a fine of 200 to 1,000 CNY or detention of up to 10 days (拘留). Using a forged document or someone else's document where real names are required, such as buying a train ticket or checking into a hotel, brings, in serious cases, criminal detention (拘役) or public surveillance (管制).
The minimum payment is a loan with interest charged by the day, about 18% a year at the cap that applied before 2020, and it voids the interest-free period. An installment advertised as "0.6% fee per month" is about 13.8% a year, not 7.2%. That is because you repay principal every month while the fee keeps being charged on the original amount. To tell which loan costs more, look only at the annualized rate, not the daily rate or the monthly fee rate.
An employer cannot hold your ID card, collect a deposit, or collect money under any other name. If an agency did not get you a job, it must refund its fee. Training loans (培训贷), where you pay for training before you can start work, and pyramid schemes (传销), where payment depends on recruiting people, are both scams the authorities have named. For interest above 4 times the one-year LPR (loan prime rate), a court will not support the part above that, but you still repay the principal.
A master's costs tuition, and it also costs you two or three years of pay, which is usually the bigger part. In a UK study that removed differences in family background and bachelor's results, at age 35 women with a master's earned only about 2% more, and men about 2% less, and the differences between fields are large. If you already work, you can study part-time; the certificate has the same force as a full-time one, but you can't get the national stipend (国家助学金).
In the same UK study, after removing differences in family background and bachelor's results, at age 35 women with a PhD earned about 8% more than those with only a bachelor's, while men earned about 9% less. The mental strain of a PhD is also heavy: about a quarter of PhD students across countries have clear symptoms of depression, and about one sixth have clear symptoms of anxiety. So first check whether the job you are aiming at hires only PhDs, then decide whether to do one.
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