The Cornell Note-Taking System: Learn the Method Students Have Used to Enhance Their Learning Since the 1940s

How should you take notes in class? Like so many stu­dents who came before me and would come after, I had lit­tle idea in col­lege and even less in high school. The inher­ent­ly ambigu­ous nature of the note-tak­ing task has inspired a vari­ety of meth­ods and sys­tems, few of them as respect­ed as Cor­nell Notes. Invent­ed in the 1940s by Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion pro­fes­sor Wal­ter Pauk, author of How to Study in Col­lege, Cor­nell Notes involves divid­ing each page up into three sec­tions: one to para­phrase the lec­ture’s main ideas, one to sum­ma­rize those ideas, and one to write ques­tions. After writ­ing down those main ideas dur­ing class, imme­di­ate­ly sum­ma­rize and add ques­tions about the con­tent. Then, while study­ing lat­er, try to answer those ques­tions with­out look­ing at the main body of notes.

You’ll find a com­plete and con­cise expla­na­tion of how to take Cor­nell Notes at Cor­nel­l’s web site, which includes infor­ma­tion on the “Reflect” stage (in which you ask your­self broad­er ques­tions like “What’s the sig­nif­i­cance of these facts?” and “What prin­ci­ple are they based on?”) and the “Review” stage (in which you “spend at least ten min­utes every week review­ing all your pre­vi­ous notes” to aid reten­tion).

For a more detailed visu­al expla­na­tion, have a look at teacher Jen­nifer DesRochers’ instruc­tions for how to take Cor­nell Notes in the video above, which now approach­es one mil­lion views on Youtube. Her own ver­sion encour­ages tak­ing down main-idea sum­maries in draw­ings as well as text, and includ­ing things like “key points” and “impor­tant peo­ple or ideas” in the ques­tion col­umn.

That DesRochers’ video now approach­es one mil­lion views sug­gests stu­dents still find the Cor­nell Notes sys­tem effec­tive, as much as or even more so than they did when Pauk first pub­lished it. Over time, of course, its users have also aug­ment­ed it: take Doug Neil­l’s video “Improv­ing Cor­nell Notes With Sketch­not­ing Tech­niques” above, which com­bines stan­dard Cor­nell Notes with his sys­tem of “sketch­not­ing,” also known as “visu­al note-tak­ing and graph­ic record­ing.”

He pro­vides exam­ples of what such Cor­nell-for­mat­ted sketch­not­ing might look like, explain­ing that “hav­ing the option of doing some­thing more visu­al in your mind trig­gers a dif­fer­ent type of pro­cess­ing pow­er, so that you’re more active in the way that you’re respond­ing to the ideas. You’re not just pas­sive­ly tak­ing in infor­ma­tion.” The nature of school, as stu­dents in every era have known, can often induce a state of pas­siv­i­ty; sys­tems like Cor­nell Notes and its many vari­a­tions remind us of how much more we can learn if we have a way to break out of it.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,300 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

Wyn­ton Marsalis Gives 12 Tips on How to Prac­tice: For Musi­cians, Ath­letes, or Any­one Who Wants to Learn Some­thing New

Carl Sagan’s Syl­labus & Final Exam for His Course on Crit­i­cal Think­ing (Cor­nell, 1986)

What’s a Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-Proven Way to Improve Your Abil­i­ty to Learn? Get Out and Exer­cise

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.