How to take lecture notes in university: the Cornell method

What lecture notes are for

In first year, many courses post slides, so it can seem pointless to take notes at all. But slides show the topics, not the reasoning: why a step follows, which example the instructor worked on the board, what "this will be on the exam" was attached to. Notes capture that layer. They also give you a set of questions to test yourself on later, which is where most of their value lies.

The research on note-taking supports a modest claim. Writing notes and reviewing them helps, and the review counts most. A widely shared 2014 study suggested longhand notes beat laptop notes; a later replication by Morehead, Dunlosky and Rawson (2019) did not find a reliable difference between the two. Use whichever lets you listen, think and write in your own words without drifting to other tabs.

How the Cornell method works

The Cornell system was developed by Walter Pauk, an education professor at Cornell University, and described in his book How to Study in College. You divide each page into three areas:

The steps are often called the five Rs:

1. Record in the notes column during class. Short phrases, abbreviations, and space between ideas.
2. Question: soon after class, write questions in the cue column that the notes answer.
3. Recite: cover the notes column, read each question, and answer out loud or on scrap paper. Then check.
4. Reflect: ask how this connects to last week, to the textbook, and to likely exam questions. Write the summary.
5. Review older pages regularly by quizzing yourself from the cue column.

A filled-in Cornell notes example

Here is one page from an imagined first-year biology lecture on enzymes, written out as text.

Notice that the cue questions ask for explanations and sketches, not just definitions. Those are the questions an exam will ask. They also make excellent flashcards; our guide to making good flashcards shows how to turn them into cards that work.

Outline notes and when to use them

The outline method uses headings and indented points: main topic at the left margin, sub-points indented beneath. It suits well-organized lectures that follow a clear structure, such as a history or psychology course with numbered slides. It is fast and easy to read later.

Outline notes struggle with lectures that jump around or are built on worked problems. In math, physics and chemistry, write each worked example step by step and note in the margin why each step happens. The two methods combine well: outline in the notes column, Cornell cues and summary around it.

• Before class: skim the slides or reading so you know the structure and can listen rather than copy.
• During class: write examples, connections and emphasis. Skip anything already on the posted slides word for word.
• Leave gaps for what you missed, and fill them from the textbook or a classmate the same day.

Laptop, tablet or paper?

Each has real trade-offs. Typing is faster, so laptop notes tend to be longer, and they are easy to search and reorganize. The risk is typing what the instructor says word for word without thinking about it, plus the pull of other tabs. Paper is slower, which forces you to choose and condense, and it handles diagrams, arrows and equations easily. A tablet with a stylus sits in between.

• Science and math courses: paper or a stylus usually works better, because so much of the content is diagrams and equations.
• Reading-heavy courses: a laptop is fine if you paraphrase rather than transcribe.
• Either way: turn off notifications, and if your institution offers accessibility services for note-taking support, use them.

The after-class review: where notes pay off

Re-reading notes feels productive but does little. Recalling them does a lot. In a well-known experiment, Roediger and Karpicke (2006) had students either restudy a passage or take recall tests on it. Restudying did slightly better on a test five minutes later, but the tested group remembered much more a week later. The Cornell recite step is this kind of retrieval practice, which our article on active recall versus rereading covers in more depth.

Spreading these reviews out uses the spacing effect as well as retrieval. Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) rated both practice testing and distributed practice as high-utility techniques. For a full term plan, see our spaced repetition schedule. The university study skills deck and the research and study course cover note-taking and review in more detail.