Effective Minimum Dose
It is not often that I get asked about strategies for the written exam. The concept seems straightforward. Here are your materials. Study them. We will test how much you know.
But what if your study technique is the reason you are not scoring well on the written exam?
When I took my first sergeant test back in 2000, yes, I know, some of you were not born yet, I studied so hard that I can still remember specific questions to this day. Take the question below. I got it right. The other 124 questions are what kicked my butt.
There is a concept called Effective Minimum Dose, and it applies directly to studying large amounts of material. The idea is simple:
Stop studying what you already know.
My agency provided over 1,000 pages of study material and six months to get through it. My mistake was spending too much time on material I already knew well, going back over concepts I had already committed to memory, while leaving other material underprepared.
Effective Minimum Dose suggests a two step approach. Build familiarity across all the material first, then go back to lock in the concepts that need more focused study. You do not need to memorize every detail on the first pass. Recognition gets you through most multiple choice questions. Memorization comes after coverage, not instead of it.
The officer who covers everything adequately will almost always outscore the one who mastered half of it.
This piece first ran in The Edge, my newsletter for law enforcement professionals. Subscribers get it first.
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