The Cornell note-taking method, with an example

What is the Cornell note-taking method?

The Cornell method divides each page into three parts. A wide column on the right holds the notes you take in class. A narrow column on the left, the cue column, holds questions or key words you add after class. A strip across the bottom holds a short summary of the page in your own words.

You take notes as usual, turn them into questions the same day, and later cover the notes and answer the questions from memory. That last step is what turns a page layout into a study method, and it's the step most people skip.

The system was developed by Walter Pauk, an education professor at Cornell University, who set it out in his book How to Study in College (Cornell Learning Strategies Center). Cornell's alumni magazine says he devised the technique in the 1950s as a teaching assistant, and that it gained national popularity through his 1962 book, which remains in print in its 11th edition (Cornellians).

How to set up a Cornell notes page

The University of Cincinnati's guide gives these measurements: the notes section should be six inches wide and nine inches long, and the cue column 2.5 inches wide and nine inches long (University of Cincinnati). The summary goes in the space left at the bottom. The same guide suggests writing your name, the course title, the date and the lecture topic at the top of every page.

• Notes column (right, wide): what you write during the lecture.
• Cue column (left, narrow): questions and key words, written after class.
• Summary (bottom, a few lines): the main points of the page, written last.

The exact inches don't matter much. What matters is that the cue column is narrow enough to force short questions, and that you can cover the notes column with a sheet of paper or your hand.

How to take Cornell notes, step by step

1. 1During class, write in the notes column only. Use short sentences and abbreviations, and leave a few blank lines between ideas so you can fill gaps later.
2. 2After class, ideally the same day, read through the notes and write a question or key word in the cue column next to each main idea.
3. 3Write a two- or three-sentence summary at the bottom. If you can't, that tells you which part of the lecture you didn't follow.
4. 4Cover the notes column and answer each cue out loud. Then uncover the notes and check what you got wrong or left out.
5. 5Come back to the page in a few days and repeat step 4. Spend your time on the cues you missed.

A Cornell notes example: the heart's two circuits

Here is one filled-in page from an introductory physiology lecture. On paper, each cue sits in the left column, level with the notes it points to.

Cue column and notes column

• Cue: What are the four chambers of the heart? Notes: two atria (upper chambers, receive blood) and two ventricles (lower chambers, pump blood out).
• Cue: Where does each side of the heart send blood? Notes: right side pumps blood to the lungs (pulmonary circuit); left side pumps blood to the rest of the body (systemic circuit).
• Cue: Trace one drop of blood from the body back to the body. Notes: venae cavae, right atrium, right ventricle, pulmonary artery, lungs, pulmonary veins, left atrium, left ventricle, aorta.
• Cue: What do the valves do? Notes: tricuspid, pulmonary, mitral and aortic valves keep blood flowing one way.
• Cue: Why is the left ventricle wall thicker? Notes: it pumps into the systemic circuit, against higher pressure, all the way round the body.
• Cue: What does 120/80 mmHg mean? Notes: systolic (pressure as the ventricles contract) over diastolic (pressure as they relax), measured with a cuff.

Summary

Summary: The heart is two pumps side by side. The right side sends blood through the lungs and the left side sends it round the body, with four valves keeping the flow one-way. Blood pressure is written as systolic over diastolic, in mmHg.

Notice that most cues are questions, not labels. "Valves" in the cue column only reminds you of a topic. "What do the valves do?" makes you produce an answer, and "Trace one drop of blood" makes you put the whole page in order.

The review step most people skip

Plenty of students draw the Cornell lines, fill the notes column, and never touch the cue column again. That leaves you with tidy notes and the same study habit as before: rereading.

Covering the notes and answering the cues is retrieval practice, one of the most studied ways to make learning last. In one classic experiment, students who restudied a text did better on a test five minutes later, but students who had been tested on it remembered more after two days and after a week, even though restudying had made the other group more confident (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). A 2013 review of ten common study techniques rated practice testing as high utility and rereading as low utility (Dunlosky et al., 2013).

Timing matters too. A modern replication of Ebbinghaus's forgetting experiments reproduced the curve he described in the 1880s (Murre & Dros, 2015). That study used lists of nonsense syllables, not lectures, but the lesson carries over: write your cues while the lecture is still fresh, and recite from them again a few days later.

Common mistakes with Cornell notes

• Writing cues during the lecture. You don't yet know what mattered. Add them afterwards.
• Using labels instead of questions. A word in the margin reminds you of a topic; a question makes you recall it.
• Copying a sentence from the notes as the summary. Write it without looking, then check.
• Never covering the notes. The layout without the recall step is just a page with a wide margin.
• Spending longer on neat lines than on the content. A ruler is optional.

Cornell notes on a laptop, tablet or phone

The method works without paper. In a notes app, start each note with a short "Questions" section, put your lecture notes below it, and end with a "Summary" heading. On a tablet, a two-column table does the same job. Answer the questions before you scroll down to the notes.

If you use Lumyo, each note gets a summary and a category automatically, which helps you find a lecture later. Still write your own Cornell summary, because writing it is part of the learning. When you want to check a recalled answer, you can choose which notes a chat reads and ask, and each answer cites the note it used, so tapping the source opens the exact line. For more ways to test yourself before an exam, see how to study from your own notes.