Memory palace for studying: how to use it for exams

A memory palace helps you keep the parts of an exam that are lists or sequences: the steps of a process, the causes of a war, the bones of the hand, the structure of an essay answer. You place a vivid image of each item at a spot along a route you know well, and walk that route in your head during the exam. This guide shows how to turn a chapter into a route, with three worked examples, how to review it, and where it will not help you.

New to the technique? Start with our guide memory palace: how to build one, step by step, then come back here.

What a memory palace is good for in an exam

• Sequences: the stages of mitosis, the steps of a calculation method, the order of events in a period of history.
• Lists you must reproduce completely: the causes of something, the parts of an organ, the members of a group.
• Names and dates: who did what, and when.
• The outline of a long answer: five points for an essay question, in the order you want to write them.
• Vocabulary: word by word, in a palace you keep for one language.

It is less useful for things you have to understand or apply, like solving a new problem. The palace holds pieces; it does not explain them. Understand first, then store.

Does it help students? What the research shows

In 2014, a group of teachers published a study in Advances in Physiology Education. Medical students followed the same lectures on endocrinology. One group then studied on their own; the other had an interactive session in which they learned the material with the method of loci. The second group scored significantly better on the assessments, and the students said they found the technique helpful.

The technique also works for people who never used it before: in a 2017 study in Neuron, beginners who practised it for 40 days, 30 minutes a day, went from recalling 26 to 62 words from a list of 72.

One more finding matters for exams. In 2006, Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke showed that students who tested themselves on a text remembered more of it a week later than students who spent the same time reading it again. Walking your palace and recalling each item before you look is exactly that kind of test.

How to turn a chapter into a memory palace

1. Make the list first. Go through the chapter and write down what you must be able to reproduce, in the order you want it. Keep it short: 5 to 20 items per palace.
2. Choose a place for this chapter. One palace per topic. Your home for biology, your school for history, your grandparents' house for French. Separate places keep topics apart.
3. Fix a route and pick spots. As many spots as items, each one clearly different from the others.
4. Make each item visible. Abstract words need a stand-in: a word that sounds alike, an object, a person. Make the image big, moving and a bit absurd, and let it do something with the spot.
5. Walk it and test yourself. Recall every item before you check it. Do it again that evening, the next day and a few days later.

Three worked examples

1. Biology: the stages of mitosis

Prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase. Route: front door, hallway, kitchen, living room.

• Front door: a professional chef in a tall hat (prophase) blocks the door, untangling a huge ball of spaghetti strands: the chromosomes becoming visible.
• Hallway: a metal detector arch in the middle of the hallway (metaphase): everything has to line up in the middle to pass through.
• Kitchen: an anaconda (anaphase) pulls the spaghetti apart to both ends of the kitchen.
• Living room: a television (telophase) splits into two televisions, each with its own picture.

2. History: the causes of the First World War

A common way to learn them is militarism, alliances, imperialism, nationalism and the assassination in Sarajevo. Five spots on the way to school:

• Your gate: soldiers marching in step around the garden (militarism).
• The corner shop: shopkeepers chained to each other by the wrists, so if one moves, all move (alliances).
• The bus stop: a giant map being torn into pieces by people in crowns (imperialism).
• The bridge: every lamppost wrapped in a different flag, shouting (nationalism).
• The school gate: a car stopping, a shot, a hat falling (Sarajevo, 1914).

3. An essay answer

For an essay question you expect, decide your five points and their order, and place one image per point in five rooms. In the exam, walk the rooms and write a paragraph per room. You no longer lose a point halfway through.

Our free memory palace generator builds the route for you: type up to 20 items and it places them along 20 spots in a villa, with an image for each and a test. You can print it, share the link with a classmate, and put a reminder in your calendar to walk it again tomorrow. Nothing is stored on our side.

How to review before the exam

• Recall before you check. Walk the route with the list hidden. Only then look at what you missed, and make that image stranger.
• Space it out. The same day, the next day, a few days later and the day before the exam. Short walks, not long sessions.
• Walk it backwards once. If you can go backwards, the images are really there.
• Keep the palaces separate. Do not reuse a palace for a new chapter before the exam is over.

Where it does not help

A memory palace will not make you understand a proof, interpret a source or solve a problem you have not seen. It also costs time to build, so use it for what you really have to reproduce from memory, not for everything. Used that way, it turns the most tiring part of revision, learning lists by heart, into something you can do in a few walks.

For teachers: the generator works without an account or e-mail address, so pupils can use it in class. Read more in why we remember some things and forget others.

Sources

• Qureshi and others, The method of loci as a mnemonic device to facilitate learning in endocrinology leads to improvement in student performance as measured by assessments, Advances in Physiology Education 38 (2014): journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/advan.00092.2013
• Roediger and Karpicke, Test-enhanced learning: taking memory tests improves long-term retention, Psychological Science 17 (2006): profiles.wustl.edu/en/publications/test-enhanced-learning-taking-memory-tests-improves-long-term-ret
• Dresler and others, Mnemonic training reshapes brain networks to support superior memory, Neuron 93 (2017): cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(17)30087-9