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Who is the iCanStudy academic program for?
Who is the iCanStudy academic program for?

Our program is suitable for a wide range of learners. This article will help you evaluate if it is suitable for you.

Justin Sung avatar
Written by Justin Sung
Updated over a week ago

Our academic program is suitable for a very wide range of domains and circumstances. This is because the techniques are built on fundamental methods of human processing, rather than superficial, subject-specific tips or tricks.

You may also be interested to learn about the fundamental approach behind how our program was created to better understand how it can be so transferrable.

Go direct to your question:


What age and educational stage?

The program is designed for students of any level, whether you’re a high school student looking to take back control of your grades, a university student wanting more time, or a professional looking to accelerate your skill acquisition and learning.

Our youngest students are 13 or 14, while our oldest students are in their 80's. Learning is a lifelong skill, after all!

As many of our techniques can be quite advanced and cognitively challenging, we do not recommend the program for students under the age of 13, unless very gifted.

The program will be best suited for senior high school or university students.

It is second-best suited for professionals interested in learning under time or life commitments.

The strength of your academic background does have an effect on your ability to progress, but we have not found this to be consistent, with some academic high achievers progressing very slowly, and some learners who haven't studied formally in decades after nearly failing high school progressing extremely fast.


Which academic curriculums or countries?

Most curriculums and assessments are more similar than they are different. The skills to succeed in most structured curriculums overlap heavily.

All learners must be proficient at deep processing and higher-order thinking, self-regulation, and self-management.

In addition to countless regionally-specific high school and university curriculums, our learners use our program to achieve success in:

  • MCAT

  • IGCSE/GCSE

  • A-levels

  • IB

  • USMLE

  • UPSC

  • JEE

  • NEET

There are also many learners worldwide studying for professional certifications like CA/CPA/CFA examinations, medical and surgical specialisation exams, and software engineering and development certifications.

The program does not favour any one curriculum and we are confident to say that it is suitable for any academic curriculum as long as it involves declarative knowledge (see below).


Which subjects or domains?

The program is based on fundamental processes that your brain uses to learn new information. Therefore the program is optimal for any subject where you need to learn, retain and apply knowledge.

It is most effective for subjects that are heavy, conceptual or detailed. It is least effective for highly procedural or skill-based domains such as music performance, dance and (partially) languages.

Declarative vs. procedural knowledge

Our programs are suitable for any subjects with reasonable declarative knowledge requirements.

Declarative knowledge is about knowing "what," encompassing facts and information. For example, understanding the laws of thermodynamics, the nuances of complex historical events, or simple facts like knowing that Paris is the capital of France.

Procedural knowledge, on the other hand, focuses on knowing "how" to perform tasks, like riding a bicycle or baking a cake. Declarative knowledge deals with information, while procedural knowledge involves practical skills and actions.

Sciences

Sciences are a perfect fit, especially if it's dense or conceptually difficult. We teach methods to encode the information efficiently as well as retrieve the details for exams or real-world applications.

Medicine

Medicine is a great fit. Some areas need to be memorised, and we'll teach you techniques for that, while some things need to be conceptually understood or related to clinical application.

Anatomy

Anatomy is a decent fit. The memorisation techniques we teach will make it easier for you, while the encoding techniques will help you to apply your knowledge clinically.

However, anatomy is not inherently conceptual, so some techniques will not be applicable.

Mathematics

Maths is a partial fit. Our techniques will help you answer the most challenging questions since you will develop a strong conceptual understanding of the topic, however, it won't help you with the procedural aspects of doing calculations. It will certainly help you, but not as much as compared to sciences or English.

Philosophy

Philosophy is a good fit. Because of philosophy's inherently conceptual and historically chronological nature, our techniques should help you understand the principles and development of philosophical ideas more easily.

You will still need to memorise some aspects though, which our memorisation techniques are well suited for.

English

English is (surprisingly) a very good fit. We teach a variation of some of our encoding techniques which make writing deep and meaningful essays very easy.

They are well-suited for text response, unfamiliar media analysis and essay writing. With English assessments becoming more "curvy" lately, our techniques work even better.

However, applying our techniques for English is an intermediate level technique, so beginners will find it difficult to use the techniques straight away.

Languages

Languages are not inherently logical so they are an average fit for our techniques.

The greatest benefit is if you have prior knowledge in a related language, for example, if you are a Japanese speaker learning Chinese, our techniques are more helpful as they share common roots.

Or if you're an English speaker learning French, the same applies.

Though our techniques do help a little, the system is not optimised for languages, beyond just making you a better learner overall.

Economics

Economics is very conceptual, especially at the higher levels, and shares many similarities with science. Therefore, our techniques are a very good fit.

Law and Legal Studies

Law and legal studies are a variable fit. Our techniques will help you to understand legal concepts; structures and systems; landmark cases and their pertinent details; and bring your learning together in deep applications.

However legal studies also include many random or highly specific rules and exceptions, which you will need to memorise through some of our auxiliary techniques.

Politics

Politics are a variable fit. Like legal studies, our techniques will help you to understand concepts; structures and systems; key policy details; and bring your learning together in deep applications.

However, politics include many random or highly specific rules and exceptions, which you will need to memorise through some of our auxiliary techniques.

Coding

Coding is highly procedural and skill-based. Therefore our techniques are a low-level fit.

Our techniques will help you to understand concepts, logic and structures, as well as help you to understand how you can practise learning programming languages faster.

However, our techniques are not well suited for learning coding syntax and specific use-cases, which form the bulk of intermediate coding work.

You will still probably benefit from the time management and focus techniques, and we have many students on the program only for that.


Interested in learning how the program was designed?

You can watch our webinar on How it Works which explains the approach to creating the program and therefore the problems it is most suited to solving.

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