The honest answer: both — but for different jobs. Knowing which job is which saves hundreds of hours.
What self-study does best
First-pass learning is a private act. Reading a new chapter, wrestling with a derivation, solving your first ten problems — these need silence and personal pace. In a group, the fastest person's pace becomes everyone's pace, and everyone else quietly nods along without learning.
What group study does best
- Explaining to each other. Teaching a topic is the strongest test of knowing it. If you cannot explain depreciation to a friend, you do not yet own it.
- Doubt exchange. Your friend's five doubts probe your knowledge from angles you never considered.
- Accountability. A fixed weekly session is a deadline, and deadlines finish chapters.
The 80/20 split
Roughly 80% of study time should be solo, 20% in a small group of two or three serious people — larger groups drift into conversation. A weekly two-hour session is plenty.
A group session that earns its time
- Everyone arrives having already studied the agreed chapter.
- Each person teaches one section, aloud, from memory.
- Take a common test: one fresh paper on the chapter from 7Marks, written silently, swapped and marked with the key.
- Discuss only the questions people got wrong — with steps, not just answers (7Solve settles arguments fast).
That structure turns group study from a social hour into the sharpest two hours of the week.