Effective studying at the college level involves prioritizing important information. We examined the relationship between self-reported study strategies and selectivity on a value-directed remembering task. In this task, the importance of to-be-remembered information is varied by random assignment of point values to a list of items that are later recalled. Participants (*N = *63) viewed 6 lists of 20 words that ranged in value from 1-10 points and were instructed to maximize their score on free recall tests given after each list. For each participant, a selectivity index was calculated as a measure of the ability to recall high-value items given one’s memory capacity. Following this task, an academic strategy score was calculated for each participant using 10 Likert-scale questions about their studying habits. These questions focused on how strategic participants were in terms of regulating their studying. We found a significant correlation between selectivity index and academic strategy score (*r*(61) = .454, *p* < .001), suggesting that the ability to prioritize valuable information in a memory task is associated with the use of methods of studying that rely on selective encoding.