How do you prepare for your exams

Top Exam Preparation Tips

Studying and preparing is vital to success in exams.

It is, however, difficult to know how best to manage your preparation period until you have some experience.

This page therefore offers some ideas, based on experience and expert opinion, to help those still quite new to exams.

Some of these tips sound like ‘common sense’, and relate to the importance of looking after yourself. Others are more about how you do your studying.

Both types are important, and will help you to both study better, and perform better in the exam.

1. Start your revision early

There is no substitute for starting early with revision.

You need to give yourself enough time to review everything that you have studied, and make sure that you understand it (or to read round the subject or ask for help if you are struggling). Last minute cramming is much less productive.

Ideally, review each subject as you go, and make sure that you understand it fully as this will make revision much easier. Ultimately, the best tip is to study hard and know your subject, and starting early is the best way to achieve this.

2. Organise your study time

You will almost certainly find some subjects easier than others. You will also find that you have more to revise for some subjects than others.

It is worth taking the time to plan your revision and consider how much time you might need for each subject.

It is also helpful to consider when and how long you plan to spend studying each day. How much time will you be able to manage each day? What other commitments do you have during your study period?

Plan your revision to ensure that you use your time to best advantage. When is the best time of day for you—morning, afternoon or evening? Can you do more reading at particular times? This will help you to plan broadly what you intend to do, although you should always make sure that you leave it flexible enough to adapt later if circumstances change.

3. Look after yourself during study and exam time

You will be able to work better if you eat a healthy diet, and get plenty of sleep.

This applies both during your exam period, and when you are revising. Surviving on junk food is not a good idea. For more about the importance of diet and sleep, see our pages on Food, Diet, and Nutrition and The Importance of Sleep.

It is also a good idea to take regular exercise when studying. A brisk walk, or more vigorous exercise, will get your blood moving and ensure that you are better able to concentrate. There is more about this in our page on The Importance of Exercise.

4. Vary your revision techniques

They say that variety is the spice of life, and it certainly helps to improve your studying.

Always doing the same thing, for example, reading over your notes on a subject, is likely to be quite dull. Spice up your revision period by trying different exercises and techniques. Alternatives to reading your notes over include:

5. Vary your locations

Changing the location in which you study—for example, your room, the library at school or college, a quiet cafГ©, or someone else’s house—is also good.

Research has found that this can help to improve memory retention. It is not clear why, but the suggestion is that the brain makes connections between the background and what you are studying: more different connections makes things easier to remember.

6. Take regular breaks

You cannot work solidly for 8 hours. In fact, it is very hard to work in a concentrated way for more than about an hour.

You may find that some days you can do more, but mostly, one to one and a half hours is likely to be your limit before you need a break.

Take 10 minutes periodically to go and get a drink and walk around a bit.

7. Know your exam

Make sure that you have looked at past papers.

This will ensure that you are prepared for the type of exam you will be sitting, whether multiple choice, short answer or essay.

Know what you are expected to do: for example, how many questions from each section will you have to answer? Of course, you still have to read the instructions on the paper itself, and make sure that they are the same, but this will help you to feel comfortable with what will be expected.

Even more important, make sure that you have practised the right type of questions, and know what will be expected of a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ answer.

8. Make sure you know the practical details about your exam

Also make sure that you know what to do if something goes wrong. You might, for example, be ill on the day, or get held up on the journey, and you need to know who to contact.

Take a bit of time at least a week beforehand to make sure that you know the answers to all these questions.

This will help you to stay reasonably relaxed, and ensure that you know what to do if something goes wrong, as well as minimising the chances of something going wrong.

Further Reading from Skills You Need

Develop the skills you need to make the most of your time as a student.

Our eBooks are ideal for students at all stages of education, school, college and university. They are full of easy-to-follow practical information that will help you to learn more effectively and get better grades.

And finally…

We all have different ways of working, and that includes preparing for exams.

As you get more experienced in taking exams, you will find the ways that work best for you, and learn how best to prepare. In the meantime, these tips should give you a good starting point for study.

How to prepare for exams

As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”. We’re not sure if he was talking about his exams, but it’s definitely good advice for any student. Proper preparation for your exams is the key to success. But with the amount of testing the average student today goes through, it can start to feel like you spend more time revising than learning. Here’s our guide to smart exam preparation to take the pain out of revising, and get you the result you deserve.

Start early: Your exams won’t just focus on what you learnt last week. They test you on a whole year’s worth of study, so sometimes you can be asked a question in May on a topic that you covered in September. Instead of trying to cram all that knowledge into your revision session right before the exam, why not review what you’ve learnt more regularly? Doing a short review of what you’ve learnt every few weeks means that your revision is spread out throughout the year. It’s a little bit of time out of your day that will save you hours of cramming when exam time comes around.

Make a plan: When you’re facing the prospect of an important exam, it’s tempting to just open your textbook and get revising. Stop. You need to make a plan. Write a list of what you need to revise. Once you’ve made your list, break down each topic into smaller sub topics, and make a note of which textbooks and resources you need to look at to refresh your knowledge. Looking at your revision in bite size chunks is a lot less daunting. You can then assign an amount of time that you want to spend on each of your sub topics, whether it’s 5 minutes or an hour. That way you’ll know how much time you need to devote to your revision. This time management technique will put a stop to the revision all-nighter.

Use memory techniques: There’s lots of different ways to make facts more memorable. If you’re the kind of person who is great at remembering song lyrics, why not turn your most-hard-to-remember dates, names or formulae into a rhyme? Perhaps you’re a more visual learner? Why not create spider diagrams and flow charts to present the information you have to learn in a more memorable way.

Ask for help: Some topics just don’t seem to click, no matter how hard you try. The classroom isn’t always the best place to tackle these difficult subjects. Your teacher is often working with multiple students and not always able to give you individual attention. A private tutor is a great way to get some one-to-one learning. Online tuition isn’t as expensive as you might think, and it more than pays off when it time to sit down in front of that exam paper.

Get a study buddy: A problem shared is a problem halved. Working with someone else is a great way to revise. It gives you a break from sitting in your room by yourself, staring at a wall of text. A study partner can also offer insights into a topic that you might not have thought of. Set each other tests, and make sure you keep each other motivated. When you’re starting to get tired of revising, having someone else there to cheer you on can prove invaluable.

Test yourself: Making yourself mini tests is a great way to revise. Use cards or post it notes to write your own test questions and then put the answer on the back. Then shuffle the cards and pull out your questions at random. This is a great way to test your knowledge at home. Another great way to test yourself is to answer sample questions and give yourself a time limit – the same way you would in an exam. Getting used to working this way teaches you how best to manage your time in the exam room, and also makes working against a ticking clock seem much more natural.

Reward yourself: Revising is hard work. You deserve a reward; you earned it. Also, studies show that incentivising learning helps information stick. So whether it’s a square of chocolate or half an hour on the Xbox, that little treat helps all the work you’ve just done to stick.

Relax: This is the most important one. Nerves can get in the way of you doing your best when that all important paper is put in front of you. Take some time away from studying to see your friends and get some exercise. As long as you’ve revised hard and smart, you’ve got this.

Exam Preparation: Ten Study Tips

Updated July 22, 2022 Updated July 22, 2022

Preparing for exams? Give yourself the best chance with these top ten study tips, and try not to let the stress get to you! Remember: you’ve got this.

Give yourself enough time to study

Don’t leave it until the last minute. While some students do seem to thrive on last-minute cramming, it’s widely accepted that (for most of us) this is not the best way to approach an exam. To help sort out your time management, set up a timetable for your study. Write down how many exams you have and the days on which you have to sit them. Then organize your study accordingly. You may want to give some exams more study time than others, so find a balance that you feel comfortable with.

Organize your study space

Make sure you have enough space to spread your textbooks and notes out. Have you got enough light? Is your chair comfortable? Are your computer games out of sight?

Try and get rid of all distractions, and make sure you feel as comfortable and able to focus as possible. For some people, this may mean almost complete silence, for others, background music helps. Some of us need everything completely tidy and organized in order to concentrate, while others thrive in a more cluttered environment. Think about what works for you, and take the time to get it right.

Use flow charts and diagrams

Practice on old exams

Explain your answers to others

Parents and little brothers and sisters don’t have to be annoying around exam time. Use them to your advantage. Explain an answer to a question to them. That will help you to get it clear in your head, and also to highlight any areas where you need more work.

Organize study groups with friends

Get together with friends for a study session. You may have questions that they have the answers to and vice versa. As long as you make sure you stay focused on the topic for an agreed amount of time, this can be one of the most effective ways to challenge yourself.

Take regular breaks

While you may think it’s best to study for as many hours as possible, this can actually be counterproductive. If you were training for a marathon, you wouldn’t try and run 24 hours a day. Likewise, studies have shown that for long-term retention of knowledge, taking regular breaks really helps.

Everyone’s different, so develop a study routine that works for you. If you study better in the morning, start early before taking a break at lunchtime. Or, if you’re more productive at nighttime, take a larger break earlier on so you’re ready to settle down come evening.

Try not to feel guilty about being out enjoying the sunshine instead of hunched over your textbooks. Remember Vitamin D is important for a healthy brain.

Snack on brain food

Plan your exam day

Drink plenty of water

As a final tip, remember that being well hydrated is essential for your brain to work at its best. Make sure you keep drinking plenty of water throughout your revision, and also on the exam day.

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This article was originally published in February 2008 and was updated in May 2017.

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How to prepare for your exams with one week to go

Hopefully you’ve been revising hard for several weeks now. You made a good revision plan and have been steadily working through it, feeling your confidence grow.

But, what should you be focusing on in the last week before your exams? To be honest, if you’re well prepared already the last week won’t be that different to all the previous weeks.

Here are the things you should be doing to prepare for your exams with one week to go.

How to prepare for your exams with one week to go

1. Identify your strengths and weaknesses

If you’ve been following my revision planning advice you’ll have identified your strengths and weaknesses ages ago. However, at this point it’s worth going over that list again. You’ll probably find that, if you’ve been busy bringing your weaknesses up to scratch, your strengths and weakneses have changing in relation to each other.

At this stage you should refocus your efforts on your remaining weaknesses.

2. Study in focused bursts and take breaks

By now you should know how long you can focus for before you take a break. This could be anything from 20 to 60 minutes.

Use a timer to time your focused study sessions and time your breaks as well (don’t get lost in social-media land and forget to come back to your studies).

3. Choose a topic for each study session

Start each study session knowing what you’re going to focus on in that time. Don’t sit down aimlessly thinking ‘I must get some revision done,’ not knowing what you’re going to study.

4. Finesse your exam technique

Hopefully you’ve been doing lots of past papers for weeks. If you haven’t, you can’t leave it any longer. You can’t neglect your exam technique any longer.

Use power hours to help you learn content, do past papers and learn to think like an examiner in a focused way.

5. Get help with anything you still don’t understand

Pester your teacher, find a different text book in the library or look it up online. It’s your responsibility to make sure that you understand every aspect of the syllabus for every subject.

6. Get plenty of sleep

Sleep is vital for making sure all that good learning you’ve been doing is fixed in your head. While you’re asleep new connections are made in your brain – if you skimp on sleep you’re effectively cheating yourself out of the knowledge you’ve gained in your study sessions.

7. Eat well

Try to eat healthy meals and snacks – feed your body with goodness the way you’re feeding your mind with knowledge.

8. Exercise

Scientists are always coming up with new proof that exercise helps your brain. Only this week I read an article that said that exercise makes your brain bigger. It also gives your brain a rest from all that study and relieves stress.

Get your trainers on and get out in the sunshine!

9. Know the logistics

You should already know, but if you don’t, find out when and where all your exams are going to be. Also make sure that you’re able to get there on time.

10. Relax!

I know that might sound ridiculous but you need to have some wind down time at the end of each day so that you sleep well. It also stops you from feeling like a revision machine.

Follow these top tips on how to prepare for your exams with one week to go and when you get to exam day you’ll be in a great position to do your very best.

Do you need more help?

If you need more advice on how to spend the last week before your exams, there is a whole module inside The Extraordinaries Club called ‘Exam Time’ which covers:

Join The Extraordinaries Club to get all the advice this module shares and get my support on the coaching calls throughout exam season.

You’ve got this! Keep working hard and you’ll be OK.

The Most Effective Exam Preparation Strategy

Exam preparation is one of the topics we get the most questions on, so I decided to see what study techniques other experts recommend to make sure my study advice is still up to date. I bought some books about studying in college and dove in. This post boils down what I learned about effective exam preparation from all these books:

Most of these books start with other topics and then lead up to the exams. That would seem to be the logical order, but I decided to reverse that. I’m starting with exams.

What caused me to do that was a golf school that I recently attended. The instructor’s premise was that the most important objective in golf is what happens at the end – impact.

If the goal is impact, then why not just set up for it in the first place? That is, configure your stance, arms, grip, as they will be at the moment you arrive at impact. From there, simply rotate back and through and you will hit the ball perfectly every time. It works.

Ok, so maybe not the perfect analogy, but in college, being prepared for exams is the end goal. Remember, this isn’t about taking exams, it’s about preparation for exams.

Everything you do should be done in a way that makes it as easy as possible to review and retain information in the most effective way possible.

So what exactly is the best way to do that?

Make it stick

All of the books I’ve read generally recommend some form of method that I’m about to discuss.

I’m going to focus on one book in particular as the entire book is about exams, or rather, ‘the science of successful learning’. It is called:

Make it stick. By Peter Brown, Henry Roediger III, and Mark McDaniel.

This is a book that I highly recommend to every college student who cares about doing well. GET THIS BOOK! It is only 253 pages and the core of how to do it covers about 150 of those pages.

The wrong way to prepare for exams

Before I explain how to prepare for exams the right way, I want to cover what is the wrong way of doing it.

There are several ways that students typically study for an exam. One of the worst ways is cramming, or what the author refers to as ‘massed practice’. That is, waiting until the last possible moment and then re-reading and reviewing material in one or more very intense long blocks of time right before the exam is given.

Cramming can work to some extent to get you through the exam, but the stress is high and the risks are great.

Another method that is less stressful is what the vast majority of students do. They open their class notes or textbooks and start paging through. They are skimming and re-reading, looking at the headlines, highlighted areas, illustrations, and other parts of the page. If they think they know it, they keep moving on.

What they are also doing is looking for things that they think they DON’T know. Then they’ll stop, read and re-read those more intensely until they feel comfortable that they know them.

The problem with this re-read method of study is twofold. First of all, students that study this way waste a lot of time focusing on what they already know, instead of focusing on what they don’t know, but they don’t know what that is.

Secondly and worst of all is that simply reading and re-reading is not an effective way to actually commit knowledge to long-term memory or effectively apply that knowledge to complex scenarios that typically appear on exams.

They are only giving themselves a false sense of security that may prove illusory when they take the exam.

The best way to prepare for exams

Self-testing

Just looking at something, again and again, isn’t enough. That’s just putting it in. To make it effective, you have to pull it out.

In Make It Stick, the authors refer to this as ‘retrieval’. That is, doing self-quizzing so that you are consciously forcing yourself to recall the information and not simply re-reading it.

Everything you learn in lectures and in textbooks is ultimately going to be turned into a question of some kind. If you know you are going to be asked questions, then start asking them yourself.

This goes back to the golf analogy that I used above. If you know that self-testing is the best way to prepare for an exam, then set up notes and textbooks to do self-testing as effectively as possible.

I cover taking notes, how to study a textbook, and how to prepare for exams in detail in the How To Study section of the website, which, combined with the Shovel App gives you a cohesive step-by-step system for getting A’s in every class, completely free! Get started here if you want to learn our full ‘how to study system,’ but here’s a quick version:

First, make sure you take all class notes using the Cornell Note Taking Method. This is simply dividing each notebook page into areas by drawing a line down the side of the page about one-third of the way over.

Take your notes on the wider side and then leave the narrow side open to write test questions.

Studying your textbooks the right way is also extremely important. I recommend highlighting textbooks, not as a way to come back and do a mindless review, but rather as a way to identify testable concepts. Once you’ve done that, you can formulate questions and create your own self-testing routine.

If your textbook has wide enough margins, write your test questions there. If not, then use a notebook or loose leaf paper.

From now on, everything you do to prepare for exams involves asking yourself questions or explaining to yourself the material you’ll be tested on. As you review your class notes or read a textbook, just be thinking “what in these notes or on this textbook page is likely to be on the exam, in what format?” and then write the questions:

What is the theory of…
Explain the principle of… and compare it to…
What are the 5 factors that influenced the…

Just put them down.

You can self-test in a variety of ways. Simply doing it mentally is good, but actually speaking it will be even better. Practice answering out loud. Recite it. Make complete answers that add supporting material and explanation. Say it as if you are teaching it to someone else.

Writing it out is another way. Varying retrieval methods will help long term retention. Use flashcards, do problem sets. Whatever the class and the material to be tested dictates. Don’t just review, DO, and do it frequently.

Spaced repetition

As you can imagine, you can’t self-test just once. It is most effective when it is done in multiple sessions over time. Do this self-testing on a regular basis continually from the time you learn the material all the way up to the exam. It’s easier to take small bites and do them more frequently.

How often you should do it depends on the difficulty of the material and how well you are retaining it. There is no starting too early. Literally, the next day after you learn about the material for the first time may be both acceptable and beneficial.

Every day is too much. You should have a day off and forget some of the material. It is beneficial! Some difficulty and effort ‘retrieving’ actually improves retention long term. Do a little review every few days or more if the exam is a way off. Get a feel for how much you are retaining. As you get closer, go to every other day.

Remember, you don’t have to try to do weeks of material at once. Focus on one chapter or one set of notes. Quiz yourself on those concepts and see how you do.

Benefits Of Self Testing:

The benefits of self-testing are many and indisputable. First of all, you find out early what you know and don’t know. You can meet with the professor and get help way before the exam. Secondly, you are taking small bites at a time. It is much easier to focus on one set of class notes or one chapter than trying to do it all at once. Lastly, you aren’t wasting time on things you already know. You can check off the things you are sure you know and give more attention to those that you don’t.

Mix it up

In Make It Stick the author speaks of how most people think that they will do better if they do things with a ‘single-minded focus’. That is, if they just practice one thing with great intensity and duration, they’ll master it faster. Studies show just the opposite!

Success is actually greater when you use what is referred to as ‘interleaving,’ which is simply mixing up your practice so you don’t do too much of one thing for a long period of time.

One example is a tennis player who hits 100 forehands first and then 100 backhands, or a golfer hitting 100 shots to the exact same distance.

One might think that doing 100 of one thing first and 100 of something different next would be better. Not so. Mixing each of them up continuously throughout the practice actually makes the player better at both. More importantly, it gives the player a better ability to actually apply the skills in a real game when they will have to react instantly and instinctively.

This has also been proven especially useful in math where instead of doing one type of problem multiple times, students do different types of problems in random order. Mixing them up was more effective at solving them.

Mixing it up will keep from getting bored as well. Pounding the same thing over and over just gets monotonous and you’ll quit before you even get the practice done.

Practice practice practice

I never liked the term ‘study’ for an exam. I view studying as the acquisition of knowledge. That is, when you first learn it and understand it.

To actually recall it and apply it, you don’t study, you practice. That is you ‘DO’ it, whether that means quizzing yourself, working problem sets, or thinking through different ways to apply it.

You’ve probably heard the saying ‘practice makes perfect.’ Actually, it doesn’t.

Dave Pelz, the famous golf instructor likes to say “perfect practice makes permanent.” I agree.

Preparing for your exams the correct way will get you better grades with less stress. It will help you make your knowledge more permanent and give you the ability to apply it more intuitively and creatively.

Many of the classes you take now are prerequisites for even harder classes to come. Everything you do now will carry over to the next semester and make those classes easier still.

Start building a solid foundation by practicing, not studying for exams.

About that cramming…

One last thing. If you do need to cram for an exam, don’t just scan and re-read the material. Try to quiz yourself. Formulate questions out of the material and ask them out loud. Then give the answers out loud as well. Reciting and trying to remember by heart will be far more effective at committing the concepts to memory than just silently reading them.

Next time, avoid cramming for an exam and do self-testing early and often. Confirm that you know the material and have it committed to memory. When you do, the actual exam will be the easy part.

To sum it up

By following these simple steps, you will get better grades with less stress.