We all know how this goes every semester. You juggle four, five, or even six classes all semester long. You’re constantly writing essays, completing online homework, or studying for quizzes. The work never seems to end! And just when the semester winds down for the holidays, you get slammed with cumulative final exams in EVERY class…sound familiar?
Well we hear you, and we are here to help. Prepping for cumulative exams is tough, especially when you haven’t been specifically preparing for them months in advance. Here are some helpful tips and tricks to help you study for your upcoming exams:
1. Make flashcards
When you’re down to the last minute, this can be a really effective trick. Go through your notes and make a flashcard for every important concept. It can be a vocabulary term, a question, or just a fill-in-the-blank problem. Just writing down all of the important info can really help you to remember different concepts, even if you don’t have time to run through them.
Quizlet is an awesome tool for running through flashcards when you don’t have the time to make them yourself. Just Google your course, and chances are someone has already made a flashcard set that you can use for your own studying.
2. Read your notes out loud
Sometimes just reading your notes won’t cut it. Reading through your notes and saying the important concepts out loud is a very efficient way to study. Find a quiet space in your dorm, apartment, or even the library and just run through everything. Saying the notes out loud in addition to just reading those works your brain in two different ways, and thus promotes better memorization.
3. Make a study group
As if you needed another excuse to get together with your friends, studying with people in your class is a great way to review before an exam. Sharing notes and other class materials helps you to see something you might have missed in your own notes, and therefore helps you to close any gaps you had in understanding the course material. Also, the group environment will help reduce your pre-finals stress.
4. Re-read your notes before bed
We’ve all heard our professors tell us that studying before bed will help you remember material. Well…it actually works! All of that material that you studied before bed will be fresh in your mind, and you can actually study in your sleep. I HIGHLY recommend this method to review.
5. Rework through old exams and quizzes
Chances are your professor will ask very similar (if not the same) questions on the final as they have asked throughout the semester. If you receive graded work back in your class, run through all the questions and answers. If you got something wrong, try to figure out why it is incorrect, and figure out the correct answer. If you are preparing for a math or science class, rework through your old exams and problem sets. This will help you to better familiarize yourself with the material and will make the cumulative final a breeze.
6. Repetition, Repetition, Repetition!
When you are truly down to the last minute, repetition will be the key to remembering vocabulary terms, equations, and other information. Repeating the material over and over again will help to store the information in your short term memory and will become easier to recall on the final. Although practicing this way is not actually learning the material, it is one of the best ways to prepare yourself for a cumulative final.
Obviously we would all like to say we constantly study and do classwork in college, but sometimes that’s just not the case. We are involved in extracurricular clubs, sports, relationships, and have other commitments that we need to maintain in addition to our course work too, and that’s okay!
If you find yourself being super busy all semester and need to cram for a cumulative final in just a couple of days, these are some really effective tips to get you there.
Good luck studying, ladies!