When most people think of finals week in college, the first thing that comes to mind is having to study for tests and memorize material. And while that may be true for some students, a “final” in college isn’t always a sit-down exam — it’s just the last assignment that needs to be completed before the semester is up. And if you’re worried about your grades slipping, searching for finals studying tips can heavily depend on the type of final exam you’re actually taking.
Finals week looks different for everybody, depending on your majors and the specific classes you take each semester. This can serve as a major relief for those that aren’t great test-takers and consider themselves more hands-on learners. In fact, depending on your major, an exam might not serve as much purpose compared to another type of final, which could benefit you in the long run because completing the assignment would help you gain useful skills for certain fields.
If you’re curious how to best prepare for the different types of finals you may experience in college, college students are here to share their tips to help you succeed.
- Exam
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This one is pretty self-explanatory, but I wanted to start with the obvious. For an exam, memorizing the content is crucial, so start studying as soon as possible, especially if the test is going to be cumulative. In fact, designating some time to review the material right after you learn it bit-by-bit throughout the semester will definitely avoid you from cramming all this information at once when the end of the semester rolls around.
A lot of the time though, a final exam will only cover the material that was given post-midterms (particularly in the case where you have already taken a midterm exam). Be sure to clarify with the professor what chapters or topics exactly will be covered. Also, check out the class syllabus and see if your professor plans on having a day in class where they will review the content and what exactly will be covered.
- Group Project or Powerpoint Presentation
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This category of finals is great for those that like to work with others or for those who are great at public speaking. Group projects are beneficial because on top of developing your communication and critical thinking skills, you can split up the workload instead of having to complete everything by yourself.
Communicate with each member of the group as early as possible and designate early who is responsible for completing what, so everyone knows what they need to get done. Starting a group chat may be helpful to keep in touch as you all work on your parts — GroupMe can come in handy if you don’t want to give out your phone number.
When it comes to building and practicing your actual presentation, know your resources: Canva and Slidesgo are awesome sites for slideshow templates that stand out. Meeting up in your campus library or on Zoom or Google Meet for a practice presentation can allow you to prepare so everything flows the day of and you’ll know how long the presentation will be, if length is a factor in your grade.
- Speech
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Meeting a specific time length is often an important grading factor in speeches, along with making sure you hit a specific number of topics and have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
“While prepping to do my speech I approached it as a script and constantly practiced it in order to refresh my memory,” says Gregory, 20, St. John’s University. “I recommend you approach with full confidence and practice, practice, practice. Talk slow and don’t rush through it so just take your time and you should be alright.”
Review the rubric to see what you will be graded on and create an outline for your speech to map out what you are going to say. You may be able to bring index cards with you as aids, or you might be expected to go up and give a speech without any sort of paper or reference. Being prepared here is key — this is not the type of assignment where you would want to attempt winging it.
- Essay
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For an essay, you definitely don’t want to wait until the last minute. Review the rubric if your professor gives you one and evaluate what exactly you will be graded on and the points you need to hit in your paper. For me, I’ve found that creating an outline of my paper’s structure, along with the pages of a book I will be referencing or the links to sources I will be including, is a good place to start before drafting.
“As an English student, I … believe you should always write an outline that details each part of the paper, what will be discussed, and the argument you are trying to make that connects to the overall theme of the paper,” says Matthew, 23, St. John’s University. “In doing so, you will remain within the theme of your paper, making strong arguments, and stay on track to finish your paper in a timely manner.”
You may even be able to drop in during office hours to gain feedback from your professors before classes end, which will not only show that you care, but also provide you with guidance. One professor I had even incorporated workdays for each paper we had throughout the semester so we could work on it during class. If your class does the same, make the most of this time to ask your professor any questions and get ahead.
And once you’ve finished your draft, sites like Grammarly can help you double check for any spelling or grammatical errors and tone throughout before submitting.
- Short Film or Video Project
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From my own experience, filming and editing a video (whether a news story, documentary, or short film narrative) is a lot of work and takes lots of time. Even a video that is only a few minutes long requires hours of editing, potential voiceovers to include, B-roll footage, mapping out the layout for everything, and coming up with a script.
Not only will you need time to work on editing your creation but depending on the assignment, you may need to reach out to other people to be in it. Allot yourself time to reach out and hear back from them before you schedule days to film.
“For my Adobe editing class, we had to create a film trailer for a fake movie we came up with,” says Jake, 23, St. John’s University. “The hardest part for me was coming up with the concept itself. I eventually made a horror skit based on the muffin man from Shrek, which is silly for sure, but the point here is to take inspiration from your influences and find ways to create your own identity [beyond] them.”
Go into filming with a plan, whether that’s with a script or just a brief outline of how you want your video to be formatted. This helped me tremendously on filming day because I knew exactly what footage I needed and what shots I needed to make sure I got while at a certain location.
My last tip for this one is to make sure to constantly save your work while editing and afterwards. Have it backed up on a virtual drive, and you can even purchase a flash drive as an extra place to have it saved. It’s much better to be safe than sorry (if you know, you know).
At the end of the day, the type of final you have for a class comes down to the professor and how they want to approach teaching the course (which includes the assignments they give). Good luck with finals, and finish this semester strong before winter break!