STUDY TIPS: HOW TO KILL YOUR EXAMS

By Sofia Arts Romero and Manon Goirand

STUDY TIPS: HOW TO KILL YOUR EXAMS

First and foremost… HAPPY NEW YEAR! We hope you had some time to relax and pick up the energy to make a good comeback after the break. With finals coming up soon, we thought it would be more than useful to use this journal and share some tips to ace your exams this block! 

A good way to prepare for your exams is to follow a plan. Here's what we propose:  

First, you should write down the detailed planning of all your exams, including the dates, material needed ( check Nestor if you are not sure), and look at your current grades for each class. This way, you will know which course to prioritize and which ones you will need to work on more. 
Next comes deciding on a study room, which can be really helpful. Find a clean, fresh, and quiet study space with no distractions, whether this is your bedroom, an office, or a library. Having a clean space helps declutter your mind when you want to fully focus on a task and be in the zone for a couple of hours. Continuously keep this space as tidy and clean as possible during finals week, since you also don’t want to spend time cleaning it. Therefore eating and spending leisure time should be done somewhere else to disassociate your study space with leisure time. Additionally, it is essential to have breaks from time to time to freshen up. Additionally, studying in time blocks has been proven to be the most effective, since 50 minutes of focus and a 10 minute break shows a balance between quantity and quality. Shorter breaks are most effective for memorizing materials, whereas longer breaks are most effective for problem-solving and writing papers. 

Now it's time to go over the material. Start organizing all the material you will need for a course (e.g. lectures, tutorials, book, mandatory readings etc.) and start reviewing them chronologically: Lecture 1, Tutorial 1 and book chapter 1…
To retain information, most people need to write notes, and that’s our next step. Organize your notes, either digitally or handwritten, and make them as visually appealing as you can. This organization will make it easier for you to review them later on and also will want to make you read them more than if you had poorly written notes. If you make digital notes, here are some pros and cons to look out for:

  • Pros: more time-efficient, easily accessible during exams, you can share notes with classmates to simultaneously edit your notes, information can be found very quickly with the CommandF function

  • Cons: less visually appealing, takes more repetition to encode this information quickly

for handwritten notes:

  • Pros: information is more quickly encoded when handwriting notes, more visually appealing

  • Cons: more time consuming, notes can be disorganized and messy, harder to find information

As previously mentioned, you should organize them by topics/chapters/weeks/lectures to remember where you can find this information. This will also help you access the information easier during your exam (if it is an open book).

Repetition is key: review all the material you set yourself to study and go over it over and over again. Find a study partner you can review the material with, which may help you see things from a different perspective, discuss any questions you may have, or even just to repeat the material out loud to encode it.
Lastly, a good night sleep and exercising before studying is crucial to freshen up and encode the information you are learning more effectively. This is because both increase energy levels and fight fatigue. Exercising, specifically does not have to take more than 20 minutes if you don’t have the time, and even a five minute brisk helps freshen up. However, at least 8 full hours of sleep is recommended to be ready to take on a day of studying. 

Some tips if you need additional help: if you find yourself really struggling with a course or don’t have enough time in between your student job, assignments, and life, and absolutely want to avoid a resit, different solutions are available. First, if you have a bit of money to spare, you could consider buying a summary. The cost of a summary varies depending on the course but they are usually all-around 10€. Note that if you are an EBF member, you can get a 10% discount. If you are considering this, go on the web website on “Study” and then “Study support”, clicking on “Summaries'' and then on a link on the page. This will send you to athena summarywebsite where you have a variety of summaries. A second solution, still looking at the EBF platform on “study support”, you also have the option “Exam training” which consists of personal tutoring and access to study documents shared by previous students. You also have a 20% discount if you are an EBF member. For more information on these options, go on the EBF page related.

Hope this will help you in your exam! We wish you good luck!

STUDY TIPS: HOW TO KILL YOUR EXAMS

  1. Make a planning

  2. The importance of a clean working environment

  3. Look over the material

  4. Note writing

  5. Repetition is key

  6. Additional help: summaries and exam training