Guidance on Final Hour preparation

 Finals week is quickly approaching and it’s crunch time. How you decide to manage your time and plan your studying over the next couple weeks will dictate how you perform on exam day.

Stay tuned for 6 tips to help you pace your final exams. 

Let's get straight to it. 

First and most importantly, go into the last couple of weeks with a plan and get your calendar out and mark the days for each exam. 

Based on the test days, work your way back with how you want to review the information. For example, let’s say you have a final on Monday December 5th and Thursday December 8th. If the first test is much harder and requires more studying, you may focus solely on that, and then only start studying for test two only after finishing test one. On the other hand, if the first test is easier, you may start studying for the second test well before your first test, and then only study for test 1 for a couple days leading up to it.

 This obviously depends on your course load and which finals you have, so figure out what works best for you. 

Now when I say 'plan what you're going to study', I literally mean write out what chapters or what topics you plan to review for each day leading up to the exam. Final exams generally include all of the information since the beginning of the course. 

I recommend spending less time reviewing information that was tested on the mid term and more information from the second half of your course. 

This is for two reasons. First, you should already be familiar within formation from the first half of the class, after all you took a test on it and therefore you will need less time to review it. 

Second, final exams generally favor information that hasn’t been already assessed in prior exams. Meaning, even though the class is technically supposed to include information from the whole course, it probably includes a majority of information since after the midterm. 

Now, when you're making this plan, give yourself some wiggle room. You will probably fall behind on your schedule, so have a few "catch-up" blocks to account for this. Also, if you are not able to review all the information that you wanted to on your schedule, don't worry, it's not the end of the world, you can still totally do well on your exam.

 Now, don't neglect other areas of your life. True story, I had a friend in college who took pride in the fact that during finals week, he would not shower for four or five days straight at a time. That is disgusting, please do not do this. It's important to remember that you can only study and absorb so much information in a day. By neglecting other areas of your life, you're not doing yourself any favors. 

Remember, you have to be wll-rested, well-fed, healthy and not stinky to maximize return on your studying and also performance on test day.

 Because you can only study so many hours in a day, longer hours yields diminishing returns, therefore Efficiency is the name of the game. 

Schedule your study breaks around meals, and exercise. For example, wake up, have breakfast then study for two hours. At your break, start laundry then do another two hours of study, then have lunch followed by another two hours of study. At this point, you're probably pretty tired of studying, so go to the gym and get a workout in. 

 Group study is excellent to maintain motivation and discuss difficult concepts. However, it also generally slows you down. Therefore, only group study occasionally. Have an agenda with the group as to what lectures or topics you all want to go over and this will help keep you guys on track. 

Taking turns teaching difficult concepts to one another will also benefit everyone involved, especially in classes that are heavy on concepts and have essay based questions. More on that next. So, tailor your study approach based on the exam. 

For physics, math or chemistry, doing loads of practice questions is probably one of the best ways to prepare for your exam.

 The exam is gonna have a series of problems that you need to solve and show your work for. But remember, making sure you review and understand the mistakes you made are also equally important. So, for more conceptual classes like neurophysiology or biology, essay questions are more common. Group study here is actually great to reinforce those difficult concepts. If you can teach a concept to someone else, chances are that you have a solid grasp of it and you're ready for the exam.

 For multiple choice questions, memorization is king. I recommend focusing on flashcards with space repetition. 

No all-nighters! Do not fall into the trap of thinking that pulling an all-nighter is the best way to improve your test score.

 In very very rare situations, is it ever a good idea to deprive yourself of significant sleep before an exam? It's more important for you to be sharp than for you to be cramming before your test. You'll be tired while studying and duringtest day. Additionally, you lose out on the benefits of REM sleep which actually helps consolidate information you learned. 

Which brings me to another point, going back to scheduling your study times and breaks. I recommend you study right before sleeping for this exact benefit; information learns right before bed has greater rates of retention, use this to your advantage.