A week is enough time to prepare well for most tests, if you use it differently from the way most people do. The usual plan is to read the notes a few times and then cram the night before. The plan below uses about the same number of hours, spread out, and it is built on the three techniques with the strongest research behind them: testing yourself, spacing out your study and mixing topics.
Plan for about an hour a day, and adjust for how much material there is.
Seven days out: map the material
- List every topic the test covers, using the syllabus, the study guide or the chapter headings.
- Rate each topic: green (confident), yellow (unsure) or red (lost).
- Gather your materials: notes, slides, readings and past quizzes.
Do not start rereading yet. Today's goal is a plan.
Six days out: first pass on the red topics
Study the topics you rated red. Read each one carefully once, then close the book and write down what you remember. Check your notes and fill in the gaps.
Five days out: quiz yourself on everything
Take a practice quiz across all the topics, including the green ones. You will probably find that some "green" topics are really yellow. Update your ratings.
Four days out: yellow topics and yesterday's mistakes
Work through the yellow topics the same way: read once, then recall. Then redo the questions you got wrong yesterday, without looking at the answers first.
Three days out: mixed practice
Do a set of questions that mixes all the topics in random order. This is the closest thing to the real test, where questions do not come sorted by chapter. Note which topics still cause mistakes.
Two days out: a full practice test
Take a full-length practice test under test conditions: timed, no notes, phone in another room. Mark it honestly, and spend the rest of the session on the questions you missed.
The night before
- Take a short quiz on the items you have missed more than once. No new material.
- Get ready for the morning: pens, calculator, anything else you need.
- Sleep. A full night's sleep helps you hold on to what you studied and think clearly during the test. An all-nighter usually costs more than it gains.
Why this plan works
- Testing, not rereading. Every day includes recall, which strengthens memory far more than looking at notes again.
- Spacing. Each topic comes back several times over the week instead of once.
- Mixing. Mixed practice trains you to recognize which method a question needs.
- Feedback. You always check your answers and return to your mistakes.
Traps to avoid
- Spending the week on your favorite topics. The green topics feel good to study. The red ones are where the points are.
- Making beautiful notes. Rewriting and color-coding notes takes hours and involves very little recall. If you rewrite anything, do it from memory.
- Checking answers too early. Try each practice question properly before you look. The effort is part of the learning.
- Studying with the phone next to you. Even short interruptions make a session much less effective. Put it in another room for the hour.
- Skipping the practice test because you "know it". It is the best way to find out whether you do, while there is still time to fix it.
If you only have three days
Compress it. On the first day, map the topics and quiz yourself on everything. On the second, work on the weakest topics and redo your mistakes. On the last day, take a practice test in the morning and review your mistakes in the evening. Keep the sleep.
Let Quizbot build the plan
If you would rather not organize all this by hand, Quizbot's Exam Prep does much of it for you. Add your material and your exam date, and a short diagnostic quiz shows which concepts you already know. Quizbot then builds a study plan by concept, schedules practice with spaced repetition and sends a daily review reminder. For extra practice tests, the practice question generator turns any chapter into a quiz with an answer key.
