Planning your one month of study before May exams

[wombat123]

So my teachers always say to not just "say you're gonna study and not plan anything", and tell us to take out our calendar and allot times for studying different things. But today I tried doing that and I just ended up being way too detailed and didn't know how to plan.

So right now I'm just making goals for myself, like I should finish doing this by then, or I should study 3 chapters of psych in three weeks or something like that. Seems more concrete to me.

How are you folks planning to study during this last precious month before May exams? What are some of your strategies?

[timtamboy63]

Do as many past papers as possible. I'm assigning one subject for each day, the subjects that I'm good at get less time. After doing the past paper, I identify what section I'm weak on and study that for the rest of the day.

[Sandwich]

I think it depends a lot on the subject but in my opinion:

For sciences - you should leave yourself some time for past papers at the end and then grab a copy of the syllabus for each subject and just go through it point by point. The danger of revising from past papers only is that not everything will have come up in a past paper and they probably won't help you cover everything that's actually in the syllabus; you don't want to miss anything. However you DO need to leave yourself time for past papers, certainly.

For maths - PAST PAPERS. That is all.

For group 3 subjects - hard core revision. Given that they tend to have non-specific syllabi, you'll probably actually have to revise from your notes having read a few past papers to see what the score is on the sorts of questions they like to ask.

For languages (B, AB) - not much you can do, try and learn a list of phrases that would be great for essays and look for your usual errors in old essays so you can try and avoid them. Kinda too late to build up your vocab etc. now but definitely you can revise to be bang-on with your grammar.

For languages (A) - even less you can do. Just flick through your set texts and make sure you've not forgotten key themes, characters, plot etc.

Really focus on sciences, maths and group 3 (unless it's Philosophy which you can revise in a day if pushed...) with your time. Past papers for languages and group 3 are worth looking at but probably not worth actually doing because you'd waste so much time writing an essay based on knowledge you already have. The purpose of revision is to take on board knowledge you've not yet cemented, not to practice writing out what you already know.

I commend "finish the syllabus" as your ultimate goal. Preferably finish it, review everything very quickly again and then do past papers (for Sciences). The most effective thing I've ever found is giving myself a subject and just bombing the whole thing for say 4 days. I want to have revised all Chemistry within 4 days (for instance). The problem with breaking it up is that you can lose sight of the bigger picture of finishing EVERYTHING and accidentally focus on smaller pictures. It's most efficient to just go through a whole subject all at once, in my opinion. Gets you in the zone Also you can make the syllabus into a load of small goals - it is after all already broken up for you. I actually recommend sticker charts or some kind of reward system. It sounds lame but really anything to motivate yourself, however pathetic, is good!

The hardest thing really is that you revise over Easter but then just before the exams you realise you've forgotten half of it and can't possibly memorise ALL subjects simultaneously, so the most difficult 'planning' is actually of your last-minute revision. You can revise like hell for Biology but if you have Chemistry the following morning and then Maths in the afternoon, what do you do?! So yeah Tough nut. That's my advice (having been through it!). Somehow you will complete the inhuman feat of revising entire subjects in a night in a blind state of panic during that fortnight of terror and sleep deprivation.

The morning after my last exam I woke up at 5AM feeling scared, had a moment of perfect relief when I realised what day it was and slept a beautiful mellow sleep til midday haha. I think I was absolutely knackered for at least a week before I'd made up for all the sleep I missed during those 2 weeks