How do YOU study for finals?

It is that time of the year again.

What I do is only take notes on the right hand pages in my notebooks, and when I study I try to summarize my notes, from memory, one the blank left hand pages, working out any problems I may need to do. For things to be memorized I make flash cards, too.

For math, chemistry and such I try to do many examples of problems I think will be on the exam, and try to really understand the concepts.

I am little short on studying time this year because of a megaload of assignments due late last week that needed to be turned in (I wasn’t slacking, either, for some reason some profs think its funny to hand out new assignments during the last week, so they weren’t something I had procrastinated doing).

Overall I feel pretty good because I have kept up with reviewing all semester, but it always seems that no matter how much I study before finals I feel I should have done more.

What are your favorite ways of studying?

Currently? Procrastinating until the day beforehand, finally sitting down trying practice problems, and panicking.

The most productive way of studying for me is to re-write my notes in a logical table. The first column is my “if” column, the next column is “then” and the third column lists any exceptions. It has helped me ace many quizzes and exams. Unfortunately, it cannot be applied to every subject so I’m really stuggling for my Finance final.

…stuh-dee?

I’m a real procrastinator when it comes to studying. And I don’t want to sound vain but I’ve never really needed to. I don’t get perfect grades which I might be able to if I put my rear in gear but I don’t fail either so I lack incentive.

As for my study technique I will take my lecture notes and write out the facts in bullet points. Then use the textbooks provided (and by provided I mean had to buy) to flesh out the bullet points. All of this happening the day and night before because as my friend Holly says, “If you learn anything more than 36 hours before you’ll forget it.”

I flip through my written notes, read the relevant portions of the text, then read my notes more carefully, read and work through homework and quizzes if I have them, and go through the text and notes once more. I’m working on a short (five pages) paper for one class that my professor just decided to spring on us as well.

Strangely enough, I find my preferred method of study is to make a list of the areas covered in a subject, then look up the relevant chapter in a textbook for each area in turn and read it as many times as is necessary. I never indulge in any of that silly behaviour such as writing stuff down, doing practice problems, that sort of thing.

I understand that almost everyone in the world considers this a stupid way to study, and perhaps it is, but it’s always worked okay for me.

~ Isaac

I’m an engineering major, so for the majority of my classes I redo the problems that were on quizzes and homework, do the examples from the book, and work any other problems possible. I also go over the professor’s lecture notes it he has put them somewhere for the class to download, and read the notes that I took.

Also, knowing the format of the test always has been one of the biggest things to either help me or screw me over. For example, if I know there are multiple choice or true/false questions on concepts, I will spend more time committing definitions and concepts to memory, but if I know if it will only be write-out problems, I will look over the key words and make sure I understand them, but then I will spend most of my time on working out problems. You can of course find out the format of the exam from the professor, from past exams, or from friends who have previously taken the class.

The thing that helps me the most is finding out what the professor plans on putting on the final. Usually in the last class period or two the professor goes over what will be on the final, but sometimes it is a really short review. So I usually try to either go by the professor’s office hours or email him and say “I would really like to do well on your final, what material will be covered on it, and how should I study for it?” They usually have a few good pieces of advice, and also when grades are calculated and my grade is on the edge of a A or B, the professor was more likely to round up the grade because they knew I was wanting to do well.

If your final is really soon like in the next day or two, emailing the professor probably won’t help because they will just be annoyed and think that you are only starting to study immediately before the test. But a week or two weeks before the final if you ask them how to study, it makes you look good, even if you aren’t planning on studying until the night before the test.

I realize that this is a really long post, but I hope it helps.

The first thing I used to do is make sure I’m well rested and fed. Going into a final dead beat is a good way to ensure a bad grade.

If the final has a lot of subjective stuff, I’d never bother studying much–I went to class, did the reading and stayed awake during lectures and that’s all I needed.

If it had a lot of objective material, I’d make a list of things I needed to know and memorized it, if necessary. I have a pretty good memory for stuff like that.

I write outlines of all the important information that’s likely to be on the test. Usually, if I rewrite something enough, I’ll remember it no matter how tired I am. Sometimes, I also ask people to quiz me, to make sure I don’t go blank right after I see the test. Of course, all of this is done the day/two days before the test, because I’m a longstanding member of Procrastinators Anonymous.

I tend to read very fast, so my most successful study method was to recopy my class notes. Writing things would slow me down enough for the material to sink through my thick skull.

I go over all my course notes and labs and rewrite them in a very condensed version. On average, 10 pages of notes fit on 2 pages once I’m done. By doing that I can distill all the information down to the core concepts and things to remember. I use colors to link ideas, and symbols to point out very important things.

This is especially important to me because I have a written exam to take at the end of my 3-year program, and it will be helpful to have the condensed notes to study from. Of course, I can always go back to the original notes if I need to flesh something out, but so far my technique is working very well for me.

Unfortunately, I can’t focus lately, so my notes are getting done one line at a time, with coffee breaks in between. I’m hoping the caffeine kicks in soon and I write the rest really fast!!

Procrastinate.

Then once I’m done with that I look up the past exam papers and read through them. I figure out what the most likely questions are to come up on the exam and study only those topics. I usually study one more topic than the number of questions I have to answer on the exam (ie if I have to answer 3 questions on the exam I’ll study the 4 most likely topics to appear). It’s a fairly high risk approach, but has worked pretty well so far. I really see no reason to study more topics than necessary. I have some friends who will try to study everything, but I really think that is fairly pointless. All you need to know is a few things reasonably well. Of course, I’m sure I’ll get screwed over at some point when the questions I counted on appearing don’t. Then I’ll just have to hope I can write well enough to get a C or something and just not fail.

This technique obviously wouldn’t work in all areas. I’m a philosophy major so only have exams consisting of a few essay questions.

Currently I don’t, but I have in the last years gotten more used to the possibility. Makes all the difference in college, so I hear - those without good study habits die hard. Better safe than sorry, I suppose.

It depends on the subject. For me personally, I have to have organization to study. So with things like Science or History, I group tests, homeworks, assignments, etc from each topic we covered that year together. For things like Math, I usually just practice problems on past tests.

I do try to look a little more generally at things, because it’s impossible to remember all the details from the year. Usually I try to see how things connect and the major themes and concepts.