If its the night before an important exam, I get the whole get a good nights rest advice, but do you continue to study? Does it help or could it hinder? Would not having something to distract you cause you to stress all night or would laughing the night away relax you so much the study material would “disappear”?
I have a very important exam tomorrow at noon- I’ve been preparing since early April. I’m afraid its all starting to run together…
I’ve always been pretty binary: if I know something, I know damn well that I know it. If I don’t know it, I’m damn sure of that.
I’d watch people take tests, how they’d sweat and sweat and fidget and cross stuff out and take all the way to the very last minute of the test.
Not me. I was usually the first guy out of the room. Why suffer? Either I know the answer or I don’t!
The more I study hard the night before a test the worse I would do. The night before most test I would review my notes once take a quick look at the chapters involved relax and try to go to bed early.
As a side note. At the Maritime Academy the Boilers and Turbine class always had test on Friday. Thursday night I would start my pretest study routine routine. But my room mate would start bugging me about going out to Flamingo Joe’s in town. On Thursday night Flamingo Joe’s was happy hour all night long. 25 cents a drink. And as 1st class officers we had liberty until 12:00 midnight. I never took a boiler or a turbine test without having a hangover. But I always aced the test. A solid A+ or maybe only an A. Pissed my roommate off, he got A- or B grades. Infact I ended up with one of only two A’s in both classes. And they were 5 unit classes. I have often wondered if I would have done as good as I did if I had not relaxed the night before.
I’ve done my studying long before tonight. Possibly a light review, but mostly I relax. Rest and be fresh for the exam, be ready and be calm.
Oh, and good luck (earlier today).
Me too! And when someone asks “How do you think you did?” right after the test, my response is always, “I think I got 100%, I sure didn’t put any wrong answers down on purpose!”
I chose “Relax” for this poll since you’ve been studying since April. It’d be different if it was a midterm you’d only spent 3-4 days on. Then I’d brush up on my least confident sections.
If it’s going to be a long test where I need my energy, I would relax on the day before. For example, the NYS Bar Exam is two days long and six hours each day. I also spent three months leading up to the Exam studying. One extra day is not going to help, so the best strategy is to use that day to rest.
For normal tests that you take at the end of a semester, I would study. Usually there is little time to study during the semester because your too busy with regular school work. The extra day helps.
My policy is to finish all of my studying two nights before, then to spend the day before doing absolutely nothing but fun.
My choice wasn’t offered. Cram!! I managed A’s and a B or two cramming the night before exams. Horrible way to do it, but it worked for me.
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I never took a boiler or a turbine test without having a hangover. But I always aced the test.
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So having a few boilermakers before a boiler test was your secret. 
Back when I was in school, cramming didn’t help me.
The last BIG certification exam I took requires being actively in the field for something like five or eight years in order to even be eligible to take it, so one night of cramming wasn’t going to be useful.
These. Cramming is IMO/IME utterly counterproductive.
I suppose if one is not actually wanting to learn anything but just wants to skate all semester sleeping through class then spend the last 48 hours before the final doing a cram, followed by a dump the next day one could do that *a la *kayaker.
One will learn just about exactly zero that way, but folks have used that technique to get a degree before.
Yeah, my cramming was all in courses required by the University for my degree. Non-science stuff. Things like sociology, anthropology, philosophy. I would cram the night before and get an A.
The science stuff was what I was living. I worked in a lab, hung out with scientists, etc. Those courses were all A’s without requiring studying. I attended those lectures because I wanted to.
I remember my first physics course. Midterm and final exam, that was it. Before the midterm, someone complained about all the formulas we were required to memorize. He told us not to bother. People expected a sheet of formulas, but there wasn’t one stapled to the exam. When someone anxiously pointed it out, he wrote “F=ma” on the board and said we could derive whatever else we needed. He was right, I got an A, and my A was helped by the crazy curve.
For a long-term study plan of 6 months like this, you’re probably not going to learn anything new the last night before the exam. But I would do a high-level review of all the topics as a warm-up. Not to learn it, but to load it into cache.
I never study the same day of a test. That just messes with my head. I need at least one night of sleep between studying and a test.
That’s a good attitude to have.
In general, this is what I’ve found, but there is an exception. Sometimes I have “crammed” memorization-related “facts” or “factoids” the night before (or even the hour before!), especially if there are areas that I feel that I am likely to be weaker in. This sort of memorization (usually) can’t turn a fail into an A, but it can help bring a C up to a B or a B up to an A if it lets you get a few more points here and there.
If you don’t know any chemistry, you aren’t going to pass a chemistry test. If you are pretty good with most of the material but are a bit weak on isotopes, memorizing a few of the most commonly mentioned isotopes (e.g. U-235, Deuterium, etc.) could help enough to make cramming worthwhile. This is especially helpful in classes where the instructor relies heavily on multiple-choice testing.
You should study AND get a good night’s rest. For example, study from 5 pm to 8 pm then spend a couple hours doing whatever you enjoy and get to bed at your usual time.
But even the word study may be a little misleading. The night before a test, all you should be doing is reviewing your knowledge. Maybe that’s answering sample questions from the text or just seeing how much you can recall. If you find out that you’ve forgotten something or don’t feel confident about a particular area, then brush up on that subject.
You shouldn’t be trying to learn new material the night before.
Why do so many certifying organizations have prerequisites like this? Is it mostly to prevent crammers from “passing” and becoming incompetent “certified” practitioners, or is there something more? A big part of me is telling me that requiring prerequisites to take a certification exam is a cop-out and a tacit admission that the exam writers can’t be bothered to actually test for mastery of the material. If the test was actually good enough, then they could just let anyone take it and laugh all the way to the bank every time an incompetent person tried to cram for it.
I had a drink and a good night’s sleep the night before the bar exam (both days). I don’t think cramming is counterproductive, necessarily, though it’s generally pointless; I just think it’s not worth losing out on being rested and relaxed for the exam.
Two years ago Easter Sunday I knew what everyone in my MBA class was doing…studying for the finance final, to be held the next day.
I told my husband he could go to his mother’s without me, I had to study for the exam. I broke out the books at eight in the morning, worked through the problems I was unsure of, and put together a cheat sheet that would fit on both sides of an 8" x 11" sheet of paper (we were allowed it, and only it, plus our calculator, for the test. I don’t know how I did it, but I crammed weeks’ worth of notes and formulas with size eight font and no margins.)
I think I stopped for breakfast around 2pm. By late afternoon I was done. I’d either learned it all or I hadn’t. For me, it’s not trusting my abilities, so I go over stuff several times to make sure it’s sunk in (being shaky in math is another issue for me.)
I aced it. 
I was a crammer. Worked great for getting good grades, but I didn’t retain much.
Continuing this discussion over here to avoid a hijack
I used to get up at 3:00 or 4:00 AM, put on a pot of coffee and cram then. It worked for me.