Best Ways to Cram for an exam

When you are cramming for an exam on the day before the exam, you cannot take a break every 10 minutes to go fetch a glass of water or forget the calculator or a notebook while studying. 

Keep everything you need with you and go with the flow. When you are studying and everything is going smoothly, avoid breaking the tempo to achieve productive results. 

If you are cramming for an exam, you probably have less time. Don’t go into the details, stick to the headings, and the main idea. Read the summary and bold sentences. 

You can also read the first few lines of each paragraph to decide if it's important, if it is something unimportant or vague, move onto the other one. 

Trying to concentrate on one thing for hours at a time will not be beneficial to you in the grand scheme of things. It's important to give your brain time to soak up the information and process it. Taking breaks will help you retain the information. After 45 minutes to an hour of work, get up and walk around. Take a water break. Scroll on Instagram for a bit. 15 minutes later, you can come back and get back to work.

If this is a true cram session, then you have very limited time to remember as much information as you possibly can. Don't try to remember every little detail about each topic. At this point, you only have time to focus on the big ideas and key terms you might come across on your test. You need to answer a majority of the questions right to score well. When you're studying, make sure you're focusing in on bolded text in your textbook or key ideas that your instructor made sure to explain in class.

Studying can be very effective if done in the right place. Trying to study in a loud house with kids or in a bed where you could easily fall asleep will not work. You need to go somewhere quiet where you will have enough room to work. It's also important to feel comfortable in your space. Don't go to an unfamiliar coffee shop where you're going to feel self-conscious. You need to be 100% focused on the material in front of you.

Have a cup of coffee and snacks. Cramming is a very stressful job. We need to feed ourselves. Most importantly, a quiet environment free of distractions. So stay away from your smartphone and Facebook.

In most cases, we just can't get everything into our heads in no time. Ask your colleagues for notes. Remember to attend the very important review sessions! Make a detailed checklist of everything we need to cram into.

Even if the test is tomorrow, studying overnight is not a good idea. We should sleep well for at least two hours. Set the alarm and good luck!

If you find yourself binge-watching videos, 20 minutes after you sat down to study for the exam, you need to put your phone away. Mute your phone, if you are not expecting an important phone call or put it in another room.

Promise yourself a treat of snacks or using the phone for 10 minutes after you finish a chapter. Avoid all the distractions that might take your mind away from study. 

If you are stressed or can’t stop thinking about something, give yourself some time to let go of your thoughts, and then start studying. When you are cramming yourself while studying you need the highest level of concentration, otherwise you will only end up reading everything and not being able to memorize it.  

While it may not seem like a huge deal, where you choose to study can have a major impact on how much you get done. If you're trying to study in a mess, you're more likely to get distracted and stressed by the things around you. Trying to study on your bed is a huge no. You're likely to end up getting sleepy or grabbing your phone to look at social media. Choose a space where you can effectively work and not get distracted.

If you're having trouble studying, it could be because you're studying in the wrong room.

Studying in your bedroom, although tempting, and very comfortable, may be hindering your school performance and information retention. Your brain associates your bedroom with relaxing, so you're likely to feel sleepy and out of focus when studying in it. If you don't have an office, just try to work anywhere but your bedroom. Try at the dining table or in the living room, whichever one has minimal distractions.

While it may seem counterintuitive to step away from an urgent cram session, you have to give your brain time to relax and refresh. If you study for hours on end, you're more likely to forget information and mix things up. Giving yourself timed breaks helps you break your studying into manageable chunks. You can even coordinate your breaks with specific sections of material. Don't take a two-hour break though; use a timer to keep yourself accountable. You can try studying for 45-50 minutes and taking a break for 10-15 minutes.

Day 1 = Scan material with Quick Highlighter / Watch all lectures at 1.5x speed.

Day 2 and 3 = Skip to practice exams immediately (or repeat all HWs if you don't have them). Eat well and sleep for about 6 hours. Don't bother making flashcards or anything else, but jot down what you missed and come back to the material afterward.

Do 30 jumps every two hours to keep blood flowing. Don't play with caffeine, you will regret it. Put your phone in Do Not Disturb mode.

If I had to name the number one biggest problem when it comes to focusing on my work, it would be social media. It's hard to resist from picking up your phone and scrolling through Tik Tok, but you have to if you're going to effectively study for your exam. Log off (or delete the app completely) and put your phone on Do Not Disturb. You'll find that it is so much easier to focus when you're not distracted by whatever Donald Trump tweeted twenty minutes ago.

Study groups can be extremely helpful when studying for a big exam. It gives you a group of people that will keep you accountable during the studying process as well as someone to bounce ideas off of. The people in your group can quiz you on important topics, explain subjects that don't quite make sense to you and give you the chance to help them as well. It also makes a tedious task just a bit more fun. Misery loves company!