Final Exam Preparation
Helpful Hints
• Organize your notes
• Make sure you have ALL the handouts and notes
• Make sure all of your quizzes, tests, and assignments are corrected
• Make summary notes (compress your notes so you only have a handful of papers to study from)
• Ask for help!
Prepare
• Analyze your past test/quiz/lab results
o Where did you go wrong?
o How can you improve?
• Stay relaxed and confident
o Don’t talk about the exam to others before you write. Anxiety is contagious.
Reviewing
• Put your phone (any electronics) away (give to someone or put in a drawer while you review)
• Take good notes (make sure everything is correct)
• Organize your notes
• Estimate the hours it will take to review (time management)
• Create a study schedule o Study in chunks, don’t try and study everything everyday
• Test yourself or a friend
o Study by yourself, then get a friend to quiz you
o Helping other classmates also helps you get a better understanding of the material
• Finish your studying the day BEFORE the exam o Cramming is not good
o Have a healthy breakfast and relax the day of the test
o Studying the day of the exam is more detrimental (quickly review your notes instead)
o Get a good night’s rest before exam
Test Taking
• Read directions carefully
• Do a quick overview of the exam before you start writing
• Answer questions in a strategic order
o Easy first
▪ This builds confidence and may help you make associations with the harder questions
o Hard last
▪ Make sure you look at marks allocation and have enough points to get full marks
▪ A question worth 3 marks will probably require 3 relevant points
• Review
o Make sure you have completed all the questions to the best of your ability
o Make sure you have answered all the questions
o Look for any mistakes you have made
• Put a * beside questions you are unfamiliar with and come back to them later
• Never leave a question blank
o Make a common sense guess, which could give you more marks than if left blank
o Write something that you can remember about the topic