Exam Prep tips...
Ever heard people say they just studied the night before and did fine?
Yeh right…
I wouldn’t trust this method to get a passing grade at tertiary level!
Revision doesn't begin a week before exams, although it might be more intense towards the end of the semester. To maximise the chances of a satisfactory result in your exams, start your preparation as early as possible in the semester or at least 3 weeks before exams begin.
Here are some things you can do at any time to prepare for exams:
- Know what kind of learning style suits you best and find ways to work this into your study. Take 5 mins to do this cool questionnaire online to find out about your learning style, go to VARK
- Make sure you are familiar with the course outline, lectures, tutorials, lab sessions - what is or has been covered, and when? The course outline is often the key to understanding what your lecturer wants you to get out of the course.
- Think where your subjects fit in to your overall course and career objectives. Maybe more work on that subject you find boring now will pay off much later on.
- Work through past exam questions. You can access past exam questions (not answers lol), from the UC library website http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/exams/ When using past exam papers, just be mindful that sometimes courses vary year to year – only utilise past exam questions if they are relevant to the material you have covered in your course.
- Take some time to focus somewhere where you won’t be interrupted, study in the Library, like in the Macmillan Brown Library study spaces, or at the Pacific Student House.
- Try studying in short bursts with high focus - Turn off your cell phone & unplug the ipod, take the landline off the hook and turn off the tv if you are at home, take some time out from the kids in a room on your own … Time yourself and see how much you can accomplish within an allotted time (i.e. 40minute chunks, with 5 min breaks in between each 40 min study session).