This is a guest post by Mohammad Arfeen from Pre-Med Hell where he writes tips for succeeding as a pre-med student.
You’ve been out partying, you get back to your room and you realize that you have only a few days to study for your next exam. What do you do? In this post I’m going to try to cover the most basic and effective cramming techniques that I know. First let me give you a little background on myself, I am a biochemistry major, which means that most of the methods I will cover will be methods that have helped me cram for science exams, they may not translate directly to other majors. For the sake of generality I will attempt to block out major points, which you can apply to any subject. So let’s get started.
First things first, we need to understand the situation that we are in. We have between 24 to 48 hours before the exam, and say 3-5 chapters of material to study. Let’s make some assumptions, you have been attending the lectures, and you are fairly up to date with the reading assignments or problem sets. Now we go over the limitations of cramming, there is no way that you can cover all of the material, and you will not be storing this material in your long term memory; which means you will have to go over the material again before a final exam. Our main goal in this situation is damage control; we need to make the best of a horrible situation.
Pro-Tip One: Prepare
Isolate yourself, find a place where no one else can find you, and you will have no distractions. Bring pens, paper, pencils, food, drinks, and anything else you may need, once you sit down in this place you shouldn’t be leaving.
Pro-Tip Two: Game Plan
Create a game plan, set up a timeline and write down exactly what you want to cover each hour. The most important thing to remember here is damage control, there is no way to cover all the material in such a limited amount of time. Aim for the easy points, don’t lose points on material that you are comfortable with. I like to follow the 80/20 rule, spend 20% of your time learning new material, and 80% of your time becoming perfect at the material. Set a deadline for yourself to finish studying, remember Parkinson’s Law “the perceived complexity of a task will expand to fill the allotted time.”
Pro-Tip Three: Triage
Now that you have decided what is going to be cut out, focus on the big picture, stick too bolded sentences, and key words. Do problems that you find difficult, and review sections that give you trouble. Stick to your plan.
Pro-Tip Four: Condense
After you have done a review of the material, start condensing. Condense every chapter down into an index card. By the end of the night you should be able to condense the whole exam in one index card.
Pro-Tip Five: Repetition
Recite the material over and over, write it out over and over, and just keep repeating. Your goal is to put the material into your short term memory, the easiest way to do this is to keep repeating.
Pro-Tip Six: Calm Down
Maintain your cool, go in with a positive attitude, don’t think about what you did wrong. The most important thing to do at this point, is to keep a positive mental attitude, you need that mental edge over the test. Don’t start to get nervous or antsy, you can’t afford to lose that edge to the test.
Pro-Tip Seven: Sleep and Caffeine
These are both powerful tools, try to get at least three to four hours of sleep before the exam, and set your alarm at least 2 hours before the exam, cease all studying about a half hour before the exam. Any studying done in the 2 hours before the exam should be using the note cards you made with the condensed material. If you are a coffee person or a caffeine person, have some about 20 minutes before going into the exam, make sure you use the restroom before going in.
Good luck, and remember damage control, there is no way to cover everything so don’t try to learn everything. Next time be sure to study earlier so you don’t find yourself in the same position.
6 Comments
Mohammad,
Thanks for the excellent article. I like the medical terminology thrown in there :)
Thanks for running the post, I look forward to a great partnership and more guest posts in the future.
Great tips Mohammad, and excellent timing on the posting, I will be using this strategy to catch up from spring break.
Cheers mohammad – I’ll be using all of these techniques – if it’s good enough for pre-med – it’s alright for IT masters exams!
Great tips every one of them!
As an IT student with an insane workload, a psychology prof of mine tipped me to this (and it works great!) so I thought I’d share it with you… It works as a compliment to what Mohammad shares here…
It’s called “State Specific Learning” and it means just this: “The more closely your physiological state at the time of memory recall is to the time of memory acquisition, the more easily the information will be accessed…”
Like this: If you eat donuts while you study, then eat apples right before your test, you won’t get the added bonus of state specific memory…
Here’s how I used it to ace my exams everytime… I did pretty much everything Mohamad suggests here, but then when it came time to super cram my review cards I induced state using: “Hazelnut Coffee and 3 Hungry Bear Chocolate Chip Cookies”
I did not every use that combination at any other time during the studying (only while cramming my review cards)… Then right before the test I would buy my three cookies, and my hazelnut coffee and bring them into the exam room (i’d always check with the prof to make sure i could “keep my blood sugar right throughout the test with a snack.” )
Most test are 60-90 minutes, so I’d pace my cookie consumption accordingly and avoid any blood sugar drop offs…
It worked so well as to be astounding! To this day, hazelnut coffee with hungry bear cookies seems to strangely access every little obscure memory I have tucked away in the corners of my mind!
As long as the combo is enough to be striking, you can use whatever you want: Just remember to make sure and only use you power state combo for index card cramming and test time, if you use it while you study bulk material, your state triggers will work against you and take you back to a state of mental exhaustion! I think this affects 90% of students, they snack on the same things while studying as before test taking not even realizing that they are triggering mental exhaustion!
Excellent post! The cramming techniques given by you are much effective for getting better score in the exam. I think I should apply these techniques for my forthcoming midterm exam. Now I’m looking forward to study all your articles. Thanks for the post.
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