Long after college is over, graduates still have nightmares about exams. Waking up in a cold sweat after dreaming about a big test is one of the most common night terrors out there.
Exams can be the most stressful experiences in education. That is, if you’re underprepared.
We want to put you at ease. Exams don’t have to be dreaded. They’re always challenging, never comfortable, but shouldn’t be overwhelming.
This post will give you an easy and effective method for preparing for the big day. And hopefully it’ll make you think again about some common, ineffective study methods, too.
What we get wrong about studying
Research has shown that we often pick unreliable methods for studying. This same research has identified an optimal way to learn that’ll put you in a much better position come exam day. We’ll show you both.
First, let’s talk about what you might be doing now. This isn’t a lecture or a criticism. We all make these mistakes because they come naturally to us. Recognising them is the first step to studying smarter.
Mistake #1: Rereading
Rereading your textbooks and notes is about the least effective way to learn. Yet it’s a study strategy used by 84% of students. So why is it so ineffective?
Rereading is passive. Your eyes move over the page, but your brain isn't doing the work that builds memory. The material starts to feel familiar, and familiar feels like understanding. It isn't.
Learning happens when you do something with information: explain it, question it, or connect it to what you already know.
Try instead: close your notes and explain the topic out loud, or sketch a mind map from memory. Then check what you missed.
Mistake #2: Highlighting
Highlighting leaves you with scattered phrases, stripped of context and stuck in a textbook, apart from the rest of your notes. Copying them out word for word doesn't help much either.
Try instead: after each section, write a one- or two-sentence summary in your own words and add it to your notes.
Mistake #3: Treating your notes as dead matter
It's tempting to see class notes as a finished record you'll look back at later. Your best notes are works in progress. Research links working with your notes over time (rephrasing, summarising, adding to them) with better exam performance. Every edit strengthens what you've learned.
Try instead: revisit your notes within a day of each class and add one thing: a summary, an example, or a question.
A better way to learn: Three habits that do work
So how can you improve your study habits easily and effectively? Here’s what we know about good study practice from recent studies on the subject, and some simple tips to improve your exam prep.
1. Refine your notes
Aim for notes you can trust: complete, clear, and free of clutter. After each class:
- Fill the gaps from slides, readings, or your lecture recording
- Add a short summary at the top
- Cut anything you don't need
- Combine formats: text, diagrams, slides, and audio
Genio Notes is built around this idea, with a simple four-step method: Capture, Organise, Refine, Integrate.
2. Quiz yourself
Retrieval practice means pulling information out of your memory. It's one of the most powerful ways to learn, and it shows you exactly what you don't know yet.
Quiz Me in Genio Notes makes this effortless. It turns your recorded lectures into multiple-choice questions, so you can test yourself in seconds instead of writing quizzes by hand.
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Choose 5, 10 or 20 questions from a single class, or from up to 10 classes in a Collection
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Add your slides or PDFs to make the questions more specific
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Check your results summary to see your strong and weak areas, then spend your next session on the gap
Want a fresh challenge? Refresh for a new set of questions and quiz yourself again a few days later.
3. Space it out
You need to meet information more than once before it sticks, and it sticks better when those reviews are spread out. This is called spaced repetition. A simple schedule for any class:
- Review it the next day
- Review it again a few days later
- Review it after a week, then keep widening the gap
Set calendar reminders so you don't have to remember to remember.
Planning your exam prep
So let’s pretend you have an exam in 1 month’s time. How should you approach it?
Taking the mistakes and pro-tips into account, let’s plan a study schedule to get you ready.
Your exam plan
Day 1:
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Get all your materials and notes together. Do you have everything you need? Now’s the time to identify any gaps in your knowledge and the information available to you.
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Do you need anything from your professor? Send them an email today to make sure you get an answer in good time.
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Using our guide to organisation, plan out a schedule of work for the next week. We recommend an hour’s studying per day. Your schedule should include…
- Time to review and refine materials (5 study sessions)
- Time to put quizzes together (1 study session)
- Mock exam time (1 study session)
Days 2 - 7:
- Begin working through the schedule you’ve set out
- You should have a list of small tasks to get through. This will help you tackle bigger concepts manageably.
- Remember to avoid simple rereading and highlighting exercises. Your notes are there to be upgraded!
- Keep your quizzes fairly simple at first. This is about testing your base knowledge of a subject. You can start developing these tests as you move towards the big day.
- Keep rewards in mind
- If you’re naturally a crammer, you need to keep rewarding yourself for sticking to a plan. Set a goal and a reward for a session at the same time. That way, you have something to look forward to when you’re done.
Week 2:
- How did you do on your first test?
- If you’re happy with your results, well done! You have less to work on with this subject. You’ll want to test yourself again nearer the time, but you can move on to the next subject this week.
- Need a bit more work? Don’t worry, this is a good thing - now you know where your knowledge is lacking. You should spend a part of this week going over any areas you fell short on.
Day 1:
- Adjust your schedule
- Based on your test, change your plan if you need to. Factor in a couple of study sessions to review areas that need work (if any). You’ll be testing yourself again on this subject nearer exam time.
- Rinse and repeat
- Work through your schedule. It’s a good idea to maintain a consistent routine, so repeat your pattern from week one of combining review tasks with quizzing.
- Fleshing out notes
- As you work actively with your study materials, you’ll start to build up complete, effective notes. Just make sure you follow our pro-tip #1 (refining notes) to get the most from this activity.
Week 3:
- How confident do you feel?
- You’ve had a couple of weeks of organised, targeted study. Now’s a good time to assess where you’re at. Do you feel confident? If you’re at all unsure, devote more time to study. If you were working a 1 hour per day schedule, bump this up to 2.
- Get into the detail
- Two weeks is an appropriate time to reground yourself in a subject. For the final stretch you need to be focused on the details. Whatever your major is, you should look to go beyond the primary information (the facts, figures, and key concepts) and move toward your supporting material.
- Remember to change things up and make your study sessions interactive. It can be tempting to revert back to old study habits when you have a test approaching, but keep faith in your new routine and you’ll be amazed at the difference it can make.
Week 4:
- Run though your tests again
- Now that we’re on the final stretch, it’s time to return to the quizzes you’d made throughout your study time. Run through each and see how you do, making tweaks to your schedule to go along with your performance.
- Think also about creating new quizzes. Each time we need to come up with a list of questions, we’re helping to think about information conceptually. This is a huge boost for learning, so make sure you run through it as often as you can.
Make your notes work smarter
Genio Notes helps you capture every lecture, organise it, and turn it into study material you'll actually use.
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