Acing Your Exams 101

Introduction

As students, we’re sure you sometimes struggle with spending your time productively and trying to avoid those last-minute cramming sessions before exams (unless you’re a really studious person in which case keep it up!). Although we all know in general that productivity is what’s causing us to feel so much stress and even underperform during exams, it’s not as simple as just waking up one day and saying “Ok I’m gonna study extra hard today”, which we’ve all done before and probably works for a maximum of 30 minutes HAHAHA. So, if you feel like you’re in the same situation as what we’ve just described, we have a list of six study and productivity tips below to help you out!

Tip 1: Plan!

At the beginning of the exam season, try to devise a plan and most importantly, follow through with it! This will go a long way in leaving you with minimal stress before the exam. I like to split my revision period into 3 blocks: content revision, mock papers, fixing. This is a screenshot of my SH1 CT revision plan. (Disclaimer: This format is what worked for me! Please cater to your learning needs and organise your revision plan accordingly :))

When doing content revision, identify the chapter you are weak in and try to clear them first before tackling others. You can use resources such as youtube videos, slides, lecture notes and questions to build your foundation. You can then assess your learning through attempting topical questions. For me, I also did a few mock papers on the 3rd and 4th week for subjects I was better prepared for.

Now, you can move onto doing the mock papers. Please try to do them under timed conditions and mark honestly! This will not only help you learn to perform under time pressure, it will give you valuable insight to where your strengths and weaknesses lie.

Lastly you need to fix the gaps in your learning through learning from mistakes done in your mock papers. This is a great time to set up consultations if you realise you need help understanding certain topics. Other tips to help you are listed in point 6!

Tip 2: Set realistic goals

Setting goals is important as it allows you to track your progress. When you set goals, you will feel more motivated to take tangible action to achieve the goals. However, the goals set must be realistic- if the goal is too easy, you will get complacent and if it is too hard to achieve, you will give up easily.

Not everyone will desire A in all subjects so set a goal that will allow you to feel proud of yourself at the end :) There will definitely be obstacles and stumbling blocks along the way! The most important thing is to have the courage to pick yourself up and continue on your journey towards your goal. It is a marathon and not a sprint :)

Tip 3: Work together with your friends

Some of you may already ask your friends for help when you’re unable to solve questions, but it may be useful to work even more closely than that! Some of the things my classmates used to do were:

• Go for consultations with our teachers as a group

• Make revision flashcards and test each other closer to the exam

• Share our exam essays with teachers’ comments in the class drive

It really doesn’t matter if you and your friends have varying strengths in the subject - in fact it’s even better! It’s been said quite often before that the best way to test whether you really understand a concept is to try explaining it to someone else, especially someone who doesn’t understand it as well as you do. On top of this, there is always something to gain from reading others’ work - I remember clearly being very surprised seeing my friends interpret questions in a completely unorthodox way and still clinch higher level responses.

Don’t be afraid that your friends will judge you or steal your notes HAHA. Exams can be an individual race but working towards them should be a team effort! Plus plus, working with friends never gets boring hehe and being among them can let you relieve stress at the same time :3

Tip 4: Keep yourself focused

Here are some ways you can do this:

• Delete social media applications (Instagram, Twitter, etc)

• Physically distance yourself from distractions (e.g. put distractions in another room)

• Set a “daily reminder” on Instagram which notifies you once you have spent a certain amount of time on the app so you know you should put it away

Personally, I found the app ‘Forest’ especially useful. ‘Forest’ is a productivity app which allows you to plant virtual trees by being productive for a set amount of time during which using other apps on your phone is not permitted and instead would kill the virtual tree. There are different types of cute trees to choose from and you can also plant with friends who own the app!! Do note however that it is a paid app, but you can always share the app with your friends (that’s what I did)!

Tip 5: Incentivise yourself to feel motivated to do work

This tip may be a bit odd but I always found myself a lot more productive when doing work in a good mood rather than dragging myself to the table. As most students out there I didn’t enjoy getting my brain fried from tons of content but there are a few things which made me more motivated to start studying and in turn made me more productive! For example, I really like the feeling of orderliness so before starting work I like to list the things to be done and check them off after completing! The feeling of satisfaction when you tick them off really drives me hahaha and it’s better to list your “to-do’s” as small, achievable things which allows you to check them off more frequently! Similarly I liked to organise my notes in a neat manner online and seeing all the table of contents filled motivated me to keep going (like my excel file below was so aesthetically pleasing to look at HAHAHA *subtle self plug*).

Apart from the above I also really like curating playlists to study with HAHAHA so study time became something I looked forward to because it’s when I could listen to those playlists on repeat :”D

Of course there are many other methods to motivate yourself other than what I did, you need to find out what works for you! It could be giving yourself a break to walk around at a park or eating a snack after completing a set of past year papers too! The important thing is to make sure it is suited to your personal preferences.

Tip 6: Be honest with yourself

Oftentimes when we are doing corrections for wrong questions we tend to gleam over our mistakes and look at the answer key going "I’m pretty sure I sort of know what went wrong,". Worse still, I used to (and sometimes, till now) have the habit of looking at the answer key when attempting questions. I would then convince myself that I would have gotten the answer anyway.

If you feel called out, I have a couple of tips that can help you break this bad habit :)

The solution that really helped me is constantly asking if I’m being honest with myself. Only you will know how comfortable you are handling certain topics, and any areas you are lacking in. To identify concept weaknesses, you can look at the learning outcomes for each chapter or any mistakes. Rather than boosting your ego by focusing on what you know best, when you get a question wrong, take the time to find out where you actually went wrong. Was your content lacking? If so, look at your notes and learn the content first or consult your teacher/friends. Did you apply a certain technique wrongly? Learn the correct way and attempt similar questions till you feel comfortable. I like to write down the mistakes and concepts I have made in my subject based notebook/post-it and ask at the end of the lesson. Then I would (try my best lol) to consistently update and review it at the end of each week. By actively recalling content in spaced repetitions I can make sure that my learning points are in my long term memory and I will not make the same mistake again in exams.

Conclusion

We hope these tips are useful to you in some way! The journey can be tough and hard now but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Your friends, family and teachers are here with you on this journey so if you feel stressed you can always reach out to them for help! To the SH2s, good luck for your A-levels, we are rooting for you! To the rest of the NJcians reading this, we hope you have a fun, productive and fulfilling time in NJ :)

P.S. If you are planning on writing the BMAT, you can get some revision done in June!