Whoops. It’s the night before, or the period before, your big unit test or final. You find that you haven’t even learned any material that’s going to be on the test tomorrow. So then you Google “how to cram last minute”.
It’s okay. It happens to the best of us.
Shockingly, although everyone has advice on how to study efficiently and effectively, the internet is almost devoid on tips on how to cram for an exam. So here’s the lifesaving blog post you’re looking for, from someone with too much experience in last-minute studying.
1. It Won’t Be Pretty.
The first thing to do is to accept that you won’t be getting 100% on this exam (probably). Unless you get a wild stroke of luck or you’re lying about having never studied the material, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll do perfectly on the test. The sooner you realize and accept this, the better.
Cramming is an ugly process where you finally understand how much you have to learn and how much you don’t know. It’s easy to become overwhelmed and panicked if you aim to know everything perfectly, and this will only hinder efficiency. So accept that it won’t be perfect, and that’s okay.
Accepting that your grade will be imperfect also helps reduce perfectionist procrastination (procrastination that results from over planning in order to get a perfect result). So brace yourself and get ready to flinch a little bit.
2. Test Yourself
In order to the best you can, you should only study the material that you’re weakest on. The best way to find these weaknesses is to do a practice test before you study. Even if all the material is new and you don’t pick a correct answer for the entire practice test, it will be highly beneficial. If you don’t know the answer, put something down or pick one of the answer options. Making these mistakes and correcting them at the end will induce the concept of hypercorrection.
When you take an exam it’s highly unlikely that you’ll remember everything you got right; rather, you’ll remember all the questions you got wrong.
Hypercorrection is the idea that the more you make mistakes, the more likely you are to remember what you got wrong and not make the mistake again. By correcting yourself before you even begin, you are priming your brain to accept material with more ease.
3. Time Yourself
When it comes to actually learning the material and filling in the gaps that you’re missing, learn in spurts of no more than 15 minutes. During these fifteen minutes, jot down questions that you could ask yourself as review afterward.
After 15 minutes, take 5 minutes to answer all of your review questions. Try to understand the concepts instead of blandly memorizing them. This will help you not only apply the information on the exam, but also help you retain the information after the test, in case you’ll need it later.
However, if you can’t understand and you’re on a time crunch, only then should you memorize. This is where the review sessions become crucial; building your short-term memory requires a lot of recall and repetition.
4. Feynman’s Technique
Feynman’s Technique, which is also known as the Rubber Duck Technique, is a wonderful way to review material quickly. Simply have a family member, pet, or even a rubber duck, listen to you as you explain whatever it is that you’re learning.
Be sure to do this while your notebooks are closed and when you have nothing but your memory to go off of. You should also try to explain in the simplest terms imaginable. This helps us synthesize our knowledge into more manageable chunks, and further highlights everything we need to review further.
Oftentimes, we learn the most about our own understanding if we explain it to someone else. This is a great technique to use during study groups, because everyone’s attention span is short. You’ll have to condense all the material into simple terms and explain it to everyone in a few minutes.
5. Stay Healthy
A crucial part of cramming that’s completely unrelated to the academic work is to stay healthy. Try your best to get at least an hour of sleep before the exam, and definitely eat breakfast before your test.
Keeping on top of your physical health is incredibly important to cramming and performing well. I find from personal experience that even if you know the material front-to-back, if I don’t get enough sleep or skip breakfast, I do worse on the test.
Now, I know a lot of people who do really well even if they don’t eat in the morning or if they don’t sleep at all. But they’re also the people who make little mistakes that cost them a lot of half marks. Unnecessary mistakes, like forgetting units at the end of a physics answer or making repeated grammatical errors on an essay.
You probably won’t cover all the material since you’re already cramming, so get some sleep because we want to MINIMIZE the number of small mistakes you make.
That being said, if you know me at all, you’ll know that my sleep schedule is a little questionable. I juggle a lot, and I’m assuming if you’re still reading this article I’m not the only one. So if you have to sacrifice your health, do it sustainably and try not to do it too often.
TL;DR – The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that cramming is stressful, overwhelming, and unhealthy. If you can, just avoid it. But if you can’t avoid cramming, you should follow the 5 steps on how to cram:
- Accept imperfection
- Test yourself
- Time yourself
- Explain yourself
- Stay healthy (as much as is realistic)
Good luck on your tests!