Video Transcription

Study the Night Before and Pass! – How To

Hey guys, how’s it going? Sha from That Student Australia, and today I’m going to give you guys some tips for the people who don’t listen to my advice—specifically, the people who study for exams a day before, a few days before, or a week out.

I usually take three or four weeks—it’s ideal to get an exam block absolutely perfect and do the best you possibly can, ticking all the boxes with perfect prep. But a lot of people are last-minute people, and I can’t seem to shake it. Not sure what it is, but yeah, some people leave it to the last day and work their best.

I’m not sure, but here are the tips I have for cramming. I have done it in the past, and I don’t really like it, but this is how you’re going to have to maximize it.

The first tip is pretty simple for any exam, whether you’re cramming or whether you have four weeks out: you need to find the exam notification or the list of things that are probably going to be in the exam. At your high school and university, they’ll probably give you a sheet of paper or an online document that says, “This is the exam, this is the date, this is how much it’s worth, and these are the topics or guidelines or things you should study.”

So, pretty much, you need that first. You can’t do anything without that.

The second step: once you’ve got that list of things you need to study for, the list of topics that are in the exam—grab your textbook, grab your source notes, or whatever you’ve actually got the information stored in. It might be online, it might be a book, and you either need to highlight or type it up on the computer. Go through all the pages, which will actually help you answer the questions in the topics.

For example, if you’re in science and they want you to identify the process involved in a reaction, you need to be able to find that exact thing in the text, highlight it, and then move on to the next point, the next instruction in the exam or the next topic.

You need to quickly glance through every paragraph in your textbook or notes in the parts that matter and just focus on the major bits. Don’t get bogged down with the nitty-gritty details; just cover the main points. You don’t have time for the details—just the major bits.

Now that you’ve highlighted everything, quickly skim through all the text and notes you have in front of you. What you need to do next is rewrite everything you’ve highlighted—all the stuff that sounds important, the major points, the core elements.

I suggest typing because you probably don’t have time to write everything by hand. Flick through those pages and look at the highlighted parts. If something feels important, type it up and save the document.

Once you’ve saved that document, which is essentially just the major parts of the exam—the core things you need to study—it’s time to start memorizing it.

Memorizing is key. If you haven’t memorized stuff by the exam, then you’re not ready. So how do you do that? I like to read things out loud, as if I’m giving a speech to an audience. I look up, look down, look up again.

You can also use flashcards, mnemonic devices like riddles or acronyms, or simple techniques like looking, writing, and checking. You can listen to recordings of your notes. There are a thousand different memory techniques that I’ve covered in previous videos. You need to use them because, if you only have 24 hours, the first third of that time has probably been spent on previous stages.

The last two-thirds need to be focused on memorizing as much as you can, cramming it into your brain as fast as possible. You only need to retain it for that one day—the exam day. After that, you can forget it all.

Use the memory techniques for all the core stuff you’ve written down and acknowledged as the main material you need to know. Then, you can fill out the rest on the paper during the exam.

So, yeah, that’s pretty much it: quickly flip through your notes, find out what corresponds to each point, write it out somewhere, and use memory techniques that work best for you.

As long as you can stay up late, drink stimulants—because you’re cramming—you don’t have the luxury of time or sleep. You need to panic your way through it and use these techniques properly.

I don’t recommend this method, as I said, but if you’re ever in a pinch, like a lot of us are, cramming techniques can really help.

Thank you very much for watching, and I’ll see you in the next video.