How to study for exams, working backwards from the date
Almost every revision plan is built forwards — start at chapter one and see how far you get. Build it backwards from the exam date instead, and the plan tells you what to drop, which is the decision that actually determines the grade.
Every revision plan is a plan about what you will not cover. Making that choice deliberately is the whole skill.
Start with the paper, not the notes
Find out what the exam actually is before deciding how to revise for it. Format, length, how many questions, whether there is choice, what proportion of marks sits where, and what past papers look like.
This takes twenty minutes and it changes everything downstream. Revising for an essay paper and revising for a short-answer paper are different activities, and people routinely spend four weeks preparing for the wrong one.
Four weeks out
List every topic on the syllabus and mark each one: can produce it from memory, half know it, could not begin. Be brutal — the point of the list is to find the third category while there is still room to act.
Then divide the days. Two thirds of the time to the topics you cannot do, one third to keeping the rest warm. This is the opposite of what happens naturally, which is that people revise what they already know because it is pleasant.
One week out
Switch to past papers, under something close to exam conditions, timed. Not with the notes open, not in a comfortable chair over three hours.
A timed paper measures two things you cannot otherwise see: whether you can produce the material without prompts, and whether you can do it fast enough. The second one is where most preparation fails, and it is invisible until you test it.
Three days out
Stop learning new topics. Anything you have not started at this point will not be learned well enough to be worth the hours it takes from consolidating what you nearly know.
Spend the time on the material that is close to solid: one more pass over the shaky parts, one full timed paper, and sleep. The last one is not filler advice — an all-nighter costs more recall than the extra hours add.
What to do when there is not enough time
There usually is not, and the useful response is triage rather than acceleration. Cover the highest-weighted topics, cover anything that appears in every past paper, and deliberately abandon the rest.
A plan that abandons three topics and secures the other nine beats a plan that touches all twelve and secures none. Choosing which three is uncomfortable, which is exactly why it gets avoided until the choice is made for you.
FAQ
How far in advance should I start revising?
Four weeks is enough for most exams if the time is used on the topics you cannot do rather than the ones you can. What matters more than the lead time is doing the topic audit early, while there is still room to act on what it finds.
How do I make a revision timetable?
Work backwards from the exam date. Audit every topic into can do, half know and cannot begin, then give two thirds of your days to the last group and one third to keeping the rest warm.
Are past papers the best way to revise?
In the final week, yes — timed and closed-book. They test whether you can produce the material without prompts and whether you can do it fast enough, and the second is where preparation usually turns out to be thinner than it felt.
What should I do the night before an exam?
One light pass over the shaky material and then sleep. Learning a new topic the night before costs more in recall the next day than it adds in coverage.
Working backwards needs the dates in front of you. majored keeps exams attached to their courses, with the deadlines around them, on Mac, iPad and iPhone.