6 Tips To Study Smarter And Not Harder For Your College Exams

Are exams haunting you and keeping you up at night? Well, you are not alone, and the struggle is real. Exams are part and parcel of a student’s life, and sometimes it just feels like you are clueless.

Research reveals that over 75% of the students face stress and anxiety over exams. Most students even look for assignment help service providers and ask questions like, “Can you do my essay?” or “Can you help me with my math paper?” etc., to receive assistance. Of course, having excellent study skills always helps overcome such situations. However, you cannot always rely on them, especially for challenging exams. Sometimes you just need to study smart rather than long and hard. Moreover, not every student has the same skillsets to ace their exams exceptionally. While some students are good at cramming information, others take a lot of time to process and absorb the study materials.

Therefore a lot of time goes into figuring out what works best for you and developing your own study habits. If you are also struggling to prepare for your tricky exams, here are 6 tips to help you ace your next big exam.

1. Get Complete Details Of Your Exam

The first and foremost step of building a study routine before a challenging exam is to get all the necessary details about your exam. Make sure to have the updated exam schedule to practice accordingly. Gather as much information as you can about your exam and clarify any doubts that you might have with your professors.

Also, take a note of the possible questions that might pop up on the exam day so that you can follow some closely related examples to get an idea. Finally, if you struggle to frame some good questions to ask your professors, here are some suggestions.

• Ask about the number of questions or the question format or exam pattern that is most likely to come.
• Enquire if you should focus on the terminology or only definitions.
• Request your professors to provide a study guide if possible to prepare better.

2. Space Out Your Study Sessions

Most students do cram before their extensive tests. And while it is a good practice to study a day before the exam, it is not wise to cram all your studying into one day. Instead, you should space out your study sessions accordingly to attain a more fruitful result.

A 2009 research showed that spaced-out learning is more effective than crammed learning and that students learned better this way. This is because our brain cannot process information when it is already full. So, if you wonder how you can retain your study materials better, take a look.

• Divide your study sessions into small manageable chunks to achieve better results.
• Take some time off between each session to replenish and rejuvenate your brain and allow the previous material to seep in.
• Involve various subjects with various activities rather than just studying one subject at a stretch.

3. Highlight Important Points

Highlighting is another important trick that will start you before studying. Before your exams, your professors will have already indicated the materials you should pay extra attention to. Highlight these questions, notes, materials, topics, etc., to pay attention and figure out whether or not you understand all parts clearly.

This will help you refine the rough edges when you actually sit to study. Moreover, highlight only the worthy materials and use different colored pens to highlight different types of resources. If you want to highlight effectively, here are some steps.

• Know the purpose of highlighting and understand what to highlight. Try to be goal-oriented and focus on significant portions of your text.
• Pick readable colors and limit your colors to avoid messing up your paper. Also, remember to highlight in moderation rather than just for fun.
• Study actively and critically engage yourself with the study material to figure out what to practice and what to avoid.

4. Stay Distraction Free

Distraction is one of the biggest nemesis of students that keeps them from attaining academic perfection. Most students often feel intimidated to answer a phone call or scroll through their social media while studying. This usually gets them distracted, and they lose time.

Distractions are often the main reason behind missed deadlines and students taking down the internet asking, “Can anyone do my grammar checker?” When you get swayed by distractions, it becomes impossible to retain information. To save yourself from this, you can take a 30 minutes break to relax and do what you like. Here are some ways by which you can stay distraction-free.

• Start by selecting a quiet environment with no background noises for your brain to focus to the optimum.
• Keep your cell phones, gaming consoles, and other gadgets out of sight so that you don’t feel intimidated.

Author’s Bio

Alison Lewis is a guest lecturer at the University of Houston. Hailing from Texas, the United States, he has over 6 years of experience as a master proofreader. She is currently associated with MyAssignmenthelp.com as an academic counselor, and students often reach out to her with questions like, “Can you edit my paper?”