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thestudiousgeminii-blog · 6 years ago

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Super helpful advice! All credit goes to the angel who wrote this☁️💓🏹

last minute exam advice

Public exams are coming up soon so I’ve decided to compile a list of advice of things to do before and during your exams to ensure you get the best possible grades. These are tricks that I use to make exams seem less daunting and I hope they’ll be beneficial to you too.

revision:

1) What to do if there’s a subject that’s fallen by the wayside (trust me, I’ve been here)

I would start by making a list of the topics which you don’t know, ranking them from the least known to the most known. At this stage, you don’t have a lot of time to make thorough notes. Instead, I recommend going through the chapter in your textbook or revision guide and making extremely concise notes with the main points of information. This can be in the any form such as a mind-map or any other preferable way, but the main thing is to make sure the knowledge is going into your brain.

Having done this, go on to do past paper questions which will highlight the keywords needed to gain full marks and will show you how the answer should be structured.

2) How to revise for a subject you intensely dislike

For me, this subject was GCSE Latin. Revising for this subject can be difficult especially if you don’t enjoy the content of the course, but the key message I repeatedly told myself was that I’ve been studying this subject which has made my life hell, and at this stage I’d want a good result to come out of it. For Latin, I used Quizlet, and whenever I had the chance, I would be on there doing vocab or revising chunks of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and Catullus’ Love Poetry. It will require a lot of will power and it’s hard to think about the end result, but ultimately, it’s only a few more weeks of studying the subject and you might as well give it your all.

3) How to make sure you get the grades you need/want

My best piece of advice would be to aim for a grade above what you need. For example, if you want an B in Maths, aim to get an A / A*. This may sound strange, but if you work at a higher level, when factoring in exam stress and nerves, you’ll probably end up with the grade you originally wanted or higher. Of course, this also means working efficiently and effectively on the topics you don’t know, but I used this technique for my GCSEs and it really paid off.

exam:

1) Leading up to the exam

Some of the worse moments before your exam can be the night before, as you lie in bed thinking about what’s to come, but also waiting outside of the exam hall. My suggestion for the night before, is to go through any concise notes you have made up until an hour before you go to sleep. In the final hour before you sleep, do something to calm you down whether it is drinking some herbal tea and reading a book or listening to a chilled playlist, but this will help you to enter a more tranquil and calm state to make sure you have a good night’s rest before the exam.

When waiting outside the exam hall, find friends who don’t make you stressed and talk about something other than the exam (this will be quite hard). This is because the last thing you want is for someone to bring up an exam topic which you didn’t revise and to leave you absolutely panicked at the last moment.

2) During the exam

The most cliche advice is to take deep breaths, but honestly there’s a reason this is repeatedly said. Taking deeper breaths slows down your heart rate and will allow you to concentrate better. Next, is to imagine the exam as a past paper or class test rather than a public exam. This can be hard, but remind yourself that you’ve revised the information and you know the content well.

Spend a minute dividing up your time according to the sections of the paper. Although this may seem like a waste of a minute at first, it’ll ensure that you don’t spend too long on one section and that you finish with time to spare.

If you come across a question you don’t know, leave it until the end, or make an educated guess. It’s better than leaving the question blank.

3) After the exam

A lot of people say to avoid discussing the paper after the exam. This is a good idea, but inevitably you’re bound to discuss a few questions with friends. However, don’t go into too much analysis of all your answers, because it’ll make the wait until results day intolerable knowing that your friend got a different answer to you for one question (this also includes not looking at the unofficial mark schemes posted to ‘the student room’).

Instead, start thinking about preparation for you next exam, as you don’t want your previous exams to take a toll on your upcoming ones.

#exam #exam help #studiousstudies

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