How to study the night before an exam

First 10 minutes: decide what tonight is for

Before you open a single set of notes, sort every topic on the exam into three piles:

• Tonight: the topics the most clues point to. They get most of your evening.
• If there's time: the topics with a clue or two behind them. They get what's left.
• Skip: the topics nothing points to. You skip them on purpose, not by running out of time.

Use the clues your class has already given you, in this order: the study guide or review sheet, practice questions your instructor gave out, your returned quizzes, the objectives in the syllabus, and what was repeated in class.

This order is our suggestion. Your class may differ.

Then check every Skip against the study guide once. If it's on the study guide, it isn't a Skip.

The full method, with a worked example.

When a topic is new to you

Is it new to you and on the study guide? Give it a first pass tonight. Leaving a likely topic blank costs more than skipping a polish on one you know. That's our suggestion, not a rule, and it's where we differ from the advice to learn nothing new the night before.

Test yourself, don't reread

In one experiment, college students either read a short passage in four 5-minute study periods, or studied it for one period and then took three recall tests with no feedback.

Five minutes later, the students who only reread remembered more (83% of the passage's ideas vs 71%). A week later, the students who tested themselves remembered more (61% vs 40%).

The students who only reread were more confident they'd remember it a week later. Source: Roediger and Karpicke, 2006 (opens in a new tab).

Your exam is tomorrow morning, somewhere between those two, and that study didn't test it. We'd still say test yourself tonight, because it shows you what you can't answer yet while there's time to fix it. That's our reasoning, not the study's finding.

Three ways to test yourself tonight:

• Cover your notes and write down everything you remember about a topic. Then check what you missed.
• Do the practice problems before you look at the worked answers.
• Turn each line of the study guide into a question, and answer it the next time that topic comes up, without looking.

What cramming can and can't do

Studying tonight can still help you tomorrow. Spreading study over several days is what the research below backs.

One study looked at this with flashcards. The same study found spacing also beat cramming the day before the test. Source: Kornell, 2009 (opens in a new tab).

A review of 317 experiments found that spreading out study of the same material beat studying it all at once, and that the best gap between study sessions gets longer the longer you need to remember it. Source: Cepeda and others, 2006 (opens in a new tab).

A large research review rated practice testing and spaced practice as the two most useful study techniques. Rereading and highlighting were rated low. Source: Dunlosky and others, 2013 (opens in a new tab).

So tonight, test yourself on the top of the list. Next time, give yourself a few days.

If it's a final

Check the syllabus for whether the final is cumulative. If it is, rank across every unit, starting with the units you remember least. Use the midterms and quizzes you got back as tonight's self-test: cover the answers, redo the questions, then check. That's our advice, not a research finding.

Know the score you need first with the free final grade calculator.

Several finals this week? Here's how to study for finals.

Next time, start a few days out

In a study of more than 1,350 people learning trivia facts, the best gap between first studying and reviewing was about 20 to 40% of the time between the review and a test a week later. For a test a year later, it was about 5 to 10%. A rough rule based on that study: if your exam is a week away, review about 1 to 2 days after you first study. Source: Cepeda and others, 2008 (opens in a new tab).

Have 3 days or more? Make a day-by-day plan. The free study schedule maker spreads your topics over the days you have and brings each one back on later days.