How to Study for Final Exams
How To Study For Final Exams
A Masochist's Guide
Your final exams probably count for 60% or 70% of your final grades. Those kinds of marks are worth putting some effort into getting! Especially if you've been slacking off all term. I have had more than a few people claim that my methods of studying for final exams were pretty torturous. I usually knock myself out pretty good when I study for finals, mainly because I'm an idiot and have no mathematical ability. But, my techniques have thus far been fruitful. With those nasty finals looming large once more, I thought that some fellow Mathies would benefit from some of my tips on how to study.
I have thus far (I'm in 3A) found that there is a direct correlation between how many hours I spend studying for a particular course's final exam, and my mark in that course. The more hours I put in, the higher the mark (generally). So, my techniques focus on how to squeeze more study hours out of the available time. I think most frosh or second year students would probably benefit from this type of approach (geniuses excluded, of course), but upper year students would probably find some other approach more helpful. Perhaps a more functional approach that focuses on the topics of the course and studying areas of particular conceptual weakness. My techniques go for the ``shot-gun blast'' mass-knowledge approach, but can be adapted to suit other purposes. Now then, onto the method.
There should be two phases to the studying. The first phase has the student summarizing their notes, getting copies of old midterms and finals, and getting copies of the solution sets to the term's assignments. The second phase is the actual studying. The first phase can and should be done while lectures are still happening. If you wait until the examination period to do this, then you'll be doing it when you could be more effectively studying for a nearby final. The idea here is that the closer to an exam you get, the more time you should be
A Masochist's Guide
Your final exams probably count for 60% or 70% of your final grades. Those kinds of marks are worth putting some effort into getting! Especially if you've been slacking off all term. I have had more than a few people claim that my methods of studying for final exams were pretty torturous. I usually knock myself out pretty good when I study for finals, mainly because I'm an idiot and have no mathematical ability. But, my techniques have thus far been fruitful. With those nasty finals looming large once more, I thought that some fellow Mathies would benefit from some of my tips on how to study.
I have thus far (I'm in 3A) found that there is a direct correlation between how many hours I spend studying for a particular course's final exam, and my mark in that course. The more hours I put in, the higher the mark (generally). So, my techniques focus on how to squeeze more study hours out of the available time. I think most frosh or second year students would probably benefit from this type of approach (geniuses excluded, of course), but upper year students would probably find some other approach more helpful. Perhaps a more functional approach that focuses on the topics of the course and studying areas of particular conceptual weakness. My techniques go for the ``shot-gun blast'' mass-knowledge approach, but can be adapted to suit other purposes. Now then, onto the method.
There should be two phases to the studying. The first phase has the student summarizing their notes, getting copies of old midterms and finals, and getting copies of the solution sets to the term's assignments. The second phase is the actual studying. The first phase can and should be done while lectures are still happening. If you wait until the examination period to do this, then you'll be doing it when you could be more effectively studying for a nearby final. The idea here is that the closer to an exam you get, the more time you should be