It's the night before the exam, and you're behind. That happens to almost everyone at some point. You can't learn a whole course in one evening. But you can use the next few hours well. This guide is an honest plan for that.
Be honest about what one night can do
Cramming works a little for tomorrow, and badly for later. Memory fades fast when you learn something once and don't come back to it. Ebbinghaus showed this in 1885 with his forgetting curve. Cepeda et al. (2006) reviewed many studies and found that spread out practice beats the same practice in one block for long term memory.
So tonight is about tomorrow's exam, not about mastering the subject. That's fine. Just know that if this course leads to a final or a later course, you will need to study it again. Our guide on studying for an exam in a week shows the better plan for next time.
Don't trade sleep for study hours
This is the hardest advice to follow, and the most useful. Sleep helps your brain keep what you learned during the day. A tired brain is also slower at reading questions and recalling answers. An all nighter can cost you more points tomorrow than the extra hours give you.
Set a stop time first. Count back a full night of sleep from when you need to wake up. That is when you stop, even if you are not done. Everything below fits into the hours before that time.
Step 1: Test yourself before you reread anything
Your first instinct will be to reread your notes from page one. Don't. Rereading feels productive, but it mostly makes things feel familiar. Dunlosky et al. (2013) rated rereading as a low value method and practice testing as high. With little time, you need to know where your gaps are, fast.
So start with a test. Use past papers, the questions at the end of each chapter, or a practice test from your own notes. You can upload your notes, slides, or a PDF to the practice test generator. It writes questions only from your material, and each answer says why. Take the test in one go and don't look up answers during it.
Step 2: Choose what to fix
Now you have a list of misses. You won't fix them all tonight, so pick. Sort them into three groups.
- Likely to come up and close to known. You almost had it. Fix these first, they are the cheapest points.
- Likely to come up but new to you. Fix the main idea only, not every detail.
- Unlikely to come up. Skip these tonight.
How do you know what is likely? Look at what your teacher spent the most class time on, what they said will be on the exam, and what came up on past papers or quizzes. If you don't know, give each topic equal time.
Step 3: Drill the misses, then test again
For each miss, read the right answer and the reason. Then turn it into a flashcard with a clear question on the front. Drill the cards. Say the answer before you flip, every time. A card you get right twice in a row can go to the side. You can make cards from your notes with the flashcard generator, or write them on paper.
In Quizfix, the Fix round does this step for you. It turns the questions you missed into cards and drills them right away.
Work in blocks with short breaks. After a few blocks, take a new short test on the topics you fixed. Use different questions if you can. If you get them right now, move on. If not, drill once more and then let it go.
- Formulas and lists: write them from memory on blank paper, then check.
- Concepts: explain them out loud in two or three sentences, as if to a friend.
- Problems: solve one, check it, then solve a new one without looking.
The morning of the exam
Eat something and get to the exam early. If you have time, look over your short list of weak points once. Don't start a new topic in the morning. It tends to raise stress more than it raises your score.
In the exam, read every question fully. Answer the ones you know first, then come back to the hard ones. A blank answer gets no points, so make your best guess if there is no penalty for wrong answers.
After the exam
If this subject comes back later, don't throw away tonight's work. Your list of misses is a map of your weak spots. Come back to those cards a few days later, then a week later. Our guide on what to do after a practice test shows how to turn a list of misses into a plan. The guide on active recall vs rereading explains why testing beats reading.