Summer! Sunshine! Holiday! Such are the hopeful thoughts on most students' mind at the moment, but before you can get your kit off at the beach and melt your mind with a steady diet of computer games, there is that rather important hurdle to surmount: exams.

Yes, it’s that time of year again, when the weather is telling you to put down your pencil and pick up a Frisbee while your tutors, parents and conscience are urging you to head to the library. Times Online Student has the expert advice to get you through revising and help you pass with flying colours, even if you’ve been less than diligent than you’d care for mum to know.

Prepare for a marathon

While everyone has their own method of revising, there are some approaches which may hinder rather than help you. Kudos on being motivated, but sitting in the library all weekend with a pile of books and no method on how to crack them won’t do much more for your marks than sitting in front of the TV.

Brandon Jones, National Director of Kaplan Test Prep, a programme that trains students for exams, says that doing a mock test – if you can find an old version or similar exam – is a big help. “If it’s a long test, practice an equivalent block of time. If you were preparing for a marathon, you wouldn’t just do ten minute sprints, you’d practice doing the whole thing.”

“Flextime”

Julie Rafal, a PhD student in Education Policy at Cambridge served with Teach for America, a US organisation whereby high-level graduates teach in schools for two years. She advises creating a structured timeline for maximum reward - a tactic Jones describes as “building a goal that is ambitious but achievable.” Rafal says you should take out your calendar well in advance. “Start backwards, if the exam is say, on June 1st, plan the last five days so that you have breathing room. Things come up all the time, so make sure there is built in ‘flextime’”.

During that flextime you don’t necessarily have to do productive things, but to maintain your momentum, make sure the time you spend faffing about is strictly delimited. “Don’t deny yourself things like facebook, and feel guilty. Have it scheduled in.” says Rafal.

Tried and true

There are plenty of new-fangled study aids out there, – internet quizzes abound on just about every subject you could be studying – but Rafal recommends the tried and true method of flashcards above all others. But don’t go writing down every single term your tutor ever uttered, so you'll suffer from information overload. “Use big index cards to bring in main arguments, main sections, who you should be referring to,” she advises. Having a physical chunk of what you studied at hand has good psychological effects as well: “Having a stack of them on your desk that you go through makes you feel like you are making progress, it’s positive reinforcement. You look at them diminish and think, ‘hey, I am getting somewhere.’”

Mind games

Don’t underestimate the importance of not only filling your head, but keeping it in a primed and ready state. The brain is a funny organ, susceptible to stress and prone to misbehaviour. “The last think you look at is the freshest in your head, so never look at a newspaper in the morning before a test, as that can throw you off,” says Rafal, although Jones recommends reading something as a sort of warm-up for your brain.

Fish and foods high in omega 3 fatty acids are said to boost thought-power, but stuffing your face with cod and walnuts is secondary to creating the optimum environment for your brain to maximise its performance. “It’s called ‘State Dependent Learning’,” says Rafal. “However you’ve been studying – in your pyjamas, with running ten miles every day – you have to keep doing the same thing in all realms.” That means going to the test in those same jimjams, and going on the run the morning of the test. This may sound extreme, but Jones concurs: “You need a routine - eat a healthy breakfast. go to bed at the same time. Don’t think just because you’ve prepared for the past week you can go to bed the day before the test at 15:00.”

Oops, it’s the last minute!

Jones says that a healthy dose of reality is key to making it through the exam for those who haven’t opened a book since term began. “You have to realise that you can’t at this point prepare comprehensively. You’ll run into trouble if you try to get two months of information crammed into two days.” But equally, says Rafal: “The worst thing you can do is give up and say there is no point. There is always something you can pull off.” Jones advises to strategise and figure out which chunks of material you can study which will give you the “biggest return”. Don’t try to nail down fiddly details, stick to mastering big concepts and overarching topics.

Exam time

If you do find an exam question you can’t answer, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to dwell on it and agonise. “Keep moving, getting one question wrong or right is never worth missing several because you didn’t get there in time,” says Jones. It is not uncommon for students to lose out overall after spending too long answering the first question perfectly at the expense of the remainder of the exam.

It may sound a bit daft on the face of it, but preparing for the exam environment itself can have as much of an impact on your marks as preparing the subject matter. “Dress in layers so you are comfortable,” Jones recommends. “It is a physiological experience as well as a mental experience.”

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