Tips from the experts on last minute revision

Ever wondered how that girl in Art History who never seems to pay the tutor any attention receives those stellar marks on all her exams? Or that bloke who sits next to you in Geography who you know spent the weekend before exams in Ibiza, yet still manages to pull off higher scores than you come test time?

Times Online talked to a number of students to find out what revision methods worked for them and why. Here is our run-down of some of their tried-and-tested strategies, presented so that you too have a chance to score those perfect marks.

The anti-cram

That classmate who jet-setted to Ibiza the weekend before exams owes his high marks to snippets of studying he managed to do on the plane ride and between frequent cat-naps on the beach. The method is called by some students the “anti-cram” and involves short revising sessions on a finite chunk of material followed by a good long pause. During the pauses, from ten minutes (enough to apply some suntan lotion) up to a half hour, you allow your mind to recharge, absorb the information and gear up for the next load. The idea is that the facts and figures you digest this way get neatly grouped in your thought patterns. This makes linkages in material easier to uncover when you are asked a question on an exam that involves comparisons and contrasts. It also helps with revising anxiety; breaking a term’s worth of information into bite-size chunks makes it seem more manageable and makes revising far less stressful. Just beware of running out of time by indulging in too many breaks, and not covering everything you need.

Acronyms

An acronym is a word formed from the first letters of a series of words - if you have to remember something in order, our students find that it’s a very handy device. You already use many well-known and established ones without even realising it. For example, “radar” which stands for radio detection and ranging. The inattentive girl in art history probably uses these devices for such things as matching artists with their works. “Pigu!” she shouts when she reaches the modern art section of the exam. It’s not Tourettes’ - it’s the code she’s invented to remember that Picasso painted Guernica and her ticket to a top mark. Be careful with this method, our students warn though. Too many made-up words can become just as jumbled as the original facts you were trying to commit to memory.

More straightforward are Mnemonic devices, funny little sentences that correspond to facts you need to keep in order, such as the well-known "My Very Elegant Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Porcupines" to remember the order of the planets in relation to the sun. Make your own to remember things like historical movements or to get your Mesozoic and your Cretaceous sorted.

Study buddy

All the students we asked said that spending at least some time with a revising partner was beneficial. Partners put the pressure on by either keeping you motivated or stoking you competitive side – you feel compelled to learn more for fear of being outdone by your brainy companions. Don’t just choose your bezzie mate. sure you two get on, but this is crunch time, and fun should be temporarily stricken from your vocabulary. Assess your potential revising accomplice with care.

Here are some things to ponder:

- Is he/she a dedicated student most of the time, or have they slacked off all term and are partnering because they want to catch up on what they’ve missed from you?

- Are they easily distractible? You want someone who will keep you in check and visa versa. Don’t choose someone who doodles all class, even if they seem to know their stuff.

- Do you have similar study strategies? If you are a big picture person, and your study mate is a details and dates person, your styles might clash.

BIG to small

When you are faced with masses of books and reams of scrawled notepaper, it is no small feat to work out where to begin; how do you take such a mountain of material and turn it into ideas and facts you can expound upon at will? Our students believe in whittling it down, rather than starting from the beginning and ploughing through ‘til the end. It is sort of like creating chapters in a book. That is, find the five to ten key themes in a subject and then for each break them into their component ideas. Then break those into their components and so on.

Make a page outline for each of the main headings you break down, and then add info so that the page looks like a family tree would, branching and branching with increasing levels of detail. Use Karate to guide your studies; you only progress to a black belt after you’ve earned your brown belt, and before that your green belt and all the colours beneath that. Therefore, only continue to the next level of refinement when you’ve securely mastered the first.

Rest and relaxation

It sounds a bit off, but skilled revisers know when not to revise. They don’t panic and push their minds to breaking when the final hours are descending and the clock ticks towards exam time. Crucial in their study strategy are scheduled breaks, healthy brekkies, and a good night’s sleep. Sounds boring eh? Well, they also permit themselves some enjoyment time; it’s a necessary revision tool. They see a measured amount of time not thinking about a single theorem or theologian as essential in order to mitigate the stress of crunch time. It’s important to still see your mates and not hole yourself up with only Plato and Plutarch for company. That way madness lies, and competent exam completion is as dependent on a good state of mind as it is a thorough understanding of your texts.

Schedules are key as exams loom. Arrange chunks of time so that you get a good bit of re-reading in, and still catch your favourite TV show, after which you immediately go back to your books. Set an egg timer to buzz when The Simpsons is over if you are worried about getting sucked in to the telly for hours on end. Or program your mobile to beep unceasingly when chill-time with your mates is up and it’s time to get down to business with Machiavelli and Socrates, that party animal.

What are your own top tips? Tell us below.

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