Five Tips for Cramming for Exams

Everyone Studies

Cramming, for those who don’t know, is studying an extensive amount of material in an extremely short amount of time. The method crammers use is usually done relatively short of exam day. This could be the night before, or even a few hours before. In other words, cramming is a way for procrastinating students to at least attempt to review material they previously neglected.

As a late teenager planning to attend an undergrad program, I can totally relate to buckling-down and burying my head in books. Whether it be for a course at school, or something needed outside of a learning environment, like a job application or driving test. Things like these make taking exams and looking-over information a huge part of all our lives. 

Our brains are constructed in a way that makes it easy to encode, store, and retrieve newer stimulus. We recognize something new, retain it, and quickly pull it out for remembrance, and in that order. 

Here are 5 tips that usually help me when I plain don’t feel like it, or want to get as much in head in the quickest possible way; these work especially when I just need to recall ‘in the moment’ items. 

Plan for the Long Haul

Quizzes and small tests can be considered sprints, in comparison to exams, which should be considered marathons. Work your brain to remember in short burst of memory, so that when a bigger test is presented, it’s easier to review and ‘bring-up’ older material. It’s helpful to rehearse before anything, so that it refreshes in you mind. Space everything you try to cram over intervals if you can when time is a luxury. If not, repeating things over, and over, and over, until you grasp it is pretty effective. 

Take It Bit By Bit

Instead of trying to ingest the entirety of a subject, chew it in pieces. This is called ‘chunking’, a psychology term that describes encoding memories in whole parts, at one time. This is tremendously useful when you feel bombarded with notes to look over that seem to be too much for one sitting. We can ultimately store as much as we want. 

Don’t Over Do It

Overstudying can be a deal-breaker. Although repetition is good, too much can be a bad thing. I’m sure most of us have had the feeling we absolutely knew something, but couldn’t get it off the tip of our tongues. failure to retrieve an item in our brain could be due to us becoming to over-confident in our own ability to remember. Take a break, go for a walk, use the information and churn it in your head as if it was something you actually need for daily use.

Make Sure It’s There When You Need It

At times, it’s best to repeat things over in your head. In fact, at times, it may be the best way to go about learning. If you can get into the groove of chanting material in your mind, it tends to stick when you need it and it becomes more accessible. This is encoding, or getting information in our heads. After it’s encoded, we store it for later use. 

Relate Newer Material 

….to older knowledge. How am I going to remember all this if it has nothing to do with me? Doesn’t hurt to try to find little ways and rhymes to help not to forget. Relate study terms to things that go on in your everyday life, that way it’s much more readily available to use because it’s something that relates to yourself, and at the risk of sounding cheesy, a part of you. 

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