study tips for high school exams

Rereading your notes is the worst way to study.

Your brain gets lazy. It sees the words, recognizes them, and thinks the job is done. But recognition isn’t recall. And exams are all about recall.

So you have to force your brain to actually pull information out of storage. Here’s how.

Stop Cramming

All-nighters are a waste of time. Cramming shoves information into your short-term memory, which forgets things as fast as you learn them. The only way to remember something for good is to review it over several days or weeks. This is called spaced repetition.

Start studying at least two weeks before the exam. Block out your calendar in short, 45-minute chunks for each subject. A focused sprint is way better than a four-hour marathon that just leaves you exhausted.

Force Yourself to Remember

This is called active recall, and it’s simple: you have to retrieve information without looking at it.

• Teach it. Try to explain a concept to a friend or parent. If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t really get it.
• Make flashcards. They work for a reason, but you have to make them yourself. Writing them is half the battle.
• Take practice tests. This is the most important one. Find old exams and take them under real-world conditions, time limit and all. It’s the fastest way to find out what you don't know.

I had a friend in junior year who was a calculus genius but bombed his history final. He'd spent weeks just rereading the textbook in his 2011 Honda Civic before school. He thought he knew it all. Then he got a blank essay question and couldn't pull a single name or date out of his head. He recognized everything in the book but couldn't recall any of it when it mattered. He never made that mistake again.

Your Brain Isn't a Machine

It needs breaks. The Pomodoro Technique is perfect for this: focus for 25 minutes, then take a 5-minute break. After four rounds, take a longer one.