5 Essential College Test Prep Tips
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In college, most of what you will be doing is studying for exams. In fact, when you look at your syllabi, you will notice that most of what you will be working towards is studying and preparing for your midterms and finals. This means that these major exams will make up a huge part of your grade. Because of this, you want to find a way to prep for these exams efficiently. If you don’t, you could burn out. Indeed, there is a wrong way and a right way to study. When it comes to exams, you need to make adjustments to your life in order to stay on track. Here are five essential college test prep tips.
- Hire a Tutor
First and foremost, you may want to think about hiring a tutor. This is especially important if you are having trouble understanding the material that will be on the exam. Most tutors are relatively affordable. If you go to Ohio University, you may want to find a local online classified service and look for tutors. Your other option is to work with someone in your course, or college, that understands the materials.
- Get Plenty of Sleep
Before a big test, it is also critical to get plenty of sleep. Sleep is important because it is like hitting the reset button. The last thing you want to do is pull an all-nighter, because not only will you feel physically terrible the next day, but you may have trouble fitting in all the information you studied. Studies show that your short-term and long-term memory can be severely affected by lack of sleep.
- Study in Stretches
In order to avoid an all nighter, you’ll want to study in stretches. This means that you want to continually maintain your notes so that you can study efficiently and in segments – not all at once. The best way to maintain your notes is to rewrite them in a cleaner notebook that doesn’t have as much scratch in it. If you have audio notes, you want to transcribe them after you come home from class – you don’t want to wait until they are all built up.
- Read as Much as Possible
It is also critical that you read the material you need to read for the test. If you have a textbook, you want to keep brushing up on the material so that it doesn’t escape you. Moreover, you want to take notes from the actual textbook and include those in your lecture notes. This will only boost your material for studying and increase your chances of getting a higher score.
- Don’t Cram
On top of everything, you want to avoid cramming. Cramming, like pulling an all-nighter, can lead to poor test grades. You may not feel it right away, but you will. Plus, cramming will only encourage you to procrastinate, which is the last thing you want. In the end, if you study in normal increments and at a normal time – usually the evening – you will hold on to the information a lot easier.
