Study tips on how YOU are going to ACE your next test!

You should also not study very late the day before the test. Late night studies are going to make you very tired the next day and not have the right mindset to be ready to take a test. Instead, you can study briefly before you go to bed and then in the morning you should take another look at your notes before you head out the door for your test. 

Once you have figured out how you are going to space out the time now its time to see what you have to study. You are going to want to study anything that is necessary for your test. Learn it to the best of your ability and then use "the testing effect"

The testing effect is simply to test oneself. For example using flashcards or questioning yourself with questions you expect on the test. This is the best way to remember and comprehend what you are learning because you must retrieve the information to the answer from your memory. 

1. Mock tests and exams
2. Problems
3. Self-generated questions or writing prompts

The best kind of practice is called transfer-appropriate processing. In short TAP. The next idea will explain what that is. 

This basically means that the more your practice resembles the exam, the more your practice efforts will transfer into actual results. Which means whatever material that you use to study, the closer it is to the test the easier the test will be when done. 

A deep understanding of you material is required as memory alone will not help you in some cases.

Understanding material is > than memory

Do not fall in the trap of "the illusion of explanatory depth"

Below will explain this. 

This is when you this that your understanding of something is a lot deeper than it actually is. You need to know the difference between what factual knowledge you have in order to build of of it. There are ways to avoid this however, the best one is to us the Feynman technique. 

I will not expand on this except the fact that this is one of the best ways to understand material for any subject. Here is a link to the video that I recommend Feynman Technique - Thomas Frank. 

The solution to beat anxiety is to do a full stimulation of the test. For example, same seating posture, materials and, most importantly, the same time constraints.There’s three benefits to doing full simulations:

1. You increase your temporary anxiety while studying, which makes it easier to recall the information due to state-dependent memory effects .
2. By exposing yourself to the exam situation you’ll be less anxious when the eventual test comes.
3. You’ll actually know what your performance is likely to be on the test!