1. Find Your Style

It’s easy to overload the brain, especially when trying to force in tons of information from the book and class. One of the top secrets for acing exams it to stop studying for 9 hours a day for one class, and find your most productive and time efficient style of studying. If you learn best with pictures, start drawing those diagrams. If you’re an auditory learner, record your lectures and listen to them again. Your style of studying will help you learn the information the best way you can, and it could cut loads of time studying.

2. Go over Your Notes after Class

Have you ever sat in a class for an hour or so, and the next day completely forgot everything you learned the day before? I know I have! If you take about 45 minutes to review and/or rewrite your notes from your class immediately after, you’ll retain a lot of the information you just learned. Try it! You’ll remember so much more than you have before.

3. Be a Teacher

Another secret for acing exams is to be a teacher when you’re studying. I don’t mean that you have to get up and teach a class for hundreds of students, there’s just one student. You! If you have access to a whiteboard or a poster board, get up and begin teaching to an empty room. Believe it or not, when you have to teach information, you remember a lot more! When you’re in the position of the teacher, there’s a new confidence and responsibility about you, and acing your exams become a lot easier.

4. Read the Book

If there’s a book for the class, read it. It may not seem like a secret, but many students don’t read the required text, and think they can skim through and get enough information for the exam. While that may be true for some classes, the more difficult the class the harder it is to skim the book. Besides, it probably takes more time to skim and find the main point, than it does to just read the chapter.

5. Visit the Professor

If you want to ace your next exam with flying colors, a great tip is to visit your professor’s office hours. Professors are people too, and they like to have visitors just as much as you do! Whether it’s just to say hi, or get clarification, visit your professor frequently. I’m not saying they will just hand you an ‘A’ if you stop by all the time, but it definitely helps! They’re the ones writing the exams! If you ask them to explain some of the important concepts talked about in class, 9 times out of 10, their explanation will include information that’ll be on the next exam. Trust me! I’ve experienced this on more than one occasion.

6. Keep Your Notes near You

If you find that you never have time to sit down and study for hours, try keeping your notes near you for the 20 minutes of spare time you have between events in your busy schedule. You don’t have to study for a whole hour to get something from your studying. 20 minutes is enough time to remember a few points from your notes. Thinking about a few points at a time is sometimes better than cramming through chapters at once.

7. Focus the First 5 Minutes

If you’re like me, you sit down to study, check Facebook, check Twitter, get out highlighters, check Facebook, check All Women Stalk, open your book, text, check email, check Facebook one last time, and then start studying. By the time all this is done, you’re an hour in and haven’t studied a lick. The last secret for acing your exams is to start focusing the first 5 minutes after you sit down. I know it’s hard, but when you start as soon as you sit, it’s easy to get into a groove and be a lot more productive. This will cut hours of your time spent in the library procrastinating and half-studying. Start immediately, and you’ll be finished and ready to ace that exam in no time.

Exams are stressful, that’s why it’s important to be productive with your learning, so your next exam can be a breeze. Do you agree with any of these tips? Which ones do you find most helpful?