The short answer
To study for exams, start from the syllabus and past papers, not your notes. List every examinable dot point, rate yourself on each, and spend your time on the weakest ones using closed-book practice questions marked against the official marking guidelines. Spread reviews over the weeks before the exam and mix topics in each session.
Why studying everything means studying nothing well
Most students study for exams by starting at page one of their notes and going until they run out of time. So the first topics get studied three times and the last ones never. And the exam doesn't care about page order.
The exam is written from the syllabus, and the people who write it publish their old papers and how they mark them. In NSW, NESA publishes past HSC papers with marking guidelines [1]. In Victoria, the VCAA publishes past VCE exams with examiners' reports [2]. That's the closest thing to the answer key you'll ever get, and most students barely use it.
Step 1: turn the syllabus into a checklist
- Download the syllabus or study design for each subject.
- Copy every examinable dot point into a list (a spreadsheet or a page per subject).
- Rate each one: red (can't explain it), amber (shaky), green (could answer an exam question on it now).
- Be honest. Rate it by trying to explain it with your notes closed, not by how familiar it looks.
Your reds and ambers are now your study plan. This one step usually cuts the work in half, because you stop re-studying what you already know.
Step 2: study with past papers, not just notes
Practice questions are recall in the exact format of the exam. A meta-analysis of the research found practice tests beat restudying and every other comparison condition studied [3], and in Roediger and Karpicke's experiments, testing beat re-reading by a wide margin once the final test was days away [6].
- Do questions closed-book first, then open your notes only for what you couldn't do.
- Mark your answers against the official marking guidelines or examiners' reports. They show you what earns marks, word for word.
- Keep an error log: the question, what you got wrong, and the fix. Re-test yourself on that log every week.
- Time yourself for at least some questions so the exam pace isn't a surprise.
Step 3: space it out and mix it up
Plan short, repeated reviews instead of one long session per topic. A review of 317 experiments found spaced study beats massed study, with the best gap growing the further away the test is [4].
And mix your topics. In one maths study, students who practised shuffled problem types scored roughly three times higher on a test a week later than students who practised one type at a time [5]. Exams mix topics, so your practice should too.
A countdown plan for the 8 weeks before exams
| Weeks out | Focus | What a study session looks like |
|---|---|---|
| 8 to 6 | Build the checklist, fix the reds | Blurt one red dot point, check it, then 3 past-paper questions on it |
| 5 to 3 | Mixed practice, ambers to greens | 10 to 15 mixed questions from several topics, marked against guidelines |
| 2 | Full papers under timed conditions | One full past paper per subject, then the error log |
| Final week | Error log and light recall only | Re-test your error log, short flashcard rounds, sleep properly |
| Night before | Rest | A 20-minute flick through your error log, then stop |
On the day
- Read the whole paper first and start with the question you're most confident on, if the exam allows it.
- Use the marks as a time guide: a 4-mark question deserves about twice the time of a 2-mark question.
- Answer the question that's asked. Marking guidelines reward the exact verb ("explain", "evaluate", "compare"), so underline it.
Mistakes that cost the most marks
- Saving past papers until the last week. They're your best study tool, so use them from the start.
- Doing papers but not marking them properly. The learning is in the marking and the error log.
- Only studying the topics you like. Your reds are where the marks are.
Sources
- [1]NSW Education Standards Authority. HSC exam papers and marking guidelines. educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/resources/hsc-exam-papers
- [2]Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. VCE past examinations and examination reports. www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/assessment/vce-assessment/past-examinations/Pages/index.aspx
- [3]Adesope, O. O., Trevisan, D. A., & Sundararajan, N. (2017). Rethinking the use of tests: A meta-analysis of practice testing. Review of Educational Research, 87(3), 659–701. doi.org/10.3102/0034654316689306
- [4]Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354
- [5]Rohrer, D., & Taylor, K. (2007). The shuffling of mathematics problems improves learning. Instructional Science, 35, 481–498. Scores as reported in Rohrer, D. (2009), Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 40(1), 4–17. doi.org/10.1007/s11251-007-9015-8
- [6]Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x