How do you get ready for an examination in two months?

Answer 1

Preparing for an exam can be stressful and time-consuming, but it doesn't have to be! By doing a couple simple things ahead of time, you can ensure that you are confident and ready for anything the test throws at you.

The very first thing to address is when to begin. You must start the process with at least a full night's sleep between you and the exam. Your brain needs time to subconsciously digest everything you've put into it, so you cannot try to cram it all in an hour or two before the exam. The best time to start the process is between the morning and early afternoon of the day before your exam, a good 24-36 hours prior to the start of the test.

Now read through the entirety of your notes that will be on the exam. If it's two pages or twenty pages, this is important. It will refresh you on the subject matter and help you remember what you learned. It will also help to make you aware of all the little bits of information and where they are located within your notes so that you know where to find them when you begin to organize the information.

Once you have a sense of where everything fits together, you are going to want to start thinking about how you can group all the information into relevant sections. You will also want to think about how you want to group them, be it based on a specific theme, chronology or by concept.

When you have identified the major themes, now is the time that you can use Wikipedia or other online sources to fill in the gaps of information that either you missed or which wasn't explained clearly. You can now use the theme that you discovered to guide your research and help you determine what information is relevant to the test.

By now you should have all the information that you will need to study written out and divided by topic onto separate pieces of paper. This is the point at which you can begin creating a narrative from the information and indexing it in a way that it can be easily remembered on the day of the exam.

The method if indexing information can be thought of like creating an information tree. Write the major themes of the exam you came up with onto separate piece of paper. Those are the first branches of the tree. Underneath the themes (which you just determined) are sub-themes, which are the more refined groupings of information within each theme. Below the sub-themes write the topics.

As you start memorizing, concentrate on one major theme at a time until you know it well. Once you have the theme and all the information below it pretty well memorized, you can move on to the next one until you have committed to memory everything you need to know for the exam.

For the first major theme, start at the top and just read through the tree. After you have refreshed yourself with a general understanding of the information, focus on learning "phrases" for each topic that will help you recall what that information was about.

After you feel confident that you know every theme, put down your studying and take a break from the subject. The idea is not to try to cram everything at once into your short-term memory. You want to give your brain time to subconsciously internalize all the information you shoveled at it. For this reason it's important to start the process at least the day before the exam.

On the day of the exam, set your alarm at least two hours before the test. An hour and a half before the exam, start running through all the themes and sub-topics in your head. Like always, check your notes if you get stuck. This is when it's time to cram-try as hard as you can to commit all the tiny details to short-term memory. You'll want to try to memorize everything you've prepared, but 15 minutes before the exam, stop! In the last few minutes you should not be thinking about the exam at all. Relax and take a few deep breaths, if you follow the steps above everything should be fine!

If you're taking a standardized test, you need months, not weeks or days to prepare for a test like this. Now some people will try to prepare for a test like this by cramming just a few minutes ahead of time, but a good test score is not in their future! In your case, you've given yourself two months, which is a decent amount of time to prepare for an exam like the one you're taking. Here's the study schedule if you need to prepare for an exam that is two months away.

Month 1

Week 1

• Make sure you've registered for your exam!
• Buy a test prep book
• Review the test basics: what's on the test, length, price, test dates, registration facts, testing strategies, etc.
• Get a baseline score. Take one of the full-length practice tests inside the book to see what score you'd get if you took the test today.
• Map out your time with a time management chart to see where test prep can fit in. Rearrange your schedule if necessary to accommodate test prep.
• Make or buy vocabulary or Greek/Latin root flashcards for vocabulary tested on the exam. You'll need 35 per week.
• Review your test prep options if you think that studying on your own will not be ideal!
• Choose and purchase a test prep option (tutoring, books, online courses, classes, etc.)
• If you are studying on your own, move this schedule up a week and start going into week 2's material.

Week 2

• Every day, go through five flashcards and learn those words/roots throughout the day. At the end of the day, put those cards in a separate pile for review the end of the week.
• Begin coursework with your weakest subject (#1) as demonstrated by the baseline score.
• Learn the components of #1 fully: types of questions asked, amount of time needed, skills required, methods of solving types of questions, knowledge tested. Acquire the knowledge necessary for this section by searching on the internet, going through old textbooks, reading articles, etc.
• Answer #1 practice questions, reviewing answers after each one. Determine where you're making mistakes and correct your methods. Keep learning content of this section.
• Take a practice test on #1 to determine level of improvement from baseline score.
• Fine tune #1 by going over questions missed to determine what level of knowledge you're missing. Reread information until you know it!
• Quiz yourself (or have someone quiz you) on the 35 flashcards you learned this week

Week 3

• Review 5 flashcards every day.
• Move on to next weakest subject (#2). Learn the components of #2 fully: types of questions asked, amount of time needed, skills required, methods of solving types of questions, etc.
• Answer #2 practice questions, reviewing answers after each one. Determine where you're making mistakes and correct your methods.
• Take a practice test on #2 to determine level of improvement from baseline
• Fine tune #2 by going over questions missed to determine what level of knowledge you're missing. Review that material.
• Quiz yourself (or have someone quiz you) on the 35 flashcards you learned this week

Week 4

• Review 5 flashcards every day.
• Move on to strongest subject/s (#3). Learn the components of #3 fully (and 4 and 5 if you have more than three sections on the test) (types of questions asked, amount of time needed, skills required, methods of solving types of questions, etc.)
• Answer practice questions on #3 (4 and 5).
• Take a practice test on #3 (4 and 5) to determine level of improvement from baseline
• Fine tune #3 (4 and 5) by going over questions missed to determine what level of knowledge you're missing. Review that material.
• Quiz yourself (or have someone quiz you) on the 35 flashcards you learned this week

Month 2Week 1

• Review 5 flashcards every day.
• Take a full-length practice test, simulating the testing environment as much as possible with time constraints, desk, limited breaks, etc.
• Grade your practice test and cross-check every wrong answer with the explanation for your wrong answer. Determine what you've missed and what you need to do to improve.
• Quiz yourself (or have someone quiz you) on the 35 flashcards you learned this week

Week 2

• Review 5 flashcards every day.
• Take another full-length practice test, simulating the testing environment again. Again, go through every missed problem, looking for weaknesses.
• Quiz yourself (or have someone quiz you) on the 35 flashcards you learned this week

Week 3

• Review 5 flashcards every day.
• Go back through weakest section (#1) and work through the problems again, memorizing testing strategies, reviewing practice problems, and whittling down the time it takes you to work through the questions.
• Quiz yourself (or have someone quiz you) on the 35 flashcards you learned this week

Week 4

• Review all of your flashcards, and have someone quiz you over every one of them.
• Eat brain food.
• Get plenty of sleep
• Review test tips to make your test-taking more efficient.
• Plan some fun evenings to help you relax
• Two days before the test, run through your flashcards one more time, read testing strategies for the exam, and review the basic principles of each section.
• Pack your testing supplies the night before: an approved calculator if you're allowed to have one, sharpened #2 pencils with a soft eraser, registration ticket, photo ID, watch, snacks or drinks for breaks.
• Relax. You did it! You studied successfully for your test, and you're ready. So take a deep breath, okay?

Before the 2 days to the exam you must have read and ready for the exam, but the 2nd day before the exam you just need to settle down the brain by having some rest and play but a day bvefore the exam you must revice all things read.