An Ultimate Guide to Ace Your Exams

Several students find the process of studying for exams to be extremely difficult and confusing. Due to this, some people approach it incorrectly, while others give up.

Applying the material in the context of that exam and having a general comprehension of it are both requirements for passing exams. Notes taking app like LectureNotes comes to aid students with online study.

The two main issues are knowing how and where to study and needing help to motivate oneself to learn. Understanding involves more than merely knowing the details of the subject at hand. It’s being able to use the information in practice.

Your studies will be more efficient, effective, and satisfying if you combine the two most efficient learning strategies: active recall plus spaced repetition. Using good study notes will help you ace your examinations.

Making Notes Effectively

Summarize the information briefly and in your own words, not the teachers or lecturers. Understanding the content rather than simply recording every word is the key objective.

Pay particular attention to the lecture’s summary and introduction since they will provide you with some great ideas on how to taking notes and organize your notes, as well as the main themes of the lecture.

By using active recall plus spaced repetition, you could later on in your revision process identify the main points and associate crucial questions. Even though it may seem paradoxical, taking notes in the classroom should begin before it even begins.

Just taking note of the chapter titles counts as a significant amount of pre-reading. It should be fine which method you use, but reading the lesson beforehand to have a sense of what will be converted is quite beneficial.

If you have time, you can also review your notes from relevant lectures OR, when there is a reading list for the lecture, attempt to read a few sources to brush up on your knowledge before the class meets. Both methods should make you more organized and awake when the lecture or class begins.

Try to keep your written notes by hand as much as you can. According to research, taking notes by hand, instead of typing them out on a laptop, encourages us to think more carefully. The most important thing to emphasize is to refrain from copying what the professor says verbatim if you must use your laptop for whatever reason. Quality above quantity, as the proverbial saying clearly states!

Additional efficient Note-Taking Methods

Prepare main bullet points for the lecture’s main topics, and then list sub-points that pertain to each primary topic area beneath them. It is known as the outline approach or linear note-taking. Online notes from LectureNotes are available at reasonable prices.

Each time, note the main ideas and questions that emerge from the subject that you may use to evaluate your understanding via active recall. Whenever you review your notes for editing in the future, the queries you create now will save you time.

Cornell Note-Taking System

The foundation of this technique is the importance of posing your questions. The Cornell University system for collecting and reviewing notes was developed in the 1950s.

Divide a sheet of paper into Cues, Main Space, and Summary. The primary space should contain the lecture notes, and the small margin on the left should contain any questions, key phrases, or annotations that may help with review and exam preparation. The summary would be in the final section in the shortest amount of words possible.

Mind-Maps

The mind-mapping style makes it simple to filter through various details and discover connections between them. Even new connections between seemingly unrelated concepts and pieces of knowledge can be found with its assistance.

You must establish the strongest foundations for success to perform well on an exam. Because mind mapping helps simplify and distill complex data into a graphical representation that our brains find a lot easier to compute, these correlations are simpler to spot. Improve your examination performance in the months and weeks before the test by doing the following.

Revision, learning new information, then revision again

Despite how tiresome it may seem, revision is essential to examination success. Even if you believe you are an expert in a subject, you may indeed increase your odds of passing an exam by utilizing your “revision” time to learn new, relevant material. By including additional information and insights that some other students in your class might not have explored, you will be able to wow the examiner.

Review the syllabus and marking system

By carefully reading the mark schemes for each of your subjects, plus taking note of the things given extra credit, you can identify precisely what the examiners are searching for.

Practice documents

Grab some practice papers, sit the exams on them, and then turn them in to the teacher for marking. Your school will likely hold some practice exams, but it always helps to get more practice. It will enable you to start predicting the types of questions you could anticipate in the actual exam, as well as help you get used to the format and scheduling of the exams.

Last-minute revision

Before the exam, quickly review the contents on your subject crib sheets to ensure that you are prepared and in the right state of mind to take on this subject.

Conclusion

Go over your notes once again. Then, quickly review your flashcards, and your written exam questions, and compile your mind maps. Make a mind map of the entire exam subject if you need one last review. Toppers Notes are available in PDF format at LectureNotes for your exam prep and revision to ace your exams.