Preparing for the exams

Exams can be scary for many people. Even for the best prepared! While we can’t take the exam for you, we can give you some tips on how to prepare, as well as what you can do in the room to maximise your exam time.

• Try to get a good sleep the night before. There’s no use staying up late studying – sleep will be more beneficial than another practice exam at this late stage. However, you’ll probably be nervous, so try not to stress if you can’t sleep – you’re still resting your body and mind if you’re lying down in bed. Having a bath, drinking a cup of tea (without caffeine!), or doing some meditation are also good ways to relax the night before.

• Don’t skip breakfast. Make sure you’ve eaten a healthy and substantial meal before the exam so your brain has enough energy. Stay hydrated, but be careful not to drink so much water that you need to take a toilet break!

• Don’t talk about the exam before the exam. I find that it’s best not to hang out with friends before the exam. However, if you think being around people is what you need, then talk about something other than how much you’ve studied and what you think will be on the exam.

• Use your reading time wisely. Decide before the exam what you’ll read during reading time. Will you quickly glance at the whole exam? Or will you focus on one question and try to work out an answer? What is essential is that you use this time to plan in your head what you are going to do.

• Decide your exam approach in advance. You know what the structure of the exam is going to be, so decide in advance in which order you’ll do the sections. Start with your strongest section/s first. However, be sure to plan your time correctly so as to not rush at the end.

• Stick to a time limit. Further to the above, set time limits for each section, and don’t go over them. It’s better that you finish all sections of an exam and don’t have time to read over them than miss out on writing the last paragraph of an essay, for example.

• If you’re stuck on a question, move on. If there’s a single question you can’t work out, don’t stay on it for too long. It’s quite likely your brain just froze for a second, and that when you come back to it, it’ll be more obvious.

• Don’t leave early. There’s always something more you can have a go at. If nothing else, review your work and read your responses aloud in your head. I’ve seen far too many people leave exams early and lament their responses once they get to re-read what they have submitted. Remember, VCE exams are not intended to be finished early so make use of the time allotted.

• Decide what you’re going to do afterwards. Most people find it extremely unhelpful and distressing to talk about the exam after it’s over. There is nothing you can do to change it now, so don’t talk about it. You could do something fun such as relaxing with your friends, or you might want to go home and chill out before studying for your next exam.

• If something unexpected happens on exam day, find out if you can apply for special consideration. If you were sick or think your circumstances affected your ability to sit the exam on the day, find out more here.

The best way to prepare for your exams

Authors: Maria & Chris

There unfortunately is no quick fix when it comes to acing your end of year exams. The simple fact is that the best way to prepare is to do lots of practice and, just as importantly, to take your practice exams seriously.

If you’re sitting practice exams at school, do not waste the opportunity to test your skills in an environment similar to what you will experience on the day. After all, you’ll be sitting your real exams at school, so try to make it a practice run for the real thing. Prepare for them as well as you can within the time remaining. Rehearsing your exam day a number of times at school is a good way to control your nerves on the big day (although a little bit of stress can give you adrenaline!) And even though it is just practice, don’t leave early – you can never read over your work too many times, and there’s always something else you can have a go at!

But to set yourself up for success you really should also be doing practice exams at home. Responding to a wide variety of questions is a great way to be prepared for whatever the exam may throw at you. Past exams are available on the VCAA website. You should also be able to access some different exams from your teacher.

When you sit practice exams at home, it’s important to practice them within the same conditions you will be under, including sticking to the time limit. It’s no use being able to answer all the questions on the exam in seven hours – you need to give it the best shot you can under a time constraint. Try not to become disheartened if it feels like you’ll never do everything under the time limit – you’ll get quicker and be able to include more detail with more practice.

Furthermore, try to complete your exam without the aid of study notes and textbooks. You won't have access to them on the day, so best you learn to wean yourself off them now. If you have done the preparation beforehand then this should be easy. If not, then you know you have a bit more work to do. The good news is that you still have time to prepare.

After you do a practice exam, it’s really important to go through it afterwards and see which bits you got wrong and which bits you can improve on. If you’re doing a VCAA exam, you absolutely should read the exam reports on the website – they not only have answers to the exam, but specific advice about what the examiners are looking for, and what a lot of students missed or consistently get wrong.

Practice makes perfect when it comes to acing your exams. By preparing to perform under exam conditions, both mentally and physically, you have the best chance to succeed on one of the biggest days of your life (no pressure of course!)

Overcoming Frustration

When you’re studying hard for a long period of time, you might start to feel burnt out and frustrated, and your workload might feel completely insurmountable.

Sometimes we may lament that “There is so much to do that I’ll never get it all done – I may as well do nothing”. This is understandable, but unhelpful in the long term. Instead, follow some of these tips so that you can find the drive to go on and overcome the frustration of feeling like you’re stuck in a rut.

• Set achievable goals. If you’re writing a list or thinking about what you want to achieve in a day, don’t expect too much from yourself. This isn’t an excuse to do one small task and call it a day, but you do need to set goals that you can reasonably achieve. Achieving every task you set yourself to do in a day gives you a great feeling of accomplishment. Setting achievable goals on a consistent basis will also prevent you from getting burnt out.

• Break work down into small chunks. If you know that you’re super behind in chemistry, try not to think about the enormous amount of work you need to do to catch up. Instead, you can break it into smaller sections and focus on completing one section at a time.

• Study in short blocks. Know the amount of time you can reasonably concentrate without a break – this might be one hour, for example. There’s no way you can concentrate for five hours straight. Schedule breaks throughout a study session, and don’t make your breaks longer than the scheduled time.

• Save your easiest tasks for the end of the day. When you’re tired after an hour or two of really good study, it can be tempting to completely switch off. But at the end of the day you could also quickly do a small task that isn’t too much of a mental strain. This could be some kind of repetitive task like revising vocabulary for your LOTE subject. The flipside to this is making sure you do your trickiest work at the beginning, when your mind is fresh.

• Make your study space a study sanctuary. I find that when I’m particularly unmotivated, it helps to make my study space as nice as possible. This makes it feel like somewhere I want to spend time. Light a scented candle. Put some flowers in a vase or move a houseplant into your space. Play some instrumental background music, if this isn’t too distracting for you. Make a special flavour of tea in your best cup.

• Look after yourself. Try to make your breaks positive. For a short break, make a fun, healthy snack, like a fruit and veggie smoothie. For a longer break, go for a walk, run or swim. If you’re studying in front of a screen, try not to take breaks in front of a screen as well.

• Remember that things will be better tomorrow. If you’re feeling frustrated or sad about your studies, remember that things will be better after a good night’s sleep. If you’re really not getting anything done, try to go to bed early.

Top tips to mix up your study session

Author: LWD Team

Feel like you are in a bit of a rut? Are things not sinking in? Do those words on the page look like a worm pizza gone wrong? Give these three tips a go to help beat the study brain drain.

1. Flash cards. I find that flash cards are a great way to study. They work best for content-heavy subjects where you need to remember facts, like history or biology. But you can also use them to help remember quotes or formulae. The process of making them is a great way to revise content – writing things down helps you remember them more easily.

Using small cards instead of writing notes onto A4 pieces of paper is a good way to split the information into bite-size chunks. You'll remember information more easily if you single it out.

Double-sided flash cards can be used on your own or with someone else. Ask you family to get involved in your study if they have time. Teaching content to someone else is one of the best ways to learn or revise it. Involving your family can also demonstrate to them that your study is important and confirm their place as part of your support team.

2. Sticky notes. You can also make single-sided flash cards like small posters to stick up in your study space. Short and sharp facts are important here. This can be very useful for maths formulae or reminders of things you have to do.

You can put them anywhere: around your desk, inside your books, on your windows, on the fridge... You could even stick them to the outside of the shower – just remember not to stand there for too long and waste all the water!

Using multicolour sticky notes is a great way to add a splash of colour and fun to your study. There are studies that suggest our brains retain more information when it is presented to us in colour. Read more here. 

But before you go sticky mad, make sure you have somewhere at home where there are no study notes. It's important that you have a place where your mind can take a break.

3. Don't waste time practicing things you already know. When you're studying, it can be tempting to go over the same thing multiple times. You can convince yourself that it's really important to practice the same thing over and over. And it feels good to know that you're really on top of a particular part of the course. But you are actually doubling your workload by wasting precious time on something you already know.

I know that there are things you're not so good at or just don't get. So take a deep breath, get some sticky notes, choose one of the tougher topics and launch into it.

Read the chapter in the textbook. Do the textbook questions. Do a related exam question. Ask your teacher or tutor for help. Practice something you know you're not good at and you will ensure you study time is not wasted. And you'll definitely get a rush afterwards of learning something new.

Top 4 tips for approaching practice exams

Author: Chris Ebbs

Practice exams are, in my opinion, the best way to study for an exam. It’s (obviously) really important to know and understand all the content of the course, but understanding the ways in which the questions will be asked is also vital. You can revise the content as much as you want, but you need to make sure you can apply your knowledge. Here are my top tips for doing practice exams.

1.     Do as many as you can get your hands on. The VCAA ones are all on the website (along with exam reports that explain the answers). Your teacher will also have some non-VCAA exams, so ask for those. Non-VCAA exams might not be the most accurate representation of what’s going to be on the exam, but they will apply knowledge in slightly different ways and help you expand your understanding of the content.

2.     Actually go through the answers. I’ve encountered so many people who ‘do’ practice exams, but never go through the answers. Practice exams are a great learning tool, so make sure you look up what you got wrong and why you got it wrong. Find the content in your textbook and practice the skill.

3.     Do exams under timed conditions. There’s no use in understanding the content 100% back to front if you can’t answer the questions in the allotted time.

4.     It’s never too early to do a practice exam. In year 12 I had a teacher who asked us to track the different practice exams we did. I kept a record of the date I did an exam and the percentage I got. Over time I actually saw improvement! If you think this might help you or inspire you to keep going, give it a shot.