How to Decide What to Study When Preparing for a Test
When you sit down to study for a test, you probably lay out all your notes, lectures, quizzes and homework assignments in front of you, and in doing so realize that there’s a lot of material to cover. Faced with this, some students buckle down and power through all of it, making sure no detail goes unexamined. If you can study effectively this way, that’s great; you’ll probably show up for the exam knowledgeable and well prepared.
But most students don't learn well when they try to study every single detail. Sometimes they get tired and distracted and never make it through all the material. Sometimes they do make it through, but the sheer amount of information crammed into their heads leaks out before the test even starts. For these students, it is far more useful to take a targeted approach: separate what’s important to study from what’s not, and make a list of topics to prepare from.
Whether you’re in high school or graduate school, it’s always important to be able to recognize key material and focus most of your energy there. Here are a few tips for telling more important material from less important material.
1. Use the three-column approach
One of the best ways to sort your material is to begin by drawing three columns on a sheet of paper:
- In the first column, list all the exam topics that you know well.
- In the second column, list the topics you understood at one point but have since forgotten.
- In the third column, write down the topics you never learned or understood.
When you sit down to study, focus mainly on the items in the second column. Ignore the first one completely, and concentrate on the third only if you have enough preparation time.
2. Study to the lecture
At many levels of education, exams cover material from both classroom lectures and textbook readings. A teacher may say that the textbook content is just as important as what is taught in class, but in reality, the subjects covered in class are more likely to appear in depth on a test. After all, teachers talk most about the topics they are most comfortable with or interested in, and they will likely write their tests with a similar bias.
3. Spot trends in the class
Teachers can be just as predictable as the rest of us. They may keep coming back to certain subjects more than others, for example, and they may write tests that are similar year after year. Assessing the main themes of the course as a whole, and your teacher's focus in particular, can help you zero in on the information that is most important to study.
Hopefully these tips will help you separate crucial from non-crucial material when preparing for a test. In theory, it is always best to walk into an exam knowing every possible detail, but in reality that is often not possible. That’s why you need to be able to focus on the material that matters most. For a full plan, see how to prepare for an exam.