Studying the night before an exam: limiting the damage

Can you really study for an exam in one night?

In part, and mostly for the next day. Cramming, meaning concentrating everything right before the exam, lets you recall part of the course on the day itself. The psychologist John Dunlosky, who reviewed study techniques, notes that almost all students do it. The problem comes afterwards: what is learned in one go is quickly forgotten, whereas the same hours spread over several days leave a longer-lasting memory.

Tonight, aim for the accessible points on the most likely concepts, and arrive rested. If the exam counts toward a final exam or the following year, you will have to go back over these chapters later anyway; what you do tonight is only a first layer.

What should you study first when you have little time?

Take ten minutes to sort before you start. List the chapters on the syllabus, then mark the ones your teacher worked on the most, the ones that come back in past papers or typical exercises, and the ones you do not know at all. Then cross two criteria: importance for the exam and your current level.

Avoid rereading the first chapter in full, you could spend the whole evening on it. For each chapter you keep, spot what you will be asked to produce: definitions, dates, formulas, problem-solving method, typical outline. That is what you will train to reproduce.

• Important and poorly known: to work on tonight, first.
• Important and roughly known: a few questions to check.
• Secondary and poorly known: only if there is time left.
• Secondary and well known: to leave aside.

How do you organize the evening before the exam?

Here is an example for an evening that starts around 6 p.m. The durations are suggestions, to shorten if you have less time or more chapters.

If your course is a PDF, text or photo depending on your plan, Fichea can turn it into a quiz with an explanation for each question, then let you go back over your mistakes one by one. A blank sheet and the course notes closed also do the job: what matters is to answer before looking.

• 6:00 p.m., 15 minutes: sort the chapters and get your material ready.
• 6:15 p.m., 45 minutes: first priority chapter. Skim the key points, close the notes, answer questions, correct.
• 7:00 p.m., 10 minutes: break, away from screens.
• 7:10 p.m., 45 minutes: second priority chapter, same method.
• 7:55 p.m., 30 minutes: dinner.
• 8:25 p.m., 45 minutes: third chapter, or an exercise in the exam format.
• 9:10 p.m., 30 minutes: go back over only the questions you missed during the evening.
• 9:40 p.m.: stop, get your things ready and go to bed early enough for a full night.

All-nighter or sleep: which one to choose?

Sleep. Inserm points out that new learning is followed, during the night after, by an increase in dendritic spines, the small outgrowths through which neurons connect. Part of the evening’s work is therefore consolidated while you sleep.

A study published in 2007 in Nature Neuroscience also shows that a single night without sleep reduces, the next day, the activity of the hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in memory, when learning new information, which is then less well remembered. If you stay up all night and study again in the morning, you are therefore learning in poor conditions. Between one more hour of studying at 2 a.m. and one hour of sleep, take the sleep.

Avoid stimulants late in the evening and keep your phone away from your bed. In the morning, settle for a light review: reread the list of your mistakes from the night before and redo two or three questions, without opening a new chapter.

What should you not do the night before an exam?

Some reflexes are reassuring at the time because they give the impression of making progress. Yet they take the time you need to test yourself and to sleep.

If stress keeps you from concentrating or sleeping before every exam, talk to your school’s nurse’s office, your university health service or your doctor. It is not a problem to settle alone the night before.

• Rereading the whole course from the first page to the last: you will have no time left to test yourself.
• Copying out neat study sheets: you spend the evening writing instead of looking for answers.
• Starting at 11 p.m. on a chapter you have never opened: only skim its headings and definitions if you still have energy.
• Comparing your progress with others’ on social media: stress goes up and you learn nothing.
• Taking medication or stimulants to last through the night without medical advice.

How do you avoid studying everything the night before next time?

As soon as the exam is over, put short sessions in your calendar for the next one: a review the day after each lesson, then another a few days later. The D-day method organizes this schedule. Twenty regular minutes will leave you far less work for the last evening.

Also keep the list of questions you missed tonight. Turned into flashcards and reviewed over the coming weeks, they will serve you for the final exam or the following year, instead of vanishing with the stress of the night before.

Frequently asked questions