How long before exams should you start revising?

See the title.

I am afraid doing quite a few retakes in January. About 6 or 7 exams in all.
Would say about 2-3 months before or what

Advice?
Cheers

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1

+ polarity -

Have you considered doing a recap every week or two? Making sure you understand things as you learn them will make revision much easier.

Reply 2

Alex-92

BillySharp92

See the title.

I am afraid doing quite a few retakes in January. About 6 or 7 exams in all.
Would say about 2-3 months before or what

Advice?
Cheers

Just work hard throughout the year, and also ^^^. I started hardcore, structured revision about 3 weeks before my first exam, and I did fairly well. Each to their own.

Reply 3

Tabers

We've been told to start doing revision for resits now if we are really serious about getting our grades up. For a couple of weeks from now I'm thinking of doing an hour-2 hours each weekend and then increasing it the closer it gets. This in my case is one biology module though.

Reply 4

Nesselphie

Definitely go over your resit things for at least an hour per week. Maybe get together with some friends or peers who are also resitting, so you can work together ^_^

If you go over your notes when you get home from school/college, and do extra reading between lessons, that really helps, too :smile:

Don't leave it until the Christmas holidays! :oops:

(I've done that before and trust me - it was not a pretty sight!)

Make sure you plan when you are going to work; I've found that little and often works best for me through the year, then intensely revising for about a week before an exam :yep:

Reply 5

hazelsaurus

It's not about how long before, it's about how efficiently you revise/take it in.

Reply 6

.Scout.

I revised three days before each exam lol.

Reply 7

BillySharp92

OK thanks guys, I'll get cracking tomorrow!

Reply 8

EnVogue

When my books eventually arrive I'll start revising for my maths exams, as I need a bit more time for them. Economics I'll start revising in a month or two as well. Then from about April for my history and economics and February for my Maths.

Last year I didn't work particularly hard and did reasonably well, but the worrying and stress is what'll get you.

Reply 9

vivid_

BillySharp92

See the title.

I am afraid doing quite a few retakes in January. About 6 or 7 exams in all.
Would say about 2-3 months before or what

Advice?
Cheers

I did retakes last year in Jan. Here's what I'd do:

Do some casual reading now as its only September atm. At half term start doing proper revision. E.g Doing a topic/chapter and doing questions. So you have 8-10 weeks to prepare. Make sure your workload is spread evenly. DONT CRAM! :smile:

E.g I had 14 chapters to learn for biology in 9 weeks. I did each of them individually and did questions afterwards to test if I had learnt it properly. Just make sure you don't leave it to the Christmas holidays!

Oh and as my history teacher said (I was a few ums of an A and he knew I was doing other retakes as well) to give up my Christmas and really revise and work hard. You've got all summer to do that he said.

Reply 10

nikita_atikin

Start now I say but in reaaaaalllyyy tiny bite size chunks. That way you won't lump everything together at Xmas time and panic.

That's what I'm doing anyway. It's a bit geeky I know but I have non-resit exams too (which I'm sure you have to) and I don't want to be resitting those too later. :smile:

Reply 11

Justin1265

I started revising for the January exams 2 weeks ago. Actually, in the summer holidays in fact. So far I've learnt 3/6 chapters of Physics. I am also scoring 40% on C3 exam papers, although I'm hoping for 90%+ in January. I'm going over all the stuff I learn every 2 weeks so I don't forget it.

It's never too early to revise.

Reply 12

Spacecam

For the past five years - no earlier than two weeks before. However, last year it was one week. Very stressful.

This year I intend to revise as I go along, making revision notes each week, as opposed to waiting till the last minute. I say intend :ninja:

Reply 13

Ash_D

When I did A levels I'd start revising 4 weeks before the exam. I'd spend two weeks going over all the work and then another 2 weeks doing past papers to make sure I could answer everything in an exam context.

Reply 14

Justin1265

So if I start now, I'm pretty much going to get all A*s.

Nice.

Reply 15

Im_a_cyborg

I personally started as soon as the course started,whenever i was free i'd revise stuff I had done in class. I then turned it up a notch around a month before exams, that way revision really is revision. For a lot of people leaving it until just before the exams works but not for me.

Reply 16

Retrospect

A week before GCSEs. A month before AS. Two months before A2. A lot of this is actually 'learning' the actual course content as opposed to straight revision. :p:

Oh, and I should add that it depends on the subject. Psych A2 was a week for January and FOUR days for June. In comparison to History/Biology which required longer.