Okay, so I'm not taking any exams at the moment but I have a junior RAM audition on violin soon. I've done quite a few exams though and now that I'm in full blown practice mode, here's a couple of tips:
- Scales! Pick a few each day to start your practice. For grades 6/7/8 where there's normally lots of scales, I would choose a couple of keys a day and do all the scales/arpps/7ths etc from those keys. For the lower grades, do a few each time so that you end up doing all of them regularly. Then when it gets closer to the exam, write them all down and pick a few out of a hat or something - it gets you used to having scales chosen at random.
- Ask your school music department or your instrumental teacher to test you on aurals. I cannot stress this enough for grade 8, the aural is HARD. It took me two terms of weekly practice to get 17/18, plus I had the huge advantage of having perfect pitch. There's a great set of apps for ABRSM called Auralbook, with a different app for each grade. You can do practices for each different part of the aural which I found quite useful.
- Consider keeping a practice diary. I started one this month and it's helped me loads. I've gone from about 20-30 minutes on 3-5 days a week to an average of 41 minutes every day (except violin lesson days). It doesn't have to be much - mine normally looks something like: "11 mins A flat scales, 9 mins Bach Dm, 18 mins Bloch" or something small like that. It might not work for you. But I've found it really useful and I don't think I'm the only one who will.
Good luck to anyone doing exams this term, I hope you do well!