5 Most ImportanceTips for Final Exam (NEW 2018)

1. Get a good night’s sleep before your final exams.

There will probably come a point the night before your final exams when it suddenly dawns on you: if you just put on another pot of coffee or crack open a red bull, you could stay up a few hours longer, cram in some more life-saving last-minute revision, and worry about sleep when it’s all over. What could go wrong? DON’T LISTEN TO THE VOICES. Any extra knowledge you gain from a few frantic hours of cramming the night before will be negated by the fact that sleep deprivation has reduced your mental capacity to that of a lobotomized gnat. Knowing stuff is important, but not as important as your ability to spell your own name or count to two.

2. Take five minutes to read through the questions properly and plan your answers.

Remember the story about the race between the tortoise and the hare? No? Well, google it. Basically, the tortoise wins. The point is, chances are the examiner is going to actually read your answer rather than just give you a gold star for filling up loads of paper with some words that you thought of really quickly. Likewise, there aren’t many things worse than getting to the end of an ingenious answer only to realise you’ve actually completely misunderstood the question. Five or ten minutes making a few bullet points and gathering your thoughts could be the most useful time you spend. (I realize this probably means nothing if you’re doing maths or science, but I studied English so I can’t help you there)

3. Write clearly and get to the point.

Long words aren’t going to confuse an examiner into thinking you’re a genius. In fact, they’ll probably make them think you don’t really know what you’re talking about.  Also, don’t bore them to death with long sentences – if you’re thinking of using a colon, chances are you should use a full stop instead. 

4. Don’t just learn an answer off by heart and reproduce it regardless of the question.

Wouldn’t it be great if that worked? It doesn’t. You have to actually answer the question.

5. Think positively and you’ll probably be fine.

Don’t beat yourself up about the fact that you haven’t learnt everything, no one really does. And remember that no matter how earth-shatteringly important it seems at the time, whatever happens, life will go on and everything will probably be fine. After all, you could always actually join the circus! Seriously. And besides, if you go into your final exams in the right frame of mind you might surprise yourself by thinking of a load of things to say that never occurred to you before. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve learned, if you work yourself up into a nervous wreck you probably won’t do yourself justice.