How to Create a Study Schedule to Prepare for Final Exams
Studying for exams at any point in the semester can be stressful, but studying for finals be extra stressful. Collecting all of the materials you need to create a schedule and assessing how much time you have to study before your finals start can help you create a study schedule.
Carefully considering the restrictions on your time and then sticking to your study schedule can help you create a useful schedule and be more productive when you study.
1. Assessing Your Study Needs
- Pick a calendar for keeping track of your schedule. Before you can actually create a study schedule for finals week, you need to decide what exactly you’ll use for scheduling. You might prefer paper calendars or planners, or you might want to use a digital app, such as the calendar on your phone or an actual study app.[1]
- Print out your exam schedule.Before you even begin crafting a schedule, make sure you have all of your exam dates in front of you. This will make creating your schedule a lot easier because you won’t have to stop and search for information or, even worse, have to start over because you forgot about an exam.
- Print out your school break schedule.
If you have breaks between when you start drawing up your study schedule and finals week, you can use them to devote more time to studying since you won’t have to attend class.
- Calculate how much time you have.
How much time you have to study for finals will depend on when in the semester you start drawing up your schedule. Once you’re ready to set your study schedule, calculate how many days you have between now and when your exams are. This will obviously be a different number for every exam.
- Prioritize your exams.
Once you know how much time you have to study for each exam, prioritize them. List your exams in order, starting with the one you have to take the soonest, and ending with your last exam. You might also want to consider prioritizing by how hard the exam is likely to be.
