Writing a set of summary sheets is honestly one of the best things you can be doing for yourself at this point in your study. It’s a great way to figure out where you’re at, where your focus should lie, and what you can probably skim over.
This technique is what I used in the week before Trials, but it’s just as applicable now.
Cram the shit out of the curriculum, every single day
I fully believe that cramming is the best form of study. If you cram every day for three weeks, you will know the curriculum back to front. If you cram for 8 hours straight, like I did, you can get 90% in that section, like I did. I learnt a quarter of the Chemistry curriculum in a day, and did not study AT ALL for the rest of the subject. I ranked second, missing out on the much-coveted first by two marks. Effective cramming is your best friend as Trials approach. Which means that coloured pens, paper, and some decent notes are also your best friends. This is the best way to create the summary sheets I’m talking about; pretend you’re working against a clock, and make sure to do the work as succinctly and efficiently as possible.
Even the absolute top students cram for exams. I’ve had to cram countless times, both in High School and at University. Cramming doesn’t necessarily mean you haven’t studied at all in the weeks/days preceding a test; it just means that you still have a lot of content to memorise, and you haven’t done it yet.
In reality, the notion of ‘cramming’ is really just trying to condense all of the most important information into an easy to access, readable form, whilst ignoring all of the red-herring you could easily get caught up on. It is getting as much information as possible into your brain, in as short a time as possible. Sounds pretty good, right? Reading over study notes isn’t cramming. Reading your textbook isn’t cramming, and neither is doing past papers. Cramming is writing succinct summary sheets, reading succinct notes, talking to yourself, using colours, finding online resources to help you cheat, spending a few hours smashing through the curriculum with a mate. Cramming is your best friend, when done correctly.
Here are my tips for the best way to cram. It can be a really effective study tool, and honestly there is no reason NOT to utilise these tips the night before an exam, or a week before the exam.
Summary Sheets: The Preparation
What you will need:
A set of notes, preferably ones that follow the dot points. Ideally, these should be your own notes, but if you haven’t made any check out some of the notes on Atar Notes HERE.
Lined paper
Easy to write with, colourful pens
Space
The key to a good cram regime is having something fairly concise to study from, in order to produce something EVEN MORE concise to aid in your final hours. These summary sheets will tell you where you’re at really quickly and easily!
This means having a set of notes, following the dot points, which you can read from. For subjects where classical ‘notes’ are more difficult (Eg. Maths), replace the notes with worked questions and answers that (hopefully) you have from your teachers, or work you’ve done in class.
In the next section, we will see what we need the papers and pens for (although I’m pretty sure it’s obvious) to create summary sheets. However, you need to come up with a colour system. Are you going to write in Red for super important things that you’ve never heard of? Are you going to use a different colour for each topic? Are you going to put dates in Orange, statistics in Blue and quotes in Green? Come up with a plan, and stick with it. Be smart, and allocate your colours to what your subject requires.
Finally, you are going to need a quite space. You don’t want your parents coming in and out making sure you’re okay, you don’t want your sibling bothering you about their homework. You need some space to concentrate, and maybe a coffee. Try not to listen to music, if you normal do this to study. If you find yourself falling asleep, though, pump out “Not Giving In” (Rudimental).
Summary Sheets: The Execution
The paper is in front of you. You’ve got a beast system for using colours when you write out your super succinct summary sheets. All of your pens are those fancy ballpoint ones, and you’ve got a decent set of notes in front of you. A hush falls over the crowd, and the cram session begins.
I recommend just reading through the notes on each dotpoint and writing out only information that is absolutely crucial. I’m talking about stats, facts, and things you’ve never even heard of. Stick to your colouring system. Use subheadings. These notes need to be absolutely beautiful.
Don’t put down information that you could, conceivably, make up in the exam. Things like advantages/disadvantages, things you’re fairly confident with but not 100% on; just leave them out. When you cram, you’re trying to get as much of a wide range of material into your head as physically possible. You don’t need everything to be super detailed, and you definitely shouldn’t be writing out sentences. Headings, and dot points, that’s it. If you can summarise the ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL information in a dot point into one sentence, do it. And do it with colour.
Here’s a bit of a pro tip: swear at yourself. When I write my summary sheets, I will literally right things like “Not that you’re ever going to remember this, but Einstein’s paper came out in 1905”. I swear at the curriculum, at myself, at the content. For me, for some reason, it genuinely helps: It may not for you, but this is just something I like to do!
Writing out the summary sheets is the best way to remember things. When cramming, some students tend to just read over past notes. THIS IS NOT VERY HELPFUL! Writing the summary sheets, identifying your weak points, using colours and other memorisation techniques is the best way to improve your mark in the upcoming assessment.
Summary Sheets: The Repetition
A lot of the time, you will only write out these summary sheets and leave it at that. You won’t have time to go over them, or anything else like that. However, if you’ve done it within a sufficiently small time frame, you may be able to do some further work.
Now that you have your summary sheets cheat sheet, throw away everything else. You haven’t memorised everything on it, obviously, and nor will you, but there’s no point extending yourself beyond that set of summary sheets. So, with that in mind, let’s go about utilising the set of summary sheets as efficiently as possible.
Read through it a few times, explaining concepts out loud. Whilst you SHOULD have very, very succinct dot points, often in unintelligible sentences, you should explain the concept in full out loud to PROVE that you know what’s going on. You could talk for a few minutes about each dot point, and then move onto the next.
If you find a bit that could be more succinct, make it more succinct. However, since you want the whole thing to be utterly beautiful, you’re going to need to rewrite the entire page. That’s totally fine, because it means you’re more likely to remember the content. Don’t just thoughtlessly spurt out the words: think about what you’re writing, and swear at yourself a little bit more for fun.
Perhaps, you want to look at some typical past questions and apply your sheet to them. I think that this is a good approach, although if it’s the night before I doubt you’ve gotten up to this stage. Don’t necessary write out answers; explain them, out loud, using your notes. If you want to add or subtract things from your set of notes, that’s totally fine. Just keep them beautiful!
This set of notes will honestly be so useful in the coming months. Whilst you only prepared them in a few hours, I promise that keeping them, making them perfect, and using them well will make a big difference in how much knowledge you retain.
There are so many more study tips you can, and should, be utilising as your HSC approaches. I can’t get them all down here, but we’ve written a whole bunch of articles that could be seriously useful, and only take a couple of minutes to read. If you have any questions, about any subjects, or about studying in general, head over to the Atar Notes forums and I’ll be there to answer you. The HSC is stressful, and having a community to help share that stress is seriously useful. Plus, I’m on holidays, and I get bored easily; why not spam me with difficult HSC questions?
Catch you on the forums.
