In this entry I will reveal my "secrets" for test preparation. I've spent these days studying really hard for my exams, but that's pretty much all I say. However, I'll try and explain a little today what exactly it is that I do when I "study". When I mention "studying" in the future, refer back to this post. ;-)

The way I study depends a lot on the type of class I'm studying for. If it's a computer science class, studying might be programming or reading through the book. It's hard to spend a lot of time doing problems for CS courses sometimes.

If it's economics, it pretty much means I'm reading through the chapters methodically, doing practice exams, memorizing the bold keywords, and digesting the summaries. When it comes to economics, I think I use rote learning techniques in the beginning, but I end up digesting and understanding it after a while...

Now, for math and science classes, the way I study is much more complicated.

First, I try to go through the homework at least once, checking my answers with the solutions if solutions are available. Then, I do some other problems in the book and check those with the solutions. When I feel like I've done enough preparation from the book, I do the sample exams if they're available.

After I've done the sample exams and looked through everything my professor has provided, I go onto the internet and look through the course websites for the same course at UCD and other universities. For math and science classes, the courses are usually the same at other colleges. Using those course websites, I usually find a lot of review sheets and practice exams that I can use to study for my own exam.

Doing the sample exams for other professors and other universities helps me prepare for tricky questions that might be on the test, and provides a more comprehensive understanding of the material, since the practice problems from any single professor are usually limited in scope.

Ok...

That's pretty much all I have to reveal right now. Feel free to use my techniques if you think they're useful, but don't use them if we're taking the same class. ;-)