How to Study for your Resits

Nobody likes being told to do the same thing more than once, and that philosophy applies especially to resits; you have to put an immense amount of time and effort into them.

Studying for your regular exams is one thing, but studying for the same exam once again entails a different procedure in order to yield different results.

To weaponise the time you have at hand and study in the most efficient way possible, follow these tips:

Access to your scripts:

If you were fortunate enough to gain access to your scripts (a copy of the actual paper you sat), do not underestimate their benefits.

The scripts belonging to the exam you intend on resitting contain your entire future study schedule; the exam was completed under exam conditions, so you can evaluate whether you require work on your time management; it shows you what types of command words you struggled to understand and need to re-learn the definitions of; and most importantly, it allows you to see topics you were not were fully prepared to answer questions on, highlighting to you what you need to spend the majority of your study time on.

If you have them, sit down with, analyze, and truly try to extract as much information as you can from your scripts. They’re a huge help.

Start with past papers:

Irrespective of whether you are in possession of your scripts, do past papers once again in exam conditions before you begin studying.

Although it may seem counterintuitive to start with testing yourself even though you wouldn't be ready to sit an exam at that very moment, it is advantageous.

It will help get you back into the exam mindset if you were lacking the motivation and forgot what that felt like, and it will allow you to understand how many things you may have forgotten since you last sat the exam. This is in addition to what you may already know you need to work on from your scripts, as time has passed between then and now, creating the scope for further potential gaps in your knowledge.

Hence, starting with past papers will allow you to gain an insight into what you need to focus on the most whilst studying.

Retain content:

There is nearly a 100% guarantee on the fact that as soon as you walked out of the exam hall after sitting your paper, you forgot the majority of content you spent countless hours committing to memory.

To recover from this, you need to unearth all of the information that is still buried somewhere deep inside your head.

You will need to:

Go through the specification to see what you don’t know from what you are required to know.

Watch summary videos on Youtube of entire topics you need to refresh yourself on.

Create flashcards (no note-taking whatsoever) of any information you need more time to retain. This will allow you to keep testing yourself and keep content on its toes in your head.

Spend only about ⅓ (or less) of your time purely revising content. The application of this content into past papers is what will help you prepare most efficiently, thereby achieving your full potential.

End with past papers:

After going over all of the content and ensuring that you can recall it with complete accuracy and maximum efficiency, your brain is almost as sharp as it was when you were first studying for your exam.

To consolidate all of your revision and come at your upcoming exam with as much mastery as possible, you need to spend all of your remaining revision time doing past papers under exam conditions.

This will help address any potential problems you may be facing, including time management, responding to command words correctly, understanding what key terms mark schemes look for, and generally identifying weak areas in your knowledge to fill them in as consistently as achievable.

Past papers are your key to success, so make sure to spend every last moment that is not spent on content on past papers instead.

Overall, you need to take matters into your own hands and ensure that this is the last time you have to study for that particular paper.

This can be done via monopolizing on your scripts (if you have them) and using them to figure out what your weaker areas were, doing a few more papers under exam conditions to assess where you currently stand in terms of content retention, covering all of the forgotten content efficiently, and doing as many past papers as physically feasible for you to familiarize yourself with them.

Factors like having a well-organized schedule, receiving appropriate nutrition, getting enough sleep, and forcing yourself to study even if you may feel like there are other occupancies that seem more interesting at the moment, are a given.

Thus, we hope these tips were helpful and you use them to the best of your ability.

Good luck everyone!