It is the night before the final exam. Across university campuses everywhere, students are still awake — and most of them have been building towards this moment for months. But how long is too long to prepare? And does more revision always mean better results? We spoke to three students about the weeks before their exams.
Mei, a second-year chemistry student, had been revising for twelve weeks by the time exam morning arrived. She had been sleeping only five hours a night for the past month, convinced that more waking hours meant more time to study. She had been eating lunch at her desk and skipping evenings out with friends. She had been listening to the same revision playlist for so long that she could hear it in her dreams. Her anxiety had been building steadily as the exam approached.
Liam, studying history, had been keeping up well all semester. However, he had been struggling with one particular topic — the economic causes of the First World War — for three weeks. He had been meeting his study group every Wednesday to work through it together. Despite their efforts, by the exam day he had been worrying about that one topic every single night. The rest of his revision felt solid, but that gap had been growing in his mind.
Karim, an engineering student, had been preparing since October — six months before the exam. By the week of the exam, he had been practising past papers for four months. He woke on exam morning feeling calm. He was, by far, the most relaxed of the three.
So what does the research say? Psychologists who study exam performance note that the relationship between revision hours and exam results is not always straightforward. Several studies suggest that students who had been overworking in the final weeks frequently performed no better — and sometimes worse — than those who had managed their time carefully. As one professor put it: "The problem isn't how long students have been studying. It's what they have been doing while studying."