Bar exams, accounting certifications, IT certifications, TOEIC, the CFA. The most common failure in exam prep is this: "I got through the whole textbook, but on exam day I had forgotten the early chapters." The problem was not too little studying. You never scheduled the reviews.
This article uses a fixed-date exam as the example and walks through how to build a review schedule concretely. The reasoning behind it is covered in Planning reviews backward from your exam date, so here we focus on "what to do on which day."
The principle: set review intervals by the days remaining
The most useful research on review timing is the large-scale 2008 experiment by Cepeda and colleagues. Their conclusion was that the optimal review interval scales with the time remaining until the final test. As a rule of thumb, reviewing at intervals of roughly 10 to 20% of the remaining period gives the most stable results.
- 3 months (about 90 days) to the exam: review intervals cap out at about 1 to 2 weeks
- 1 month to the exam: a few days to a week
- 1 week to the exam: daily or every other day
In other words, the closer the exam, the tighter the review intervals for the same material. Put the other way around: do not leave something you learned 3 months before the exam untouched for a month.
The 3-month picture: split the period into three phases
With 3 months until the exam, divide the time into three phases. The proportions are approximate.
- Learning phase (first 60%, about 8 weeks): work through the textbook while reviewing what you have covered in parallel
- Cycling phase (next 30%, about 3 weeks): stop learning new material and cycle through the problem book across all topics
- Final phase (last 10%, about 1 week): full-length practice tests and a last check of weak spots
Decide in advance the day you will stop learning new material.
Where most people fall apart is stretching the learning phase to the very end. Driven by the worry that "I haven't finished everything," they keep pushing into new chapters right up to the exam, the reviews never get done, and both the early and late material end up half-learned. Writing the end of the learning phase on your calendar first, and committing to stop new material there, is the single most effective move in building a schedule.
Learning phase: schedule reviews from the day you learn
Each day in the learning phase has two parts: new material and reviews of past material. When you learn a new section, set its review days from that date.
- 1st review: the next day
- 2nd: 3 days later
- 3rd: 1 week later
- 4th: 2 weeks later
- 5th: 1 month later
These intervals are simply the principle from the spaced repetition article, "recall at expanding intervals just as you start to forget," turned into days. The numbers do not need to be exact. Being a day off changes nothing, so what matters is actually doing the review when its day comes.
A review means recalling, not rereading. Close the textbook and see whether you can state the key points of the chapter, or rework the problems for that section. Go back to the textbook only for what you could not recall, and a review takes 10 to 20 minutes.
Fix your daily amount of new material first
There is a trap here. From the middle of the learning phase onward, daily reviews start crowding out new learning. What you learn today comes back as reviews tomorrow, in 3 days, in a week, and in 2 weeks. If you push far ahead on a motivated day, those reviews pile up a few days later.
The fix is to keep the daily amount of new material constant. Fix it at "one chapter a day" or "10 pages a day" and the review load settles at a steady level as well (the mechanism is explained in Managing reviews when you have hundreds of items).
Cycling phase: work the problem book using only the questions you missed
Once you stop new material, cycle through the problem book across all topics. The key is to not treat every question equally.
- On the first pass, do every question and mark the ones you got wrong, plus the ones you got right without being sure why
- On the second pass, do only the marked questions. Unmark the ones you now get right
- Repeat on later passes. Only the still-marked questions remain, so each pass gets faster
This is exactly the "practice testing" described in Memory techniques that are actually proven to work. Solving problems and recalling beats rereading for retention. Redoing questions you already got right feels productive, but the return on time is small.
Widen the cycling intervals gradually, just as in the learning phase: missed questions the next day to 3 days later, questions you got right twice in a row 1 to 2 weeks later.
Final phase: the last week
From one week out, the rule is to stop trying to learn anything new. There are two things to do.
- Take timed, full-length practice tests. Knowledge alone does not score if you are not used to the time pressure and question format. Doing them at the same time of day as the real exam also sets your rhythm for the day
- Go over the still-marked questions and your own summary notes. Keep the day before light, and walk into the exam with what you just reviewed fresh in mind
As noted in Planning reviews backward from your exam date, a final review right before the exam is effective as a finishing touch when spaced reviews have built the foundation. Cramming with no foundation is the problem; a last look-through is the right strategy.
If you only have 1 month
With less time, the structure stays the same. Shrink the proportions.
- Learning phase: about 2.5 weeks. Cut the review intervals at "next day, 3 days, 1 week"
- Cycling phase: about 1 week. Two passes through the problem book
- Final phase: 3 days. One practice test and a look at the marked questions
If covering everything in a month is not realistic, narrow the scope. Cycling reviews on the most frequently tested areas scores higher than a single pass through everything that you then forget.
When you have several subjects
With several subjects, review days collide and you get days where "today's reviews" add up to 3 hours. Two ways to prevent that:
- Stagger the start dates by a few days. Start every subject on the same day and the review waves land on the same day too. Offsetting by 2 or 3 days evens it out
- Set up a single view of "today's reviews" across subjects. A planner or a spreadsheet both work, but the point is a system where "which subject, which section, today" is not something you hold in your head
The purpose of a schedule is to reach a state where you never have to think, each morning, about what today is for. Once that is in place, all that is left is to work through the day's list.
Summary
- Match review intervals to the time remaining until the exam (1 to 2 weeks at most with 3 months left, daily in the final week)
- Split the period into a learning phase, a cycling phase, and a final phase, and decide the day you stop new material in advance
- In the learning phase, set reviews from the day you learn: next day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month
- In the cycling phase, work the problem book using only the questions you missed. Redoing correct answers has little effect
- In the final phase, take timed practice tests and learn nothing new
- For several subjects, stagger the start dates and build a single view of today's reviews