Getting Prepared for Regents Week

By Meisha Lamb

Welcome back, New Ro! I hope you all had a great break after Regents Week. I know some of you were relaxing at home, while others, like me, were hitting the books to retake an exam we didn't quite nail the first time. Along the way, I learned a valuable study strategy that I would love to share so that students can avoid finding themselves in the same situation again. 

It has come to my attention that many students are not aware that past Regents Exams and their answer keys are publicly available (from the early 2010s to the present). You can access this resource at www.nysregents.org. This will help you to become familiar with the format that the Regents exam comes in, and therefore, help you relieve stress and increase your chances of performing well. 

While studying for the Regents, I noticed something that will change the way that I study forever – all the Regents are basically the same! Pick the course that you're studying for, review the past few years of that Regents exam, and see if they don’t all have the same topics! The questions are so predictable! All you have to do is make notes on the topics that you don’t understand and master how to do them, and then BOOM, 80’s and above! 

 Of course, identifying and mastering difficult topics is easier said than done, so here are some additional recommendations for studying efficiently. First, get your Regent exam of choice and complete it on your own time. For the questions you don’t know how to answer, circle them. Don’t go back after you're done just yet, but mark which questions you don’t know off the top of your head. This includes questions you are unsure about, whether it is a concept, formula, or vocabulary term. 

Once you're done with the packet, go back to the questions and find a video explaining how to do that topic. Once you're done with that, you are then going to take your notes. Everyone has their own personalized way of studying, but if you don’t, I personally use AI to create my notes to then review later on (I find TurboAI to be the most convenient), or for memorization purposes, I use Quizlet. 

Now that your notes are done, your last step is to master the topic. Khan Academy (a non-profit educational organization) is a resource I find to be extremely useful. They provide students with free practice problems and videos that further explain a topic if you still didn't understand from your notes. Not only do I recommend this resource for the Regent exam, but also for your classes as well. Practice, then practice, and when you're done practicing, practice some more. 

And my final piece of advice, that you have most likely heard before, is to attend Regent review sessions. If you were 100% clear on topics before, when you were doing it on your own, you can get help from a teacher or tutor, who can explain it in a way that you can understand.

My best wishes to you all who have taken the January Regents exam. If your results were not what you hoped for, remember that there is always another opportunity to improve.