When the exam is approaching and you have several subjects to prepare for, your study sessions need to be short and effective. A study session should involve both reviewing information and accessing information. Accessing involves going into your memory to bring out information you have stored. This can be a challenge if you have practiced, but you can use fast-paced study sessions to stretch your brain's short and long-term memory, increasing the flexibility that will be useful during an exam when anything could be asked.
The 20-minute Rule
Every subject has several topics or texts to study, and you can spend all your time on just one. Your brain benefits from transitioning from one topic to another in short increments, and this builds information access (recall) that you'll need for the exam. If you set aside two hours for studying Economics, you need to split up those hours into short 20 minutes chunks of time.
During a 20 minute chunk, try to focus on only one topic, or better a sub-topic, of the syllabus and study intensely on this one part. In a two-hour span of time, you might plan to come back to that sub-topic again to see what you remember. This improves retention by making the study time short and focused, and it improves recall by forcing you to come back to the sub-topic for an additional 20 minute chunk of time after studying a few other parts of the syllabus first.
Here is a sample two-hour study schedule for an Evolution Quiz in IB Biology:
Look, Cover, Check
A very simple tool in studying is Look, Cover, Check, which is a form of self-testing in a rapid fire manner. It should be done all the time without break through a 20-minute study session. For each snippet of information, passage of text you need to remember, or description or explanation of a complex process, you should first look it over: study the parts of the information, break it down in your mind, think through the key terms, recognize the order of statements.
Once you've had a significant 30 seconds or so to look over and review the important information, cover up the notes, graphic organizer or mind map, and recite what you remember from your review. Check afterwards how close you were to what was in the text you reviewed. Take particular note of the things you've missed. Play with these missed words, phrases or ideas in your mind for a few seconds. Then try it again. Once you've had a run of 2-3 times checking your recollection, you are ready to move on to your next snippet of information.
This technique of Look, Cover, Check is very simple but quite effective. It can be done in a study partnership with one student taking time to review a select sub-topic, and their partner asking them a specific question once the text has been covered. This gives you instant feedback on what you can recall and how well you explain. Also this technique works very well using flash cards for looking, covering and recalling, and then checking.