The 5-Day Study Plan for 8-Week Courses

When reviewing for an exam, it’s important to space out your review, ideally over a
period of approximately 5 days, but during summer courses, everything is on a more
condensed timeline, including reviewing for tests. This plan is designed to help you kee p
up with the fast pace of shortened courses and do as well as possible on your exams.

Keys to a Good Study Plan

The same principles apply to creating a study plan over the summer as creating a study
plan during the regular semester. Those keys are:

1. Space out your learning.

2. Divide material so you can work on it in chunks.
3. Each day, prepare one chunk of information and review the previous days’ material.
4. Use active learning strategies to study the material (see chart below).
5. Use self-testing techniques to monitor your review.

8-10 hours of study and review may be required to get an A or a B on a typical semesterly exam, but this
is just a general guideline. You may need to allow for more study time for a summer course, since you
have to learn everything more quickly, or more time for more difficult classes.

Start early!
This is the most important key!

More than any other strategy or technique, the key to doing well on exams is starting early and using
short, frequent study sessions. This is especially important for summer courses. Remember that the
usual subtle review you get in class, whether that’s through clicker questions or just the professor
mentioning old concepts during lecture, isn’t necessarily available during summer courses, so you have
to provide that review yourself. For summer courses, it’s best to start reviewing material the day you
learn it. For example, if your lecture is at 10:30am, go to lecture and take notes, and then sometime in
the afternoon, go back through your notes and review them actively (see chart below).

Avoid cramming!
Cramming doesn’t help you remember the material in the long -run, or even for
tomorrow’s exam.

You typically won’t remember what you tried to learn the night before the exam, so it’s much better
to space out your review. Keep in mind that, for prerequisite courses or for courses in a sequence (e.g.
Chem I and II), you’ll need this information later, and cramming it into your brain in one night isn’t going
to help you recall it a few months from now. It’s easy to put-off all your homework and studying until
the last minute for summer courses, but if you wait to start until a day or two before the exam, you’ll
have way too much material and work to get through. If you are stuck in a situation where you have to
cram, it’s more important to focus on remembering and solidifying the information you already know
rather than trying to teach yourself new information. Information learned the night before isn’t likely to
stick with you, even for the next day’s exam, let alone in a few months.
Get Organized!
Split up the material into manageable chunks and systematically review each section.

The idea behind the 5-Day Study Plan is to divide up the material you need to study into 4 roughly
equal parts, then review each one. Here, we’ve labeled them A, B, C, and D, with A being the oldest
material and D being the most recently covered material. Once you’ve divided up the material, each
day, you’ll prepare one chunk of material and review the previous days’ material. For example, on the
first day, you’ll prepare A, then on the second day, you’ll prepare B and review A, and on the third day
you’ll prepare C and review both A and B, etc. It’s important to plan out your preparation and review
strategies ahead of time so that you already have a plan when you sit down to study. If you just tell
yourself that you’ll review for a couple hours in the afternoon, you might sit down to study and then not
be able to get started because you’re not sure what to focus on or how to study. If you’ve already made
a plan for yourself, you can sit down and get right to studying.

Adapted from Diana L. Van Blerkom & Patricia I. Mulcahy-Ern,. College reading and study strategies
(Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2005).
A Step-By-Step Guide to Making a Summer Study Plan: 8 Week Courses
Follow the steps below to prepare yourself for your exams and stay on top of your 8 -
week long summer courses.

Step 1: Choose a Same-Day Preparation Technique

In courses that last eight weeks, you’ll probably have an exam every two weeks, so you want to start
reviewing the material the same day that you learn it. One good same-day preparation technique could
be to rewrite your notes after that day’s lecture. This gives you an opportunity to reorganize your notes
and incorporate information from other sources (e.g. the textbook). Any of the preparation techniques
in the table below would work well too!

Step 2: Divide the Material

For such short courses, you should probably organize the material chronologically, where A is the first
material you cover that week and D is the last. List your four chunks of study material here:

A ___________________________________________________________________________________

B ___________________________________________________________________________________

C ___________________________________________________________________________________

D ___________________________________________________________________________________
Step 3: Select Preparation and Review Strategies
For each chunk of material, choose one or two preparation and review strategies. Make sure that the
review strategies you choose match the preparation strategies you’ve chosen, e.g. if you prepare
flashcards, review by going through the flashcards a couple of times. Each day, you will prepare one
section of material to review the following days, and you’ll review the material you’ve already prepared.

Preparation strategies Review strategies

Develop study sheets Recite study sheets
Develop concept maps Replicate concept maps from memory
Make word cards Recite word cards
Make question cards Recite question cards
Make formula cards Practice writing formulas
Make problem cards Work problems
Make self-tests Take self-tests
Do study guides Practice study guide info out loud
Re-mark text material Take notes on re-marked text
List 20 topics that may be on the exam Recite the list of 20 and explain each topic
Do problems Do “missed” problems
Make an outline Recite notes from recall cues
Summarize material Recite out loud
Make charts of related material Re-create chart from memory
List steps in a process Recite steps from memory
Predict essay questions Answer essay questions
Answer questions at the end of the chapter Practice reciting main points
Prepare material for study group Explain material to group members
Step 4: Write It Down
It’s important that you write out your study plan because writing something down makes us much more likely to do it, and it will be easier to
look at what you’ve written to remember how you planned to study, rather than trying to hold it in your mind for several days. For eight-week
courses, you can also choose to take a day off, if you have enough time. Taking a day off isn’t a bad idea, as it gives the information some time
to settle in your brain and it gives your mind a rest before your exam. For example, you might prepare and review material for four days, take
one day off, and then review all the material the day before the exam. Just make sure that you plan in a day to take off if you want to do so.

Day 1: ____________ Day 2: ____________ Day 3: ____________ Day 4: ____________ Day 5: ____________
Prepare Part A—2 hrs. Prepare Part B—2 hrs. Prepare Part C—1.5 hrs. Prepare Part D—1 hr. Review Part D—25 min.
Review Part A—30 min. Review Part B—30 min. Review Part C—30 min. Review Part C—15 min.
Review Part A—15 min. Review Part B—15 min. Review Part B—10 min.
Review Part A—15 min. Review Part A—10 min.
Self-test on all parts—1
hr.
Total: 2 hours Total: 2.5 hours Total: 2 hrs. 15 min. Total: ~ 2 hours Total: ~ 2 hours

Prepare Prepare Prepare Prepare Review

1. 1. 1. 1. 1.
2. 2. 2. 2. 2.
3.
Review Review Review 4.
1. 1. 1. 5.
2. 2. 2. 6.
3. 3.
4. 4. Self-Test (methods)
5.
6.
Example
This is an example 5-Day Study Plan for an 8-week course where the exam is on Friday.

Day 1: Sunday Day 2: Monday Day 3: Tuesday Day 4: Wednesday Day 5: Thursday
Prepare Part A—2 hrs. Prepare Part B—2 hrs. Prepare Part C—1.5 hrs. Prepare Part D—1 hr. Review Part D—25 min.
Review Part A—30 min. Review Part B—30 min. Review Part C—30 min. Review Part C—15 min.
Review Part A—15 min. Review Part B—15 min. Review Part B—10 min.
Review Part A—15 min. Review Part A—10 min.
Self-test on all parts—1
hr.
Total: 2 hours Total: 2.5 hours Total: 2 hrs. 15 min. Total: ~ 2 hours Total: ~ 2 hours

Prepare Prepare Prepare Prepare Review

1. predict essay questions 1. do textbook practice 1. write brief summaries 1. list 20 topics that may 1. explain 20 topics
and brainstorm responses questions 2. make flashcards be on exam and explain 2. explain material to
2. write study sheets 2. draw concept maps Review 2. prepare material for study group
Review 1. critique essay answers study group 3. recite study sheets
1. answer predicted essay 2. recite study sheets Review 4. redraw concept maps
questions 3. redo textbook 1. bullet point outline 5. recite summaries
2. annotate study sheets questions done essay answers 6. practice flashcards
incorrectly 2. recite study sheets
4. redraw concept maps 3. summarize topics from Self-Test: do unit review
textbook questions
4. redraw concept maps
5. recite summaries
6. practice flashcards