Analyzing your last exam preparation is not rocket science. In principle, it is enough if you make a very simple assessment of success and ask yourself: what went well and what went badly? This approach is often enough to uncover fundamental errors, identify the potential for improvement and find concepts that have worked well for you.
To give you an idea of what you can take a closer look at in your analysis, we have worked out 3 simple key questions for you to start with. That should be enough to get you started.
Sufficient Time?
Time management before and during the exam phase is a central element of a successful semester. You can only prepare optimally for your exams if you divide up your capacities cleverly and plan enough time for studying. You should therefore carefully analyze the amount of time you have spent preparing for the exam after you have passed it.
These questions will help you:
- How did you get on with the preparation time?
- Did it fit in terms of scope, or did you take too little time to prepare for the exam?
- Did you start studying too late or maybe even too early?
- How did you structure your exam phase?
- What did your daily plan look like?
- Have you found a suitable daily rhythm?
With this analysis, you can uncover possible weaknesses in your time management and find promising time windows for your next exam preparation. And if you would need more time for preparation, remember about helpful services like a paper writer service.
Learned Correctly?
Now that you know when and at what time you prepared, you should look at how you approached your exam and which learning methods were successful for you. Of course, how you prepare depends heavily on the individual exam and the lecturers. Nevertheless, some conclusions can be drawn in retrospect.
These questions will help you:
- Did you know from the start what your examiner values?
- Did you memorize a lot or a little? And did that help you in the exam?
- Did you learn in a structured way or was it more chaotic?
- Did you have a study plan?
- How did your study plan work?
- Did you learn in small stages, or did you absorb everything in one go?
- Did you have enough time for reps?
- Did you work through old exam papers?
Try to find out which learning methods suit you and which don’t help you. You also need to get a feel for which type of preparation goes with which exam.
Alone Or In A Team?
You can prepare for the exam either alone or together with your fellow students (in a study group). But things are complicated: on the one hand, study groups can create great synergies and represent a perfect control medium; on the other hand, studying in a group can distract you and become an unproductive waste of time. Therefore, after each exam preparation, you should determine soberly whether the study group was “worth it” for you.
These questions will help you:
- How often did you meet with your study group?
- How many times have you studied alone?
- What specific problems did your study group help you with?
- Was your ability evenly distributed?
- How did you feel after the meetings?
- How did your meetings go? Structured or chaotic?
- Could you have done more on your own in that time?
- Which advantages of the study group would you absolutely not want to miss out on?
In the end, it all comes down to the mix. My experience has been that you shouldn’t study completely on your own, but you shouldn’t have to spend every free minute with your fellow students either. With an objective review, you can determine to what extent a study group makes sense for you.
Conclusion
In this article, we have shown you what you should definitely learn from your last exam preparation and why a retrospective analysis is so important. We gave you 3 key questions for orientation, which will help you to avoid mistakes in the future and to recognize successful learning strategies.
If you get used to looking at your work from a distance and analyzing it objectively at regular intervals, you can improve and develop enormously.