Rereading notes and highlighting feel productive, but they create an illusion: because the text looks familiar, you think you already know it. In the exam you don't have the text in front of you, so what counts is your ability to recall it unaided. Two techniques train exactly that.
1. Retrieval practice: test your memory
Retrieval practice means trying to recall information instead of reading it again. Every time you pull a fact out of memory, that memory gets stronger. That's why answering questions is one of the most effective ways to study, even when you get them wrong: the mistake shows you exactly what you're missing.
Ways to practice it:
- Multiple-choice questions about your material (you can build them with AI from your PDFs).
- Flashcards: a question or concept on one side and the answer on the other.
- Blank page: write down everything you remember about a topic, then compare it with your notes.
- Explain it out loud as if you were teaching someone.
2. Spaced repetition: review right before you forget
What you study fades over time, especially in the first few days. If you review a topic several times with days in between, forgetting slows down with each round. That's spaced repetition: instead of studying five hours in one day, you study one hour on five different days.
A simple schedule
| Review | When |
|---|---|
| 1st | The same day you study the topic |
| 2nd | The next day |
| 3rd | 3 days later |
| 4th | A week later |
| 5th | A few days before the exam |
It doesn't have to be exact. What matters is coming back to each topic several times and spacing out the reviews.
The box system (Leitner method)
If you use flashcards, split them into three boxes. All cards start in box 1, which you review daily. When you get a card right, it moves to box 2 (every three days); get it right again and it moves to box 3 (weekly). If you miss it, it goes back to box 1. That way you spend more time on what's hard and less on what you've mastered.
How to combine them
- Study a topic with active reading and write questions about it.
- That same day, answer the questions without looking at your notes.
- Answer them again on the days of your schedule.
- Start each session with the questions you missed.
The Exam Simulator does much of this work for you: it saves the questions you miss, sorts them by how often you've gotten them wrong and avoids repeating recently seen questions in new exams.
Other tips that help you remember
- Mix topics in one session instead of studying a single one for hours; it forces you to tell similar concepts apart.
- Connect new material to what you already know and come up with your own examples.
- Sleep well: sleep helps lock in what you learned during the day.