How to Revise for Exams: What the Research Says Works (and What Doesn't)

October 25, 2026 · Study skills

Most students revise by rereading their notes and highlighting the important bits. It feels productive: the material looks familiar, so it feels learned. The research on learning says that feeling is misleading, and that two less comfortable techniques work much better.

What the research says

In 2013 a team led by the psychologist John Dunlosky published a review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest that rated ten common study techniques on how well the evidence supports them across ages, subjects and types of test. The Association for Psychological Science's summary gives the headline result:

• High utility: practice testing and distributed (spaced) practice.
• Moderate utility: elaborative interrogation (asking yourself why something is true), self-explanation and interleaved practice (mixing different types of problems), with the caveat that the evidence for them was more limited.
• Low utility: summarisation, highlighting and underlining, rereading, and two others.

The low-rated techniques are not useless, but they are the ones students rely on most, which is why the finding matters.

Practice testing: retrieve, don't reread

Practice testing means pulling information out of your memory rather than putting it back in: answering past papers, using flashcards, writing everything you remember about a topic on a blank page, then checking. A classic experiment by Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke, published in Psychological Science in 2006, illustrates why. Students who reread a passage did slightly better on a test five minutes later; students who had been tested on it instead remembered substantially more two days and one week later. Retrieval is harder in the moment, and that effort strengthens memory.

How to do it

• Turn your notes into questions (the Cornell note-taking method builds this in).
• Do past papers under timed conditions, then mark them honestly against the mark scheme.
• Use the "blank page" test: write everything you know about a topic from memory, then fill gaps in a different colour.
• Explain a concept aloud to a friend, or to an empty room, without notes.

Spaced practice: little and often

Distributed practice means spreading revision of the same topic over several sessions separated by days, rather than cramming it into one. Cramming can get you through tomorrow's test; spacing is what makes material stick for the exam weeks away and for the next module that builds on it.

How to do it

• Revisit each topic several times, with growing gaps: for example after one day, three days, a week, two weeks.
• Start revision weeks before the exam, not days.
• Mix topics within a session (interleaving), especially in subjects with problem types that look alike.

Why rereading feels better than it is

Rereading produces fluency: the text looks familiar, so you feel you know it. But recognising something on the page is a different skill from recalling it in an exam hall. Highlighting has the same problem; it can also become a way of postponing the decision about what actually matters. If you highlight, do it as the first step towards making questions, not as the end of revision.

Making flashcards that work

• One idea per card. "Causes of the 2008 financial crisis" is a topic; "What role did mortgage-backed securities play in 2008?" is a card.
• Write the question in your own words, and the answer as briefly as you can while still being complete.
• Say or write the answer before turning the card. Recognising the answer when you see it is not the same as recalling it.
• Sort into piles: cards you got right come back in a few days, cards you got wrong come back tomorrow. Many flashcard apps automate this spacing.

Revising for essay-based exams

Retrieval works for essays too. Instead of rereading notes, practise planning answers: take a past question, give yourself ten minutes, and write the thesis and the outline of three paragraphs from memory, with the evidence you would use. Then check your notes for what you missed. A handful of timed full answers in the last two weeks shows you how much you can realistically write in the time.

A four-week revision plan

Plan the sessions in your calendar like classes; our guide to time management for students shows how.

The basics that are easy to skip

• Sleep. All-nighters trade tomorrow's memory for tonight's hours.
• Know the exam format: question types, timing, what counts as a full answer.
• Use your university's support: revision workshops, study skills advisers, disability and wellbeing services if you need adjustments.

A note on integrity

Exams test what you can do on your own. Revision resources, past papers and study groups are legitimate; sharing exam content, bringing unauthorised material or using devices where they are not allowed are misconduct under every university's regulations. Read your exam rules before the day.

Sources

• Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. Summary: Association for Psychological Science, Which Study Strategies Make the Grade?
• Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255.

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