How to Ace Your College Midterms

Happy Saturday! I hope your weekend is going terrific so far! Right now, I’m in my senior year of college. I am so excited to be almost finished with school and start preparing for the next stage of my life. In the meantime, I’m about to enter “midterm mode” for my classes. How many of you start to get a bit worried when you hear the word midterm? I definitely used to! Midterms are nothing to be afraid of though!

Over the last three years I have taken more midterms than I would like to say I have! For Blogtober Day Thirteen, I’m sharing my favorite ways to get prepared for your midterms!

Blogtober Day Thirteen

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If you are starting your first year of college, this round of midterms may be your first ones during your time at college. There is nothing to worry about! The first test will always be the hardest because you don’t exactly know what to expect. Just remember that the professors don’t want to see you fail! There are so many resources to help you succeed in all of your college courses. Don’t forget to take advantage of them if you need some extra help.

Study Every Week

If you take anything away from this post, let it be this tip. There is nothing worse than starting to study for an exam the night before. When you realize that it’s going to take all night and not a few hours like you thought. Trust me, I have been there and it is not fun! The best way to make sure you are prepared is to study a bit every week. Go over your notes from the week, maybe rewrite them and look up any questions that you may have.

When you go over the material as you learn it, you’ll be able to spend the days leading up to the exam just reviewing your notes.

Create a Game Plan

If I know when the midterms are, I like to write them down in my college planner. I love The Happy Planner ones! This helps me see if I have multiple in a week or which ones I should focus on first. I then like to write down anything I need extra time I need to go over or work on. For example, I may have two midterms in a week but I feel more prepared for one of them. I’ll end up spending more time on the other class to make sure I ace both of my midterms!

Go to Office Hours/Exam Prep

Some professors offer exam prep before the midterm. Take advantage of this! They are there to help you and answer any questions you may have. If you are studying every week, you should be able focus on the things that you truly don’t get. If your professor doesn’t do this, then attend their office hours if you still have any questions.

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Professors may also give out study guides to help you focus on the right material for the exam. Just because it’s covered in the textbook doesn’t mean it’s going to be on the midterm. Again, it’s called a study guide, so make sure you are going over your notes from class as well.

They may also post additional material that may further your knowledge on a topic. Sometimes that additional material won’t be in the textbook, but will be on the test! Make sure you at least go over it a bit to make sure you’re able to answer any questions on it!

Attend Class

This one may seem obvious, but it’s amazing how many more students are in a class on exam day compared to a typical day. Sooo many students only attend exam days. There have been so many times during a lecture where a professor will mention that the topic will be on the exam. Definitely attend the class before the exam too!

Write Notes Beforehand

I prefer to be ahead in my classes if possible. I’ll come to class with all of my notes ready, that way I can focus solely on the lecture and only make notes that I didn’t originally make. Doing this has helped me increase my GPA and test scores. This also helps me ask any questions I may have come across early on, so I’m not asking them the day of the exam. I wrote a post all about Note Taking for College Students, which goes into more depth on how I take my notes.