How to study for a cumulative final

A cumulative final tests the whole course, and the material from the first weeks has had the longest time to fade. The two classic mistakes are starting at the beginning of the notes and running out of time around week six, and studying only the recent material because it feels more urgent. Both come from planning by the order of the course instead of by what you actually know.

The plan

1. Get the map. The syllabus, the learning objectives, old exams if there are any, and the topics the lecturer kept coming back to. List every topic by week.
2. Take a diagnostic test before you study anything. A shuffled practice test across the whole course, forty questions or so. It will be humbling. It is also the fastest way to find out which weeks need you.
3. Share out your time by weight and weakness, not by chronology. A heavily examined topic you are shaky on comes first; a light topic you already know gets a quick check.
4. Start the early material early. It has faded most, and it gains the most from being revisited over several days.
5. Study by retrieval. Turn topics into questions, test yourself, study the misses, test again.
6. Write a few questions that connect units. Cumulative finals like questions that span the course — how an idea from week two explains a result from week nine.
7. The last two days: your misses and one mixed test. Then sleep.

A two-week version

• Day 1: a diagnostic test on everything; rank the topics.
• Days 2 to 10: each day, two or three topics from the top of the ranking, plus a short mixed test of everything covered so far.
• Days 11 to 13: full mixed practice tests, with the misses studied in between.
• Day 14: the list of misses, lightly, and an early night.

If you only have a few days

Triage harder. Spend the first hour on a diagnostic test, then put everything into the heaviest topics you are weakest on. Skip rereading entirely — at this stage, questions are the only use of time that tells you anything.

Cramming versus spacing

Cramming works, briefly: a night of intense study can get you through the next morning's test. It fails in two places that matter here. What you cram fades fast, and a cumulative final by definition includes material you learned weeks ago, often under exactly those conditions. Spreading study over several days — even for the same total hours — holds up much better, which is why the plan starts the early material first.

How Quat helps

Quat is an iPhone and iPad app I make, so this part is an interested party talking.

If you captured the course as you went — photos of slides, PDFs, links, lecture recordings — every card already carries where it came from, down to the day and the note, so week-three material is still findable in week fifteen. A practice exam on all your material draws a shuffled paper from the whole course, and each folder shows how many cards need work before you start, which is the diagnostic step done for you. The misses go back into your review queue with one button.

What Quat does not do: it cannot quiz you on material you never captured. If you are starting from a stack of PDFs now, capture them first; turning captures into cards has a monthly allowance on the free plan, and exams themselves are free without limit.

Sources

• Dunlosky and colleagues (2013), Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques, Psychological Science in the Public Interest — practice testing and spaced practice rated high utility.
• Cepeda and colleagues (2006), Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks, Psychological Bulletin.