A seven-day finals week study plan built on priorities

Why a final-week plan starts with priorities

Feeling short of time in finals week usually has less to do with how many topics there are than with trying to give them all the same amount of time. A plan that starts rereading every course from the beginning spends the first days on what you already know best and leaves your weakest topic for the last evening. A more useful plan starts with two questions: how much of the exam does this topic take up, and how ready am I for it?

A research review of learning techniques rated practice testing and spreading study out over time as high utility, and mixing different topics in one session (interleaving) as moderate utility (Dunlosky and colleagues, 2013). The plan in this guide applies those principles to a seven-day finals week. That does not mean the same plan suits every student; adapt the tables below to your own courses. For the testing method itself, see the active recall guide.

Build the plan in four steps

1. List the topics. Pull the topics covered by each final from the syllabus, your lecture recordings and your PDF notes. Keep each topic small enough to study in one session.
2. Score weight and readiness. Weight is how much of the exam a topic takes up: 1 for little, 3 for a lot. Estimate it from the lecturer's announcements, the syllabus and how much class time the topic got. Readiness is where you stand: 1 for not ready at all, 3 for ready. Rather than guessing your readiness, set it by answering a few questions.
3. Work out a priority score. Priority = weight × (4 − readiness). A heavily weighted topic you are not ready for scores highest. If two scores tie, put the course whose exam comes first ahead.
4. Spread it across the days and update daily. Put the highest-scoring topics in the first days and add a short mixed review of earlier topics each day. At the end of each day, update your readiness scores based on the questions you answered.

Example: a finals week with three exams

This section is an example. The courses, exam days, scores and plan were written for this guide for teaching purposes. They are not taken from a student's upload or from a live LectureSift output.

Source: exam timetable and notes

Probability and Statistics final on day 5, Organic Chemistry final on day 6, Academic Writing final on day 7. The probability lecturer announced that conditional probability will make up a large part of the exam. In Organic Chemistry, addition reactions of alkenes took three weeks; naming compounds took one lecture. The Academic Writing exam covers paragraph structure and modes of writing. From practice questions: I struggle with conditional probability and I am comfortable with combinations.

Priority table

Seven-day plan

Planning note: day 1 goes to the highest-priority topic. Combinations scored low, so they did not get a day of their own; short questions in the mixed reviews keep them fresh.

Question

At the end of day 2 you answer more questions on addition reactions of alkenes and lower your readiness from 2 to 1. Which statement is now correct? A) The priority stays at 6 · B) The priority becomes 9, tying with conditional probability, and Probability goes first because its exam is earlier · C) The priority becomes 12 and moves to the top · D) The priority becomes 3 and drops to the bottom

Flashcards

Common finals-week mistakes

• Only rereading. Rereading your notes feels familiar but does not show how much you can recall. Start or finish every session with a few questions.
• Scoring readiness by feel. The sense that you know a topic can mislead you. Base the score on the questions you actually answered.
• Never changing the plan. The plan rests on the first day's estimates. Update the scores every evening and adjust the next day to match.
• Cutting sleep. Rather than spending the whole night before an exam studying, keep the last evening for a short review.
• Finishing one course before starting the next. Short mixed reviews help keep earlier topics from fading before exam day.

Using LectureSift in finals week

You can upload lecture recordings as MP4, MP3, WAV or MOV and notes as PDF, DOCX, PPTX or TXT. The Exam preset in the workspace turns on the summary, transcript, slide images, quiz and flashcards together. Question and card counts cannot go beyond your plan's limits: the Exam preset prepares up to 20 questions and 40 cards, while free accounts and the Lite plan are limited to 10 questions and 20 cards. Video or audio recordings and documents are processed in separate jobs.

On the results screen, the “Prepare for exam” tab includes a list of “Likely exam focus areas”. That list is an AI estimate made from the lesson content. It does not replace the lecturer's announcements or the syllabus, so treat it only as a hint when you score weight. “Start mixed practice” shuffles the questions and their options, and “Readiness” shows the share of answered questions you got right. You can use that figure when you update your readiness score.

A whole term's recordings can exceed a free account's monthly minutes. Upload the recordings for the topics at the top of your priority table first. Results on a free account are kept for 7 days, so download the packs you will use during finals week as PDFs.

Frequently asked questions

Build the plan around your own courses

Create a free account · Plans and allowances