Do you have any friends who seem to breeze through their finals? While your friends are chilling out, are you stressing out?
How do they do it!?!
They know something you don’t know.
Don’t tell anybody, but I am about to let you in on a big secret. This secret will quite literally change your life- it can make you healthier, less stressed out, and happier.
Here’s the secret to properly preparing for finals: stop cramming.
That’s right, to ace your finals and to be less stressed out about them you need to stop cramming. Cramming up to the last minute pulling marathon all nighters is an inefficient and unhealthy way to study.
Instead of cramming, you need to spread out the work. Starting now, you should take a bit of time (not too little but also not too much) to begin reviewing old notes, problem sets, and exams. The key is for this to be a regimented and manageable review process. If you stick with it and do a little bit each day you will not have to do a lot the weekend before your exams.
The bottom line is that you are going pay now or pay later in terms of preparation.
You can coast now and “pay later” with caffeine-fueled evenings reviewing a semester’s worth of materials in a few days. This is the “drinking from a fire hose” approach. Not fun.
Or you can “pay now” by doing a little bit of preparation each night and spreading out the workload into something more manageable. Being well rested and healthy indisputably helps you perform better exams, this approach of spreading out the work means you will be able to cover more material in a smart way.
An additional benefit of being ahead of the curve when it comes to preparation is if you come across any questions you can ask friends or instructor for extra help and advice.
As Mark Twain (or maybe Agatha Christie) once said, “the secret to getting ahead is getting started.” There is no time to wait, start this process now without the unhealthy late-night heroics, and your mind, body, and report card will thank you.
Extra! Extra! Read all about it!! AP TEST DATES FROM COLLEGEBOARD.COM
AP Test have started and we wanted to post all the AP test dates for everyone to see! These dates are posted on collegeboard.com. We are in the 2nd week of AP testing, so we wish good luck to all the students taking exams.
May 6-10 and
May 13-17, 2013
Exam Dates
Week 1
Test Date
Morning (8 AM)
Afternoon (12 PM)
Monday
May 6
AP Chemistry
AP Environmental Science
AP Psychology
Tuesday
May 7
AP Computer Science A
AP Spanish Language
AP Art History
Wednesday
May 8
AP Calculus AB
AP Calculus BC
AP Chinese Language and Culture
Thursday
May 9
AP English Literature and
Composition
AP Japanese Language and Culture
AP Latin
Friday
May 10
AP English Language and
Composition
AP Statistics
Studio Art: Last day for your school to submit digital portfolios and to gather 2-D Design and Drawing students for the physical portfolio assembly. Students should have forwarded their completed digital portfolios to their teachers well before this date.
Week 2
Test Date
Morning (8 AM)
Afternoon (12 PM)
Monday
May 13
AP Biology
AP Music Theory
AP Physics B
AP Physics C: Mechanics
IMPORTANT ALERT AFTERNOON (2:00 PM)
Special Exam time. AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism
is the only exam given at 2:00 pm.
Tuesday
May 14
AP United States Government and Politics
AP Comparative Government and Politics
AP French Language and Culture
Wednesday
May 15
AP German Language and Culture
AP United States History
AP European History
Thursday
May 16
AP Macroeconomics
AP World History
AP Italian Language and Culture
AP Microeconomics
Friday
May 17
AP Human Geography
AP Spanish Literature and Culture
May 22-24, 2013
Late-testing dates.
June 15, 2013
AP Services must receive written requests to change college score report recipients, and to withhold or cancel scores for the current year’s exam administration, by this date.
July
AP scores are released to designated colleges, students and their high schools
EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! THE MANHATTAN BEACH STUDY HUT IS OFFERING FREE AP DIAGNOSTIC TESTS!!
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to get a 5 on an AP test? Well now is your chance!! We are offering free AP Diagnostic Tests and the first one is only 10 DAYS AWAY!
March 24th (Sunday) and April 20th (Saturday) are the two times that we will be offering the exams for all subjects.
If you would like to sign up please contact samantha@studyhut.com or call 1-310-546-2408.
For those of you that don’t know, AP stands for Advanced Placement – a program in the United States created by the College Board offering college-level curriculum and examinations to high school students. American colleges often grant placement and course credit to students who obtain high scores above a certain number on the examinations. The AP curriculum for the various subjects is created for the College Board by a panel of experts and college-level educators in each subject. For a high school course to have the AP designation, the course must be audited by the College Board to ascertain it satisfies the AP curriculum.
Some colleges use AP test scores to exempt students from introductory coursework. Each college’s policy is different, but most require a minimum score of 3 or 4 to receive college credit.Typically this appears as a “CR” grade on the college transcript, although some colleges and universities will award an A grade for a 5 score.
Grading the AP exam is a long and complicated process. The multiple choice component of the exam is scored by computer, while the free response and essay portions are scored by trained Readers at the AP Reading each June. The scores on various components are weighted and combined into a raw Composite Score. The Chief Reader for each exam then decides on the grade cutoffs for that year’s exam, which determine how the Composite Scores are converted into the final grades. During the process a number of reviews and statistical analyses are performed to ensure that the grading is reliable. The overall goal is for the grades to reflect an absolute scale of performance which can be compared from year to year.
Every Wednesday at 8 a.m. – Study Hut Co-Owner SP, MB Officer Manager Sam, and Nicole go to Manhattan Beach Middle School to tutor students for an hour for free during the school’s late start. They have been going to the Manhattan Beach Middle School since the middle of January and each week more students attend the one hour free tutor hour. The tutoring takes place in Mr. Lub’s Classroom (Room 103). One of the Study Hut tutors made a sign to put at the middle school on Wednesday mornings letting students know where the tutoring will take place so hopefully each week more students will attend.
We started the first week with a small turn out, but each week a few more students show up. This past week they had 15 students – the most students they’ve had yet. The tutors bring doughnuts with them – which all the students look forward to. Along with the tutors, the school supplies a cart of books so you can work on any subject you need. Many of the same students come consistently every week, allowing the tutors to get to know the students on a more personal basis.
The tutors have had students come in for help in every subject including but not limited to Spanish, English, Math, Reading, and Science. The tutors have worked on many assignments with students including book reports, homework, studying for tests, organizational skills, arranging classes for High School, and many others. Usually during the hour, a few students work on the same assignments which makes it easier to help more students at one time.
Along with the tutors, MBMS also sends in classroom aids to help during the hour and make sure that everything is running smoothly.
Again, the tutoring takes place in Mr. Lubs Room (103) from 8 – 9 a.m. during the late start hour! We hope to see you there!
Ah, final exams. That glorious time of year. (I’m just kidding; I’ve heard finals called many things, and “glorious” has never been one of them). They are daunting, difficult, and above all, important to your final grade. But the good new is that they CAN BE BEATEN! (Huzzah!) It all depends on HOW you bring the fight to them. Luckily, that’s kind of a specialty here in the Study Hut.
Now, it’s difficult to write a catch-all strategy that will help you study for ALL of your finals. Mainly because you’re going to be using completely different methods for completely different tests. You wouldn’t study for a geometry test the same way you’d study for history. HOWEVER, there are similarities. Number one (and this should be completely obvious, but you’d be amazed how many people don’t do it): Give yourself enough time. Finals are not like other tests. You cannot start studying for them a few days before, and expect to be all right. Ideally, you should have started studying for each test AT LEAST 2 weeks before the test date. Remember, these tests include everything you’re studying now, PLUS everything else you’ve studied in the semester. You need time to review concepts, do practice problems, plan essays, ask questions, etc.
Number two: Organization. The very first thing you should do, before even cracking open your text book, is set up a schedule for yourself. This may sound like a chore, but you would not believe how much pressure it takes off of you. It’s a lot less scary to look at a list of things you need to accomplish than it is to stare at 6 months of notes and not know where to start. For example, I’m working with a student who has to study for a History final, covering 6 chapters and about 400 years of history. SO, we set up a schedule that he’d study exactly one chapter per night for six days (not too hard to do). Since he started so early (see Tip 1), by the time he’s done with those six chapters, he’s going to have a full week left before his test. Now, he can use that week to go more in depth, bring problems to his teacher, and make himself more confident before the test. It’s a lot easier to study a huge amount of material if you break it up into small pieces, and have ample time to do so.
And number three: Confidence. Finals are stressful. We’ve all been there. Make sure that you get a full night’s sleep the night before. And (this is huge), don’t go nuts cramming 15 minutes before the test. By that point, you know everything you’re going to know. Give yourself that 15 minutes to decompress. Just close the book, and trust in the fact that you’ve put in the proper work. You’d be amazing what a difference it makes to go calmly into a test.
If you follow this tips (and of course, come see your friends at your local, neighborhood Study Hut), you’ll greatly increase your chances at doing well on your final exams. Good luck!
