The Night Before the Exam: Re-Solve Only the Questions You Got Wrong
The night before an exam, re-solve a short list of questions you got wrong before, with the answers covered, and do nothing new. Pick the ones closest to what will be on the paper, solve each from a blank page, check it straight away, re-solve the ones you miss once more, and stop early enough to sleep.
The point of the evening is not to learn more; it is to make sure the mistakes you have already made do not happen again tomorrow. Below is how to choose the list, how to run it, and when to stop.
In this guide
Choose a short list, not everything
You will not get through every mistake from the term in one evening, and trying usually ends in reading solutions instead of solving. Choose a list you can finish with time to spare. Our rule of thumb is ten to twenty questions, or about an hour.
- Mistakes from the material the exam covers, starting with the most recent tests.
- Questions of the type your teacher or past papers show up most often.
- Slips you have made more than once: the same sign error, the same misread condition.
Re-solve each one from a blank page
Cover the answer, write the full working on paper, then check. Reading a solution and thinking “yes, I see” feels like revision but does not tell you whether you can do it tomorrow.
If you get it wrong, find the step where it went off, read that part of the solution, then cover it again and re-solve the whole question.
Write down the one thing to check tomorrow
For slips, write one short line you can read in the morning: “check the domain before solving”, “units in the final answer”. A handful of these lines is more useful the next morning than another chapter of notes.
Go through the missed ones once more, then stop
At the end, re-solve only the questions you missed tonight one more time. When those are done, stop. Do not open a new topic at eleven o’clock because one question felt shaky; sleep is part of exam preparation too.
What not to do the night before
- Start a new workbook or a topic you have not studied yet.
- Read through solutions without solving.
- Re-solve questions you always get right just because they feel good.
- Keep going until late because the list is not empty. Finish the shortest version and stop.
How ReviewNotes helps the night before
If your mistakes are already in ReviewNotes, make a set from them, or open Today, where questions you missed earlier are waiting. Solve with the solution hidden; when you finish the set, you can re-solve just the ones you missed straight away.
If the mistakes are still in your test papers, photograph the pages; the questions are split out one by one, with the answers too if the paper has them. Printing the set as a PDF without answers lets you do the last round on paper, the way the exam will be.
Questions people ask
- How many questions should I re-solve the night before an exam?
- As many as you can finish with time to spare. As a rule of thumb, ten to twenty questions or about an hour. Finishing a short list and going to sleep is better than half of a long one.
- Should I learn new material the night before?
- We suggest not. Use the evening to make sure the mistakes you already know about do not happen again. A new topic at that point is usually only half-learned.
- What if I still get a question wrong at the end?
- Re-read the step where it went wrong, write one line about what to watch for, and leave it. One more question is not worth losing sleep over.