How to Study for Finals: A Day-by-Day Plan
Five classes, two weeks, no idea where to start? Sweet Study turns your notes into a day-by-day finals plan with lessons, quizzes and flashcards.
Finals are coming, and it's everything at once: five classes, a whole semester of notes in each, and two weeks if you're lucky. Where do you even start? Let Sweet Study plan it for you. Add your notes, pick the day you want to be ready, and it builds a day-by-day plan with lessons, quizzes and flashcards.
Here's how it works, and why a plan like this beats rereading.
Make a finals plan with Sweet Study
Sweet Study is in Strawberry Notes on your iPad and iPhone. Make one plan for each class:
- Open Sweet Study in the sidebar and tap New study plan.
- Under What do you want to study?, add everything for that class: My notes, a PDF or file, a Photo or scan of paper notes, a YouTube lecture, a Web page, a Recording, or Paste text. Even your handwritten notes work.
- Have an old exam? Add it under Past test or practice questions, so you practice the way the real exam asks.
- Answer When do you want to finish studying? with the day before your exam, then pick Which days can you study?.
- Tap Build my plan.
You don't have to sort, schedule or write a single question yourself.
Sweet Study uses AI credits, and it shows you what the plan will cost before it builds anything. It's in beta, so tell us what you think with Feedback in a plan's ••• menu.
What does the plan do each day?
Every day, you open the plan and tap Continue. That's it.
- Lessons you do, not just read. Pictures show why the idea matters, then you learn by doing: predicting what happens, putting steps in order, sorting ideas, working through examples.
- Quizzes like the real exam. Questions come in your exam's format, from multiple choice to worked problems and short answers.
- Flashcards come back right before you'd forget them.
- A practice test near the end, when there's time.
Stuck on something? Tap Ask and the tutor helps you. Want to review on the bus? The bar at the bottom turns the plan into Notes, a Quiz, Flashcards or a Podcast.
Why does a plan like this work?
In a big review of study methods, Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) rated just two methods as highly useful for students of many ages and ability levels: testing yourself, and spreading your studying out over time. Rereading and underlining were rated low.
A Sweet Study plan does both. Every lesson is followed by questions, and the plan comes back to each topic over several days instead of once. Notes you've read before feel familiar, and that feeling is easy to mistake for knowing them. Here's why testing yourself beats rereading.
How early should you start studying for finals?
If you can, give yourself about two weeks. There's no magic in that number. It's simply enough room to come back to each class several times. Only have a few days? Build the plan anyway. It fits your material into the days you have.
Planning finals by hand? Three rules
If you'd rather make the schedule yourself, keep these three rules:
- Find out what you don't know. Try one question on each exam topic without looking at your notes. Sort the topics into Strong, Shaky and No idea, and give No idea the most time.
- Spread every class across the days. Don't spend all of Monday on Biology and all of Tuesday on Chemistry. Put two or three classes in each day, so every class comes back every couple of days. Inside one class, mix the problem types too. Here's more on interleaving.
- Start every session with a test. Write what you remember on a blank page, then fill the gaps in red. That's the blurting method.
You can track it all in the Tasks tab. With Premium, long-press a subject, choose Customize Tabs and turn on Calendar to drag your tasks onto days.