How to make a revision timetable for all your exams

1. List every exam with its hours

Write down each exam with its day, how hard it is for you and the hours it needs. Be specific about the hours: count the lectures and the past papers you want to do. A typical exam period might look like this:

• Economics, medium, 8 hours, exam on day 14.
• Statistics, hard, 15 hours, exam on day 18.
• Law, medium, 8 hours, exam on day 23.
• French, easy, 4 hours, exam on day 27.

That is 35 hours in four weeks. Before planning anything, check that it is even possible: 35 hours over 26 study days is about 80 minutes a day. Possible, but not if you lose a week.

2. Plan each subject backwards from its own exam

Give each subject a run-up that matches its difficulty (one, two or three weeks), sittings of about 90 minutes spaced wider at the start and closer at the end, and short reviews in the last days. The exam study plan guide explains this step in detail. Here is what it gives for the four exams above:

3. Fit them together under a daily maximum

Now add up each day. Pick a maximum you can keep for weeks, not one you can manage once: for most students that is about four hours of real study a day, less on days with classes. In the example, day 9 asks for 4 h 15 and goes over.

Resolve each clash the same way, so the plan stays fair:

• The exam that comes first keeps its sitting. Its time is shortest, so it has the least room to move.
• The other sitting moves to the nearest free day, earlier rather than later. Earlier keeps it inside its own run-up; later squeezes the end.
• Never move a review away from the last days before its exam. That is where it does its work.
• If nothing fits, cut on purpose. Lower the hours of the subject where you lose least, rather than letting the last exam take the loss.

4. Plan the days around the exams

• The day before an exam belongs to that exam's review, plus at most one light sitting of something else.
• The afternoon after an exam is for rest. Plan nothing in it; you will not use it well anyway.
• Protect sleep and meals as fixed blocks. They are the first things a revision timetable eats.
• Keep one evening a week free. A plan with no slack breaks on the first bad day.

How Orondia does this for you

In Orondia every exam is a task with It is an exam switched on: its day, how hard it is and its hours. The planner counts each one back from its own day, as in the figure, and fits them together around your classes and anything else in your week. It never goes over your daily maximum of task time (4 hours by default; you can change it, for a single day too). A sitting whose day is full moves to the nearest free day, earlier first, and the exam that comes first is planned first.

Miss a sitting and the plan for that exam is laid out again with the missed minutes; the other exams stay as they are. If an exam's hours no longer fit before its day, the task says so, and you choose what gives.

Make a free account and put in your exams; your timetable is ready before the welcome ends.