When preparing for an exam, I do not start by asking “How do I pass it?”, but something else: how can I study this subject so that it does not disappear completely from my mind once the exam is over? This approach requires more planning and often more work at the beginning, but over time I have realised that it works much better for me. Of course, grades matter. It would be hypocritical to claim otherwise, especially at university, where your average can affect your final degree mark and each exam requires weeks of preparation. However, I try as much as possible to avoid studying solely to survive until exam day. My goal is for what I study gradually to enter long-term memory, so I can retrieve that knowledge months or even years later. This completely changes how I organise my studies.
Planning before starting
One thing I do a lot is plan. Before getting seriously down to studying, I try to understand how much material lies ahead, how many days remain until the exam and what level of preparation I want to reach. I dislike finding myself five days from the exam with half the syllabus still undiscovered. I prefer knowing from the start how many chapters I must tackle and spreading them over time, reserving a substantial portion of final preparation for revision, exercises and active recall. For example, with thirty chapters and thirty days, I do not automatically plan one chapter a day right up to the evening before. Instead, I try to finish my first thorough coverage of the syllabus earlier, leaving time to revisit the same topics several times. In my view, returning to topics makes the difference between knowing something for a few days and truly remembering it.
The first goal is to understand the subject's structure
When starting a new subject, I do not immediately try to remember every detail. First, I need to understand how it is structured. I want to know its main blocks, which concepts come first and which depend on earlier ones. When studying law, for example, I first try to understand the logic of a legal institution and only then its individual rules. In economics or a quantitative subject, I try to understand the mechanism behind a formula instead of immediately memorising it as a sequence of symbols. For me, a subject becomes much easier once I can build a kind of mental map. New information then stops being isolated and finds a precise place within an existing structure. It also becomes much easier to remember.
I try to make the material my own
Studying directly from hundreds of pages without reorganising them is not my preferred method. I almost always try to turn the original material into something structured more closely around how I think. This means removing unnecessary repetition, clarifying certain passages, adding explanations where the book is too concise, and connecting topics that may have been separate in the original material. My ideal result is not the conventional summary of a few pages. It is more of a personal textbook: complete enough for serious study, but organised much more readably. Writing or reworking the material also forces me to understand what I am reading. It is difficult to explain well something you have not understood.
One risk I try to avoid is purely verbal memorisation. If I know a definition only because I remember the book's exact wording, a differently phrased question from the lecturer can throw me off. I therefore try to understand a concept well enough to rewrite it or explain it in different words without changing its meaning. Naturally, some elements must be remembered precisely: statutory provisions, formulas, classifications and technical terms. But I prefer those elements to rest on a structure I already understand. If I know why a particular rule exists, remembering its content becomes much easier.
Long-term memory requires revisiting things
Once I have studied a topic, I do not regard the work as finished. If I read it once and never returned to it before the exam, much of the information would inevitably be forgotten. I therefore try to include several revision sessions in my schedule. The first may come shortly after the initial study; later ones are progressively spaced out. I do not necessarily follow a rigid formula such as “revise after exactly one, three, seven and fourteen days”. I prefer adapting revision to the subject and the time available. The principle is always the same, though: do not wait until you have completely forgotten a topic before revisiting it. Each time I return to a concept, retrieving it becomes quicker. That increasing ease of retrieval is precisely what interests me.
I try to remember before rereading
Something I find very useful is attempting to retrieve information before reopening the material. When revising a chapter, I first ask myself what I remember: what were the main concepts? The distinctions? The formulas? The connections? Only afterwards do I compare what I reconstructed with the textbook. Revision then becomes more than passive rereading: it becomes a test of memory. If I open the book straight away, everything feels familiar, and I risk convincing myself I know something I could not actually reconstruct alone. When I first try to remember, however, the gaps emerge immediately. For oral exams, I like turning the syllabus into a large collection of questions. Not just questions I think the lecturer might ask, but questions that force me to reconstruct all the subject's main topics.
The goal is not to learn a ready-made answer. It is to check whether I can independently construct an orderly response to a question. For example, reading a commercial law chapter ten times is not enough for me. I would rather reach the point where someone can ask about a topic without warning and I can start with the definition, develop the rules, distinguish the different cases and, where appropriate, connect other legal institutions. When I can do this, I consider that section genuinely learned.
In quantitative subjects, I need to solve exercises from scratch
With mathematics, quantitative economics or subjects involving calculations, the same logic takes a different form. Looking at a worked exercise can create a powerful illusion of understanding. While reading the steps, everything seems obvious. But the real test comes when I have only the problem statement in front of me. I must independently work out where to begin, which formulas to use and in what order to proceed. That is why I consider getting ten exercises wrong during preparation much more useful than arriving at the exam having merely read thirty correct solutions. Analysing a mistake tells me exactly which step I have not yet internalised.
I also plan room for mistakes
When preparing my study calendar, I try not to create a schedule so precise that it works only if every day goes perfectly. There will inevitably be chapters harder than expected, days when I study less, topics I must redo completely and unexpected events. I therefore prefer to include buffer days and avoid extending my first reading of the syllabus to the evening before the exam. For me, planning is not about controlling every minute of the day. It is about recognising early when I am falling behind and correcting it while the delay is still manageable.
I mentally divide preparation into stages
My studies therefore tend to have fairly clear stages. First, I need to understand and organise the syllabus. Second, I consolidate the subject, complete the material and begin seriously remembering the content. Third, I need to retrieve information without support. In the final stage, I turn all this into the performance the exam requires. To summarise:
I do not try to do everything at once. When tackling a particularly complex chapter for the first time, I am not worried if I cannot immediately remember every detail. First, I must understand it. Memory is built in subsequent stages. Ideally, in the final days before the exam, I do not want to still be “studying” new topics. I want to use that stage to identify what I still cannot retrieve. This is the time for random questions, complete exercises, mock exams and connections between chapters. If I notice a section is not solid enough, I return to the material, but in a targeted way. This is very different from rereading the entire textbook from beginning to end simply because the exam is approaching. This is probably one of the principles that has changed my study habits most.
For me, “I have studied this chapter” does not mean “I have read and underlined it”. It means I have understood it, can reconstruct it without looking, and can answer a question or apply it. Several hours of work may separate those two levels. The initial reading merely brings information in. The real work is making it available when needed.
I want to retrieve a subject after the exam too
Naturally, I forget things too. Remembering perfectly everything studied during a degree would be impossible. My aim is different: I want the essential information to remain sufficiently structured in memory to be reactivated very quickly. If I reopen a previously studied topic a year later, I do not want to feel I have never seen it before. I may not immediately remember a specific formula or the number of a statutory article, but I should remember the topic's structure, its fundamental concepts and where that detail belongs once retrieved. For me, this is the real difference between studying a subject and merely passing an exam.
The grade is still a goal
None of this means I do not also study with the grade in mind. On the contrary, precisely because I want a good result, I carefully analyse the exam's structure, the questions asked, the level of detail required and how the lecturer assesses answers. If an exam mainly consists of exercises, I spend plenty of time on exercises. If it is oral, I prepare my spoken explanations. If there are quizzes, I also practise multiple-choice questions. I see no contradiction between these things. Understanding the subject and understanding the exam are two different problems, and both need solving.
Past papers help me understand the preparation required
When past papers are available, I use them a lot. Not simply to predict questions, but to understand which skills the lecturer tends to test. If certain exercises recur frequently, they probably represent fundamental course concepts. If oral questions often require connections between chapters, I need to prepare accordingly. Past papers are therefore a kind of map of the depth required. The problem arises only when you stop studying the subject and start memorising previous exams exclusively. My approach also has a cost: in some cases, I probably study more than is strictly necessary to pass. I could perhaps pass certain exams by learning less content and focusing only on the statistically most frequent questions.
But that is not the preparation I prefer. If a subject is part of my degree, I want to leave it with at least a decent mental framework of the discipline. Particularly in subjects linked to what I might use professionally in the future, studying only for the grade would feel like a wasted opportunity.
The real benefit emerges in later exams
One reason I try to build long-term memory is that university subjects are not truly independent. What I study today often returns later. Business administration concepts reappear in financial reporting, finance and auditing. Legal concepts learned for one exam become implicit prerequisites for later subjects. Mathematical tools recur in econometrics and finance. If each exam completely wiped out knowledge from the previous one, every new subject would become much harder. Studying to retain at least the essential structure instead means progressively building an ever broader foundation. This may be the aim that best describes my approach. I do not expect to remember every page forever. But I want to avoid the material becoming completely unfamiliar six months after an exam.
When returning to a concept I have already studied, I want to recognise it, know where it belongs and retrieve it quickly. That is also why I tend to organise my materials carefully. An orderly textbook, questions, exercises and a clear structure allow me to reactivate the subject much faster in the future too.
Studying to understand and studying for the exam are not alternatives
Ultimately, I think the initial opposition is mistaken. I study to understand well enough to remember, and then study to turn what I remember into the performance required by the exam. These are two stages of the same process. The first builds knowledge. The second makes it usable under pressure, with limited time and a question I cannot choose. Without the first stage, preparation is fragile. Without the second, I may know a subject well but fail to demonstrate it in the exam.
Conclusion
My study method revolves largely around planning and long-term memory. I try to start early enough to revisit the same topics several times, transform the material into a structure that makes sense to me, retrieve information without looking, and use exercises, questions and mock exams to identify what I still do not know. I therefore do not see the exam as the end of studying. It is more the first major test of knowledge that, at least in principle, should remain available afterwards. The question I try to ask is not only “If they ask me tomorrow, can I answer?” but also “If I needed to return to this topic in six months, would I still have a foundation to build on?”
For me, good preparation should allow a yes to both. Passing the exam matters. But the best result is not having to relearn from scratch everything you have already studied once.
Note: this describes a personal study method, not a universal formula. Different subjects, exam formats, available time and individual characteristics require different adaptations.