A two-week finals study plan

This plan replaces rereading with methods that were rated higher. It uses four of them, and each one is listed with its research below.

The four methods

Spacing. Spreading study over time was the top ranked technique among ten in a large meta-analysis (Donoghue and Hattie 2021), and one of two rated high by Dunlosky et al. 2013.
Self-testing. Recalling from memory beat restudying in a meta-analysis of practice testing, and the benefit grew when the learner got feedback (Adesope et al. 2017).
Interleaving. Mixing topics or problem types instead of doing one block at a time was rated moderate in 2013 (Dunlosky et al. 2013), and the evidence for it has strengthened since.
Asking why. Asking "why is this true?" about a fact (elaborative interrogation) was also rated moderate (Dunlosky et al. 2013).

Rereading and highlighting were rated low in the same review (Dunlosky et al. 2013), so this plan uses them only to check an answer.

The 14 days

This schedule is our suggestion built from those methods. It is not a study result. List your exams and their topics first, then fill the table.

Days	What to do
1 to 2	List every topic. For each, write 5 questions a teacher could ask, with at least 2 "why" or "how" questions.
3 to 5	Answer the questions from memory, in writing. Then check your notes and mark each right, partly or wrong. Rewrite the wrong ones.
6	Redo only the ones you got wrong or partly right.
7	Catch-up day. Fix gaps in your question list.
8 to 10	Answer again, now mixing topics in one session.
11 to 12	Do a full mixed practice test under exam timing. Mark it with your notes.
13	Redo what you missed. Write one "why" answer for each hard item.
14	Light mixed review of the questions you missed most. Stop early.

Move reviews earlier for topics you got wrong. If you have fewer than 14 days, keep the order and shorten each block.

Math and problem sets

For math, spacing still helps, but the benefit of plain recall is not clearly reliable (Murray et al. 2025: a small effect whose confidence interval included zero). Use worked examples and full problems, mix problem types, and check each step.

Print the plan

opens a one-page printable version of the table above (browser print, no download or email needed).

Sources

Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan and Willingham 2013: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26173288/
Adesope, Trevisan and Sundararajan 2017: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0034654316689306
Donoghue and Hattie 2021: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2021.581216/full
Murray, Horner and Gobel 2025: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-025-10035-1