The habits that earned good marks at school — rereading, highlighting, last-week cramming — collapse under university volume. What works instead is well documented.
Active recall beats rereading
Testing yourself is the single most effective technique in the learning-science literature. Close the notes and reconstruct the lecture’s argument; do problems from a blank page; answer past-exam questions before you feel ready. Difficulty during practice is the signature of durable learning.
Space it, interleave it
Touch each module briefly and repeatedly across the semester rather than in one heroic pre-exam block. Interleave related topics — mixing integration techniques, say — because discriminating between methods is what exams actually test.
For STEM: tutorials first
In maths-heavy degrees, the tutorial problems are the course. Attempt every problem before the memo appears, log every failure honestly, and re-attempt failures a week later. Lectures explain; tutorials build the skill that exams measure.
Manage the semester, not the night
University punishes deadline-stacking. A simple weekly review — one hour on Sunday planning the week against every due date — outperforms any all-nighter. And when a module starts slipping, act in week 3, not week 10: a few targeted tutoring sessions early costs less than a supplementary exam later.