How to study for an exam Spend at least 75% of your time here. Study less by looking and more by doing. Looking Looking at old notes is helpful. Looking at old solved problems (homework, in-class examples, etc.) is helpful Pattern matching is helpful. For example, “Use this formula for this ‘kind of problem’” or “Use this ‘recipe’ for this ‘kind of problem’” Doing Rewriting notes in your own words is much more helpful Solving a new problem you have never seen before is much more helpful Learning and understanding the concepts and ideas behind solving problems is much more helpful. (It is also much more powerful, and it is where you add value as an engineer. That means getting paid more too. ) Spend no more than 25% of your time here.

How to take an exam efficiently Take and exam in several passes: Pass 1: Read the problem carefully and then just set it up. Draw a system diagram if you need to. Any equations you write should use symbols only. Don’t solve your equations, just indicate that there is enough info to do so. Go to the next problem and repeat. Pass 2: Go back to the beginning and write numbers with the appropriate units in the equations from Pass 1. Do no calculations yet. Pass 3: Crunch numbers (including unit conversions if need be).