With the year end holidays fast approaching, many are studying on the final stretch. Here are some of our quick recommendations on where you should focus your attention no matter what the exam.
Studying on the Final Stretch: Mind Your Gaps
One helpful thing you can do on your last week is go back to problem areas. One reason for this is that these areas may have been problems early on, but could be better now. They are worth the second look.
We at Professional Exam Tutoring have found that creating a custom exam of questions that were previously incorrect is very helpful! It reinforces old concepts and reviews prior issues. Namely, we recommend you do this at least two days before your actual exam. Preferably you should do this at least a week before your exam. This will give you plenty of time to correct areas you are able to improve.
Also, we should note that this type of exercise can be a confidence killer. Your score on a custom exam like this is likely to be low. However, don’t sweat that too much. Remember that you got 100% of the questions from such a practice exam wrong previously. So, any score over 50% on such a practice exam is a good score! There also may still be areas you will continue to get wrong, that is totally fine as long as you see improvement elsewhere. You don’t need to get a 100% score.
Low Hanging Fruit
There is also a lot of low hanging fruit that you can accumulate in your final stretch. Specifically, review any definitions at least a few days ahead of your exam that require basic knowledge of days, or dates. For example, remembering that you must keep records easily accessible for two years is important to know for the Series 66 exam, but as easily forgettable. If you see this question on the exam, you’ll either know it or you won’t, there’s no in between.
There may also be several questions on the exam that have to do with knowing specific rules such as Rule 144 on the SIE Exam, or monitoring customer complaints. We recommend that you choose those that don’t seem to be sticking and try to memorize them as best you can.
Similarly, the day you go into the actual exam, we also recommend that you choose two or three formulas to memorize that seem important but are hanging on by a thread. With any luck, you’ll have those fresh in your short-term memory if you review them right before you arrive at the exam center. Be ready to write those down on a scrap piece of paper provided once your exam begins.
Lastly, book a last-minute tutoring session if you need it a week in advance to make sure you can clean up any last minute issues. If you need more help, feel free to reach out. Good luck!