Entering the last term and exam season for most subjects, Oxbridge Insights reached out to those who have done their first year exams in recent years to share some advice and guidance from their personal experience. We have compiled an article of advice covering: general prelim advice, online exam advice, subject specific tips and wellbeing advice.
This article will be continuously updated as more advice is collected. Follow the Oxbridge Insights IG page to be updated!
General Prelims Advice
“Revise early. Practice essays and past papers. Get mark schemes from your supervisor if possible or go through with friends.”
“Have water with you (but not too much!)”
“Always bring a watch in the exam with you (I have a cheap £5 one that I got at the supermarket). If you can’t see the clock or it’s far away it’s always good to have the time close on hand.”
“Try to plan what you’re going to revise the day/morning before the exam. You’ll be tempted to do an overview of everything but won’t remember anything. Try to pick out short key bits or things you forget, so you’re not cramming your brain right before the exam.”
“I always approach with the attitude that I will do well no matter what, and repeating this in my head as I enter the hall or as the exams are about to start really helps calm nerves and stress. I forget about how much prep I’ve done and just focus my mind on doing really well, and that has pulled me through some Exams I’ve been very badly prepared for. Obviously prep is important and often key, but if you’ve not had time or had something disrupt revision, mentality and determination are two very powerful tools!”
“Don’t over-revise! It’s easy to overdo it and wear yourself out, just do a reasonable amount of revision and make sure you know what the exams are going to look like and that you can write an essay in time then take it easy.”
“Working with others where possible/relevant for the subject – e.g. talking through topics/questions together – really nice to help each other out & work through things together and can also give you a different perspective on a topic or how to approach particular Qs for example.”
“I found making powerpoints about each essay topic worked well for me to prepare, and also going back and looking at some more stuff on the reading list that I didn’t have time to read when I first did the topic.”
“Make as many essay plans as feasibly possible, plan out every possible essay, get possible questions from you teacher, and use these as opportunities to try out arguments etc that you haven’t yet. Get your teacher to look over the plans you make and ‘mark’ the argument you make.”
“Organise, organise, organise!”
“Look at previous exam Q’s – choose to deep dive into the topics that are likely to come up.”
“Start early, stay calm.”
“Varying study spaces as much as possible (even just different rooms in the house helps massively with my concentration!)”
“Condensing lectures / key topics to a single summary sheet.”
“Use past papers (for non-essay exams) and make a summary sheet for each exam of your errors, use this to focus your revision and map your progress.”
“Studying with another person if you struggle to stay focussed (this could be through Zoom!) – helps keep you accountable + you have someone on hand for tea breaks!”
“Making bullet point plans for loads of past questions served me really well in my finals! Also creating big mind maps on different topics. Explaining or talking through a question with a friend or family member is also super helpful. Finally, when I did open book exams in my last year, I made a catalogue of all of my notes on lectures and reading – each was labelled with key themes, brief comparisons with other literature and topics they might be useful for. Took a little while but meant that during the timed open book exams I didn’t waste any time finding relevant notes!”
“Exams aren’t as important as you think they’ll be – especially this year!!”
“Testing yourself is the best way to long term memory as opposed to repeated exposure. This can be past papers and making up your own little essays.”
“Don’t worry about knowing everything from the lecture notes – that is almost impossible – you only need 40% to pass, unlike at school where expectations were much higher.”
“For MML, until you get to 4th year, exams are not the be all and end all. Yes you want to do well, but you will rarely ever have to mention what you achieved in first year exams. So, you don’t need to work yourself into the ground like you may have done for A Levels – enjoying your university experience and maintaining good mental health is far more important than first year results!”
“Use Flashcards (written, Quizlet, Anki) for details.”
“You can find “Cambridge Student Subject Sharing” on Facebook. Cambridge students are able to access exam advice, optional paper help, and subject-specific resources from older students through the resources in the Cambridge Student subject Sharing drive. @OfficialCAmSSS on Facebook.”
“Revise using past year questions + read the examiners’ reports. May also be useful to categorise past year questions by topics and see generally what the expectations are for each topic.”
“Do not pull an all-nighter for the exams.”
“Learn from the people in the years above you doing your course and modules because they’ve been through what you’re going through.”
“Cambridge exams are not a totally different thing to exams you may have done earlier throughout your education- there is no trick and they are not instantly ‘harder’ or requiring different skills- so focus on what has helped you to revise before/what kind of learner you are and find a style of revision that works for you :)”
“Using essay plans to find a general line of argument for a specific topic/module and then practise remoulding/reusing that line of argument to answer essay questions.”
“Try explaining your work or subject to someone who knows nothing about it.”
Advice for Open Book Exams
“Make revision sheets that you can refer back to when taking the exam. These shouldn’t be too long and should be in bullet points with only the main info.”
“Plan loads of essays.”
“Just try and revise as if they’re closed books because if it’s time pressured it’s better to know things off the top of your head than look them up.”
“If you’re the sort of person who easily gets lost in things, or the texts you’re looking at are especially long, then still learning key quotations can go a long way in speeding up the exam and making it less stressful.”
“Prepare like you would for a normal exam (familiarise yourself with your lecture notes and gather a few good readings per topic) then organise your notes and readings into sections so you can easily access them during the exam. I wouldn’t recommend doing any reading/research during the exam itself because you won’t be able to explain something you’ve just learnt as well as you can explain the stuff you already have from lectures, supos, etc.”
“Try and have your notes in good order beforehand. Obviously everyone has slightly different systems for this, but having notes that are v easy to refer to & take what you need from is very useful – might be good to organise it by key topics, or key thinkers/theorists, or different sides of particular arguments etc, as this also helps you to further make sense of the material.”
“Make lists of key quotes for texts etc that are accessible and marked by topic / theme etc.”
“Write as much in your open-book as possible before the exam 😉 I have been trying to write as many decent essays as possible over Easter which means a) I have revised a fair amount of content, and b) I have loads of written content to fall back on and read over in the exam – to remind myself of readings and arguments etc!”
“Make sure you have all the resources around you ready for the exam, e.g. the right dictionaries in your room etc. Also even though it’s open book, it’s still good to prepare! Especially with literature exams, if you go into them with no revision you’ll just be super stressed, so some revision notes act as a good safety blanket.”
“Don’t want to waste time trying to look things up. OneNote and Apple computers usually have a good document search, or you could merge your notes together for control F.”
“Do not waste time memorising things but rather focus on understanding the models and expanding knowledge. The way exams are marked at Cambridge means you need to do better than the rest of the cohort so use extra materials and read around the topic to impress the examiners, particularly when open book.”
“Create your own cribs sheet (combining previous cribs to both tripos and example papers) which you can use during an exam.”
“Don’t take it for granted. You still need to revise the content and know it as well as possible. It’s certainly not an excuse to take your foot off the gas. Count yourself lucky but also put in the work because for your open book to be of help you still need some kind of understanding to have formed in those books.”
“There is no right way to do an open book exam. Some people use their notes a lot, some not at all. It is worth trying out what helps you feel focussed and confident.
If you are going to use notes it can be worth considering which documents you will compile them in and how they will be organised for maximal efficiency during the exam- ctrl f is your best friend!”
“Open-book can be very useful for things like short quotations and will save you having to memorise any but isn’t so great for anything longer- there simply isn’t time for extensive researching/copying and pasting generic blocks of text will not look good.”
“Remember other people will feel like you- open-book doesn’t necessarily make things feel easier, it can often feel more daunting having so many choices/worrying about what others are doing. Know that it will be okay and other people haven’t found a magical way to make open-book work for them that you don’t know of- it will be okay!”
“Don’t keep adding to your notes. More information doesn’t mean better information. Make sure to spend time organising your notes and revising them.”
Advice for Mental Wellbeing During Exams
“Remember you have access to the University Counselling Service, College Counsellors and your college nurse. Also allow yourself a chat with your friends in the evening and watch something funny!”
“I enjoyed revising with my friends in first year, e.g. sharing notes, doing past questions together, taking it in turns to teach one topic to the others and then test each other etc. Also, dont spend all your time revising, make sure you do some things you enjoy too!”
“Take regular breaks and talk to people. All the MMLers are in the same boat so it’s really important to have a good community of them around you (and avoid anyone who stresses you out!). In covid, that is harder, but maybe drop someone from your class a message to ask how they’re feeling, because 9 times out of 10 they’ll be having the same concerns about exams as you are!”
“Also get good sleep! Good rest will make you feel better and help you remember content.”
“The mind charity student mental health workshop.”
“Remind yourself that in the grand scheme of things, it probably isn’t very consequential anyway!”
“Ensure you participate in other activities during exam revision time! Whether that is meeting friends, getting out for walks or exercise or just doing something aside from revising every day. It is not about quantity of revision but quality; 5 productive hours are better than 10 unproductive ones.”
“From my own experience, I’d definitely prioritise sleep/rest over work. It’ll make you more productive and happy. Spending lots of time working may sometimes look necessary if you feel like you’re behind, but overworking yourself is not going to give you good results in the long run (it’ll affect your stress and mental health and this could also translate into how well you end up doing). So, sleep and look after yourself first, and then work!”
“Remember the rule of 8: 8 hours for working, 8 hours for sleeping, 8 hours for relaxation/exercise/eating/looking after yourself.”
“Try not to compare! I remember being really scared seeing a coursemate come back from the library at 3am most nights – what I didn’t know is she often didn’t start work until midnight! You work in the way that suits you and try to forget about everyone else.”
“Remember you can’t know everything and there’s no point trying! The skills you’ve built up over the year will stay with you and sometimes it is better to take a break than learn one more fact.”
“Eat enough food – fruit and veg are great for nutrients but also eat food you enjoy!”
“Work with people who have similar working pattern to you – if you’re not spending 10 hours a day in the library that is completely fine (and healthy please don’t spend that long studying), but also maybe don’t spend all your time with people who are working that much – it can lead to comparing yourself which is not good for anyone!”
Subject Specific Advice
Archaeology
“Keeping all references in order on essays or notes so that you can go back, refer to them and make arguments accordingly.”
“Start revision early and revise in small increments.”
“Make revision sheets that you can refer back to when taking the exam. These shouldn’t be too long and should be in bullet points with only the main info.”
“Take these as practice and just make sure you know your content/know how to construct an argument or essay.”
– 2nd Year Archeology Student, Christ’s
Classics (3 Year)
“Read the reading list with a view to the exam rather than revision; go to lectures; learn your endings.”
- 2nd Year Classicist, Magdalene
Chemical Engineering
“Become very familiar with the steam tables and know how to extract information from them.”
“Make sure you know how all the thermodynamics equations interlink.”
“Watch YouTube videos for SAPV and structures as they’re very helpful.”
Computer Science
“Read the recommended textbooks for operating systems while you still have time, since that’s the one course that takes some time for the concepts to make sense.”
“You can email your DoS about anything you don’t understand.”
“Be productive over the Easter break.”
- 3rd Year Computer Science, Churchill
Economics
“For economics, focus on the intuition behind the models as well as the derivations.”
“For macro, spend some extra time finding empirical data to make your essays and answers more complete and developed.”
“Ask the second and third years for revision materials, notes, tips for exams, etc. They have gone through it already so can be a huge help!”
- 2nd Year Economist, Pembroke
“Network with the people in the years above you as much as possible because they’ve been through what you’re currently going through.”
“Time is of the essence. The times you were chilling in first terms because you had time were a façade, you had absolutely no time, you think you’re up to speed with work then get ahead, there’s always more work to be done and not as much time as you think. It took me 2 years to realise this and I’ll be sure to take this into my final year. Don’t make the same mistake I did!”
- 2nd Year Economist, Homerton
Education
“Education essay questions tend to be very broad so make sure you signpost early on (normally in the intro) what your argument is and what you will be considering etc and it’s okay to bring in your own reading rather than following the reading list.”
“Think about the question- what is it actually asking you, and how do you want to answer it? Don’t waste words/space just for the sake of it, try to really think about what it is you want to say, and how this helps your line of argument & make sure you address every part of the question!”
“Using essay plans to find a general line of argument for a specific topic/module and then practise remoulding/reusing that line of argument to answer essay questions.”
- 3rd Year Education Student, Homerton
Policy and International Development Track
“Choose to focus revision on studies or theorists that can work for multiple papers and answer different essay questions!”
- 2nd Year Education Student (Policy and International Development Track, Homerton)
Engineering
“There are lots of past papers on the department website – doing as many as you can is really good preparation. Work out how many you want to do, and set out a revision schedule with what paper you’ll do on each day. To start with, it’ll be hard, the papers will take far longer than the time you’re given and you may need to look at the cribs multiple times for help. That’s perfectly alright. As time goes on, you’ll get quicker and make fewer mistakes.”
“It’s a good idea to do some revision over Christmas, just to keep things in your head, abd it’s a really good idea to start doing your main block of revision in the Easter holidays, even if your exams aren’t until June.”
“At least this is what I’ve done throughout my course and it has worked so far. I find doing past papers better than spending a while looking over notes, because you get a sense of what they want you to know – the notes often contain lots of interesting information you’ll never be asked about. Often, after doing a past paper, I then look over the notes for a specific section I struggled with.”
“Use the reading time wisely! In engineering you get 10 minutes reading time. If you have a choice of questions, decide which you’re going to tackle. You can start thinking about your approach to the question which will save you time when you’re allowed to start writing.”
- 4th Year Engineer, Trinity Hall
“Carefully read the mark schemes and learn what the examiners expect of you. Some questions particularly in physics and chemistry expect very specific phrasing.”
“Past paper questions, plenty of past paper questions. Do not blindly read notes – it is a waste of time. Identify your weak areas and work on them.”
- 2nd Year Engineer, Homerton
English
“If there is a compulsory aspect to your paper, make sure that you absolutely revise for that. There will be no place to hide in demonstration of that knowledge.”
“For the rest of the paper, where you can answer with any texts, the examiner won’t know what you have or haven’t studied, so the way you revise is up to you.”
“Remember there’s such a thing as having too many texts. 2-3 max of any form is more than enough. They want to see depth in your answer.”
“Try to show a range of everything in your paper. By everything I mean genres, forms (prose, poetry, drama), time periods and styles of writing. One essay may be very heavily focussed on one text with a few others supporting, another essay might show equal consideration to all texts. One might be more historical and one more analytical.”
“Everyone has different strengths and styles – the examiners are not looking for a set type of answers so don’t be afraid to write in your own way.”
- 3rd Year English Student, Corpus Christi
“Take past papers and do essays/essay plans; then turn the plans into mind maps; turn the mind maps into flash cards; memorise the flash cards, write them out repeatedly. Plan out how long to spend on each section and question.”
- 2nd Year English Student, Corpus Christi
Geography
“Don’t focus too much on references. You’re marked on the quality of your argument, not the amount of names you cite so read on a topic until you feel like you understand it then move on. You get way more credit for a good argument than you do for lots of quotes/refs.”
“Don’t waste time memorising hundreds of references, and, importantly, don’t panic! These exams don’t count for anything, just do the best you can do and don’t be too hard on yourselves.”
- 3rd Year Geographer, Fitzwilliam
“Remember you don’t have to revise every topic! Be selective and intentional with what you revise. Obviously you want to cover your back but don’t feel like you have to revise absolutely everything – it’s a bit different to A levels in that respect (but quite nice because you can leave things you struggle with the most/find less interesting). On that note I would definitely say revise the topics you’re most interested in (obviously making sure it aligns with covering your back in terms of exam Qs), because it definitely helps motivate you/makes revision a bit more enjoyable.”
“Also practice Qs are key – I liked to make a big bank of them and work my way through a few – obviously you don’t need to do all of them, or even do essays for the ones you do answer – even just doing an essay plan is very helpful! This is also useful in helping you spot any patterns in the questions they ask and you can start to think about things which come up a lot, or come up with your own practice Qs based on this.”
“Also working with others where you can can be so helpful – talking through topics together, or how you’d approach certain questions – and is also a nice way to mix it up from staring at a screen all day.”
“Don’t feel like you need to know absolutely everything – you really really don’t! At least for Geography, it’s much more about how you engage with and use the literature, different concepts etc – how you synthesise them, how you construct an argument, how you add your own commentary/thoughts – so practising this is just as (if not more) important than feeling like you need to read everything ever.”
- 3rd Year Geographer, St Catharine’s
“My DoS always said if you don’t do one thing that isn’t Geography per day you won’t have the “brain space” to handle the info thrown at you.”
- 4th Year Geographer, Homerton
History and Politics
“For History and Politics it helps to know your opinion about some of the major essay talking points before you go into the exam, and think about what evidence you would need to back up your argument.”
“I found making powerpoints about each essay topic worked well for me to prepare, and also going back and looking at some more stuff on the reading list that I didn’t have time to read when I first did the topic.”
- History and Politics Student (graduated last year), Sidney Sussex
HSPS
“Don’t freak out if you find an essay question you aren’t sure about- sometimes it forces you to be more creative and original with your approach. Almost all of my highest scoring essays were on topics I felt uneasy about.”
“You don’t need to know everything on the reading list! In fact it is often better to study the starred key texts and then find original examples and other texts to show wider reading/understanding.”
“Clarity and structure are key- practise writing about key concepts in the simplest way you can think of, you don’t need to be ‘fancy’ a lot of the time you just need to get your point across clearly.”
“Try not to get freaked out about how other people are choosing to revise e.g. some colleges will have had mocks but lots don’t and it doesn’t make a noticeable difference if you’ve kept up to date with your work. Also, some people revise all 6 topics they did supos on, some people just revise 3- consider how reliable the questions are and then decide on what’s best/most sensible for you rather than what everyone else says! (although one back-up topic is often useful.)”
“Look at past papers early on in your revision to get a sense of the style and where to focus revision.
Practise timed papers/essay questions- even doing one can be really helpful!”
- 3rd Year HSPS Student, Newnham
Land Economy
“For Paper 1 and 3, if you want to use Word the whole time (and not have to switch around with writing out equations and typing things), it would be good to try and familiarise yourself with using equations. Perhaps type lengthier equations out beforehand so during the exam you can just copy and paste these.”
“For Paper 2, make sure you’re familiar with cases and you know the academic debates well and the opinions of leading academics so you can incorporate these different viewpoints within your essays (there are lots of really good law blogs you can use – e.g. Mark Elliott’s one – publiclawforeveryone)
Paper 4 – good to read up on current news, maybe choose a few topics to specialise in and gather lots of reading material on that beforehand.”
“For a 24 hr exam, I’d recommend against staying up the entire 24 hours trying to complete your exam + make sure you get enough to eat during the 24 hour window.”
“Revise using past year questions + read the examiners’ reports. May also be useful to categorise past year questions by topics and see generally what the expectations are for each topic.”
- 2nd Year Land Economist, Newnham
Law
“For legal problem questions, I cannot recommend the use of flow charts enough.”
“Organise, organise, organise!”
- 3rd Year Law Student, Christ’s
“Collaboration is even more important for law!!!”
“Don’t bother reading every case – use case books which give you all the relevant stuff.
Make flow charts for PQs with condensed info, and then more details notes for essays.”
- 2nd Year Law Student, Trinity
Maths
“Spend quite a lot of time thinking about question selection as it makes a big difference in the maths exams. Also I’ve found it useful to carry out a loop: revise, do tripos questions, revise anything I found hard in that question, and so forth.”
“Take the time to revise thoroughly over Easter, but practising Tripos questions is the key part of revision – that’s the best way to learn the material, through practice.”
“Don’t spend all 24 hours inside your room.”
- 2nd Year Mathematician, Trinity
Medicine
“Medicine is mostly rote learning, try and start early if you can. Also, questions are often reused and certain topics are more popular than others, do lots of past papers if your college medsoc has them.”
“If you have 24 hour exams (mostly if you’re intercalating) then don’t procrastinate the first block of time as you’ll feel much worse missing the sleep later.”
- 4th Year Medic, Fitzwilliam
“Read MCQs carefully, e.g. the word not!”
“FAB: to help with steeplechases, perhaps use McMinn’s Clinical Atlas to help with learning how to identify structures. I found that, often the MCQs were phrased in the same way as the manual.
Have a look through some MCQs to see what they are like.”
“I’m going to give essay advice tentatively as this is the first year I’ll be doing them in an exam: this year, I’m taking previous essay titles and making plans for them before the exam so that you can consider how to present the information in a structured and logical format; I think essays only need bits of extra reading.”
- 2nd Year Medic, Christ’s
MMLL
“Flashcards were useful for learning particular quotes or critics for literature essays.”
“To practice translation, pick a random passage from any novel you might have lying around and have a go at it!”
“Apps like Quizlet and Memrise were super useful, especially at ab initio stage of a language.”
“Immersion in the week before the exam – any music you listen to is in that language, you set your phone and social media to that language (if it isn’t already!), you only watch movies or series in that language (and you switch off the subtitles!), you read the news headlines in that language, you talk to yourself in that language…”
“Academic success doesn’t define you, a first is no good to you if getting it makes you miserable. Taking care of yourself is more important than any exam. Don’t push yourself to the limit, just do your best. You’re capable and your best IS good enough.”
- 4th Year MMLL Student, St Catharine’s
“For literature papers – go through and plan all the past paper questions on moodle (any questions you can’t answer then go away and do some read on it), make a word document with all your lecture/supo notes + organise it by theme, device, character etc so that in the exam you have a searchable note bank you can get ideas from!, make a quote bank with lots of useful secondary/primary quotes and also if you’re friendly with your supo partner then share your essays with each other as revision resources! Often it’s good to get another perspective on a topic.”
“For language papers – make a ‘cheat sheet’ with all the common grammar mistakes you make, so that in the exam you can go through these and check you haven’t made them. With it being an open book this year, vocab is less important but still useful to revise. Practice practice practice, i.e. do past papers/open a foreign language book and translate a page of it for practice.”
“For oral – practice with the past papers regularly and make a oral phrases sheet to revise from with good sentence starters/verb structures to try and weave into your speaking.”
- 2nd Year MML Student, Newnham
MMLL, Linguistics
“For first year exams, practicing past data questions and essays can be very helpful. Sometimes the essay questions can be predictable, which means you could expect certain topics to come up in the exam (still remember though that even if they’ve come up in the past several times there’s no guarantee they will again; maybe the examiner was feeling creative when writing the exams and this year’s exams could end up being different than what you expected – so, revise broadly too).”
“There are often many ways of approaching a question. There is not a single expected answer. So, even if you think “that’s not what I’m expected to write”, it could well be that it’s a valid way of approaching that question, as long as you argue clearly for your position. Equally, you will *not* be expected to fit in everything you could possibly talk about in 1500-word exam essays, so don’t worry if you have to leave things out (there really isn’t space to cover everything in only 1500 words).”
“Unpacking the essay question is always useful (the prompt may have an interesting wording, or maybe it contains several parts you need to talk about). Don’t skip the planning stage either. Even if you like very short essay plans, having an idea of what you will say before actually writing it down will hopefully help you make it more coherent.”
- 2nd Year Linguist, St John’s
Music
“Annotating scores, cutting up scores and rearranging.”
“More hours of revision does not always equal better grades. Plenty of sleep and time off work wonders. Be kind to yourself!”
“Making bullet point plans for loads of past questions served me really well in my finals! Also creating big mind maps on different topics. Explaining or talking through a question with a friend or family member is also super helpful. Finally, when I did open book exams in my last year, I made a catalogue of all of my notes on lectures and reading – each was labelled with key themes, brief comparisons with other literature and topics they might be useful for. Took a little while but meant that during the timed open book exams I didn’t waste any time finding relevant notes!”
- Music Student (Graduated 2020), Sidney Sussex
Natsci
“I did a real mix of subjects. Maths B, Chem, Earth, E&B. Some essay based (latter two), some problem sheet based (former two). Honestly, just do as many past papers as you can. You can find them on Moodle. Email supervisors out the blue and ask for help if you’re properly stuck – they will be willing to help you in 9.9/10 cases.”
- 2nd Year Natsci Student, St Catharine’s
Natsci – Biochem
“Revise early. Practice essays and past papers. Get Mark Schemes from your supervisor if possible or go through with friends.”
“Plan loads of essays.”
- 3rd Year Biochemist, Corpus
Natsci (Part II) Physics
“During the exam, move on as soon as you get stuck, because the exams are very time-pressured< and you can’t afford to miss out on easy marks in later parts of the question/paper.”
“For physics in particular, make sure you have practised all the standard “bookwork” questions so that you can answer them quickly without having to spend too long thinking.”
“Learn the content and do lots of practice questions.”
- 3rd Year Natsci Student
“Hand Write short summaries of each subject and proofs/derivations that appear in past papers — and just learn them.”
- Physics Student (Graduated), Churchill
Natsci Material Science
“Focus on doing past exam questions and learning about the topics that most frequently come up in exams, rather than trying to write notes on every detail of the course.”
“Be really careful about the timings in a 3hr exam, don’t spend more than 40 mins on a question, and if you’re running out of time, bullet pointing ideas is better than not giving any answer to part of a question.”
- 4th Year Natsci Student, Material Science, Newnham
Psychology
“Be aware that you don’t have to remember all of the information from your papers because the literature is endless and this would be unreasonable to expect from students, even for Cambridge.”
“Revise the topics you’ve explored in the essays you’ve chosen and try to read around them in topics which overlap with other topics the lecture covered but you didn’t choose to do for essays.”
- 2nd Year Psychology Student, Corpus Christi
Vetmed
“Learning content for MCQs will give you knowledge for the essays.”
“You don’t need to learn everything for exams, if something is taking up too much time, move on (you can revisit later if you have the chance).”
“Use resources like VIN or make your own diagrams/quizzes for visually learning anatomy.”
- 4th Year Vetmed Student, Newnham