While this article may be geared more towards freshmen who are preparing for their first set of final exams in high school, these ideas hold true today for me even as a senior. Here are five tips to survive finals.

Prioritize!

You need to organize all of your classes to see which ones are worth stressing over and those that aren’t. That 96% in history you have is not as important as the 79% in math. Chances are if you have a solid A in the class, there’s a good reason for it and you won’t need to study as much. Borderline grades (91-89, 81-79, etc.) are much more important, and that’s where you should focus your efforts. How do you know how much you need to study? This brings me to my next point.

Get to know Mrruth.com

Upperclassmen are probably familiar with this wonderful website, and underclassmen I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Thanks to our own teacher, David Ruth, you can estimate how much studying each subject of yours needs. By inputting your current grade, desired grade, and final exam weight (usually 20%, ask your teacher!), you can see exactly what score you need on the final to get the desired grade. For example, I have a 93.68 in math, and I definitely want to keep the A in the class. Based on the calculator, I need a 75.3% on the final exam to maintain my A. I’m fairly confident I can get that 75%, so I won’t study as much as I would other classes. This is an excellent tool to become more familiar with the grading system and it will definitely help you prioritize.

Also, the new app provided my Mr. Ruth and his class allows you to enter your ID number and get your personalized finals schedule without the hassle of sorting through the normal spreadsheets.

Sleep

Sleep? There’s no time to sleep, I have three tests tomorrow! Well while you might think that’s true, staying up all night studying will do you no good. In my experience, the extra hour of sleep has been more beneficial than the 20-30 minutes extra studying, because let’s be honest, you’ll probably spend a lot of that time watching TV or on the computer rather than studying. Definitely try and sleep more than you would on a normal school day.

Dress comfortably, not to impress

This seems like something minor however the way you dress and feel will help you during the test. It doesn’t mean come to school in your pajamas (but if it works..) but also there’s no need to dress to impress. Are you trying to look nice for that science test? It’s important to stay both relaxed and focused on the exam, and dressing appropriately will help do so.

Relax

If you haven’t already, you’ll come to know that generally final exams are not as big a deal as everyone makes it out to be. Don’t get me wrong, you should study and do well on them but by no means do you need to ace every test. The reality is a lot of the time, the tests are easier than what you might expect because it covers the broad ideas of the semester’s material and not the nitty gritty details. While 20% may seem like a lot, you’ll find that a final exam won’t hurt your grade that much.

That’s all I’ve got for now, good luck to you all on your finals!