3-Bullet Summary

You’ll benefit more from reading the article the whole way through. But, if you’re pressed for time, here’s a condensed version of The Ultimate Guide on How to Revise for Top Grades:

• There are loads of different ways to revise and many students frankly pick the wrong methods.
• Revision boils down to 2 essential principles: active recall and spaced repetition.
• To revise for top grades, follow the RCAR framework: recall, categorisation ladder, apply and review.

Pomodoro? Mind maps? Flashcards?

It’s that time of year again: exam season.

You know that these next few months make or break your entire year. They either reward you with A’s and distinctions, or punish you with the guilt of failure.

Like most students during this season, you’ve mustered the willpower to sit at your desk and commit to a revision session. However, as you sit down, you realise something.

You don’t know how to revise properly.

Like any normal human in the 21st century, you turn to the internet for answers.

“I’ll be in and out,” you say to yourself. “I’ll get my answers and have a productive morning of revision.”

Suddenly, you’re bombarded with a swarm of opinions and information.

“Use the Pomodoro technique”, says one YouTube influencer. “Create beautiful, visual mind maps,” you read on a blog post. “Flashcards got me A’s,” declares a random Instagram page.

Like with most things in the student advice space, you’re left feeling overwhelmed. There’s so much noise but you can’t determine the signal.

Surely everyone can’t be correct, right? How do you revise properly?

Introduction

Revision was my arch nemesis for a very long time.

For probably 7 years (year 7 through to my second year of sixth form) I literally had no idea how to revise effectively. Some days, I’d read for a few hours, on others I’d make flashcards. However, for the bulk of my later years of secondary school and sixth form, I’d take notes — lots and lots of notes. I’d rewrite entire textbooks. Then, I’d condense those notes into smaller textbooks. Finally, I’d write them even more concisely onto flashcards.

I did this for 8 hours per day, every day. My life became enveloped by studying. I’d skip out on social experiences and neglect physical exercise so I could take notes. Sure, I was getting good grades, but that was only because revising was my life, not because I was doing it properly.

But, things changed one day.

It was a late weekday evening. At the time, I was in college. What was my favourite thing to do in the evening during this period? Doom scroll on the internet!

However, instead of consuming unproductive content this time, I decided to watch some stuff on revising, because my teacher had said in class that day that we had an upcoming mock.

As I scrolled through my Google feed, an article by productivity YouTuber Ali Abdaal popped up. It was about how to revise effectively for exams — how topical! I clicked in; the ambient white background captivated my attention instantly.

To cut a long story short, he referred to a set of principles in, and proceeded to recommend a book called, Make It Stick. These principles, he convincingly argued, are the very ones underlying effective studying.

My eyebrows raised; these principles were the opposite of what I was doing. I’d been called out for studying ineffectively, and given a new framework to use instead.

Because I trusted Ali and the authors of Make It Stick, I decided to give their methods a go.

And sweet baby Jesus were they effective!

You know that mock I mentioned earlier — the one I had coming up? I got an A*. This was cool, but I was used to getting A* grades because I was a hard worker. What I wasn’t used to, however, was that I literally revised for half the time I usually would have.

Just a few simple tweaks to my methods revolutionised my approach regarding how to revise. Since that day, I have continuously refined my revision framework, and I can confidently say that it works very effectively. It got me three A*’s at sixth form, it’s put me at the top of my university and I teach it to students weekly.

Today, I will be sharing with you this revision framework. It’s grounded in scientific research, free of cost, and incredibly accessible.

Before we get into the components of the framework, though, I will share with you the very principles that changed my life forever. These principles are what power the framework you’ll soon see.

From the bottom of my heart, if you are to take away anything from this article, let it be…

The Power of Active Recall and Spaced Repetition

In Make It Stick, the authors discuss a set of revision principles that help you to, well, make what you learn ‘stick’.

Although there are quite a few in there, the two that are most important are active recall and spaced repetition.

You may have heard these two buzzwords before. I certainly had when I was in secondary school and sixth form, but no one ever explained them to me properly. So, we’re now going to unpack what these two principles mean in simple terms, and understand why they are integral to your revision strategy and getting good grades.

Active Recall

If you’ve read The Ultimate Guide on How to Study Effectively, then ‘active’ may ring a bell. In that article, we used it to describe specific studying strategies. For example, we said that asking questions about the material you’re studying and answering them in your own words is an active study method.

Active recall is why that study method works, why all active learning strategies work, and it is the same principle you must use whenever you revise. (Read that again.)

Let me explain.

See, most students revise with the assumption that their brains are sponges that absorb the information they encounter easily. This is why it is so common to see students reread, highlight and copy stuff when exam season approaches. They simply think that if they see something enough, it will sink in.

This, however, is not how the brain works.

The brain is an adaptive machine. It adjusts and develops new neural connections based on feedback.

In this way, I liken it to a muscle. Muscles grow based on mechanical tension. This basically means pushing them to the point of near or complete failure. When a muscle is pushed to this point, a signal (i.e., feedback) is sent to the brain. It says “Give me nutrients and energy so I can grow and not get beaten by this same threat again next time”. Hence, if you wanted to get a muscle to grow, instead of just showing it a dumbbell, you’d use the dumbbell to challenge it and induce a growth signal.

Likewise, your brain grows via feedback, too. Just like how a muscle grows bigger based on the signal that it’s not strong enough, your brain grows smarter based on the signal that it is incorrect and/or being challenged. For example, if you answered a question wrong and were then shown the correct answer, your brain would receive the signal to adapt and take note of the correct answer so you aren’t wrong again next time.

Therefore, when we revise, if we want to actually learn and get smarter, we need to constantly be signalling to our brains that they need to adapt. If we treat our brains as sponges and use passive learning methods, then we won’t give our brains a strong growth signal because we aren’t pushing them hard enough. If, however, we assume our brains are muscles and challenge them, then they receive strong growth signals and genuinely get smarter.

Want to know how to challenge your brain the most and provide the strongest signal?

Active recall: retrieving and applying information from memory.

Studies have shown that students who use active recall perform better in education. For instance, one team of researchers split students into 4 groups to test the impact of different revision techniques¹. Each student was asked to study the same material before being tested on it, but, depending on the group the student was in, the way they studied changed. The first group read the material only once. The second group read the material four times. The third group read the material and made a mind map. The fourth group read the material once and recalled as much as they could.

When the researchers tested the students, they found that those in group four — the active recall group — performed significantly better than all the other groups. Yes, you read that right: active recall once is more effective than rereading four times! (What was past me doing!)

So, when we get to the framework later, just bear in mind that it will be heavily centred around this principle. It is the driver of growth and at the core of how to revise effectively, so we definitely want to leverage it.

Spaced Repetition

If more students understood this graph, there’d be less problems with revision.

Figure from Schimanke, F., Mertens, R. and Vornberger, O. (2013) ‘What to learn next? Content selection support in mobile game-based learning’, E-Learn World Conference on E-Learning. Nevada, 21 October. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261952026_WHAT_TO_LEARN_NEXT_CONTENT_SELECTION_SUPPORT_IN_MOBILE_GAME-BASED_LEARNING (Accessed: 18 August 2023).

This graph is called the forgetting curve. It shows two key things:

1. The less frequently we review material we’ve studied, the more of it we forget.
2. Frequently reviewing material we’ve studied is most beneficial when the duration between reviews gets increasingly longer (so long as we’re getting things right).

In essence, the more we revise something, and the longer the gaps between revision sessions of that thing become, the better we remember it.

The reason spaced repetition is so effective is because of our old friend: active recall. The longer we leave before recalling something, the more of it we forget. Therefore, if we leave something for a while before recalling it, the more effortful it is to recall it correctly. If something is more effortful to recall from memory, the harder (i.e., more actively) our brains have to work. The harder our brains have to work, the stronger the signal it receives to adapt and grow smarter.

It is no surprise that studies dating back to the 1900s have found that pupils of primary school age all the way to university age who use spaced repetition to learn outperform those who don’t². It’s simply an effective method that combats the brain’s natural tendency to forget information it doesn’t think it needs. By recalling something constantly, you demonstrate its importance to your brain, forcing it to store that information away for when you must recall it next.

How to Revise for Top Grades

Now that you know the two principles that have the biggest bearing on the success of your revision, it’s time to turn them into a practical framework.

Importantly, this section is reliant on you having read The Ultimate Guide on How to Study Effectively. If you haven’t viewed it yet, it is highly recommended that you do so. Think about it logically: how can you revise (revisit) something if you haven’t studied (learned about) it yet?

Assuming you’ve read it, all you have to do is follow the proceeding steps in order. This framework has been curated to secure your success. If you’re consistent with it, then every minute you dedicate to revision will be productive. Guaranteed.

So, without further ado, let’s dig into RCAR: the revision framework that’ll change your grades forever!

Recall

If you read and acted on The Ultimate Guide on How to Study Effectively, then you’ll have a bank of questions and answers. This may be flashcards with questions and answers on their own respective sides, or a Cornell-style notes page. Moreover, certain question have been starred or highlighted to signify that you got them incorrect on the first recall.

The first thing you’re going to do is recall the answers to these questions again, but this time you’re going to start with all the ones you starred or highlighted.

As you’re going through the questions, you’re going to place them in one of two piles. All the answers you get correct, you place in one pile; all the answers you get incorrect, you place in the other. How you ‘pile’ your questions is up to you. You could physically pile them (if you used flashcards), colour-code them (red = wrong pile; green = correct pile), or simply code them with symbols (* = wrong pile; $ = correct pile).

Category Ladder

You now have a pile of answers you got either right or wrong. From here, we’re now going to categorise them properly. The way you choose to do this, like with the piling system, is a matter of choice (I’ll give you some options in a minute). However, your goal, no matter the format, is to place your cards into one of 5 categories:

1. Recall tomorrow
2. Recall in 3 days
3. Recall in a week
4. Recall in 2 weeks
5. Recall in a month

For all the questions you got correct on the second recall (i.e., the one you did a minute ago for the previous step), you will place them into the second category: recall in 3 days. For all the questions you got wrong, you will place them into the first category: recall tomorrow.

Your goal is to ascend the questions you take during studying all the way to category 5: recall in a month. You do this by correctly and actively recalling the answers to those questions in each of the four preceding categories. This means that you need to have correctly answered a question using active recall (i.e., retrieving the answer from memory) four times at increasingly long time intervals before you test yourself on it again monthly. (Read that again, as it’s the make or break factor that determines your success.) If at any stage of the ladder you can’t recall a question correctly, it goes back down to category 1, and you must go through the process of ascending it up the ladder again. (Brutal, huh?)

This system is basically spaced repetition. If you’re good at recalling something (i.e., you answer it right), then you test yourself on it less frequently over time. If you struggle to recall something (i.e., you answer it wrong), then you test yourself on it more frequently until it becomes something that you can answer correctly.

As mentioned earlier, there are several ways to create your category ladder. Don’t overcomplicate it; just pick one and stick with it:

• Use a note app on your phone.
• Use a spreadsheet. (Check out Ali Abdaal’s spaced repetition spreadsheet system.)
• Store your questions in five boxes, where each box = a category.
• Store your questions in five folder, where each folder = a category.

There are probably lots of ways you could categorise your notes. Regardless, just make sure that whichever system you select has 5 categories that you can easily move questions between.

Two quick caveats before moving on:

• This part of the framework is dependent on you being organised and studying the material in your course fast. If you leave your revision to the last minute, then you won’t even get the opportunity to ascend the ladder. In other words, if you’ve got a test tomorrow and you’ve only just studied the material, then you can’t physically revise your material again in 3 days time (i.e., put it into category 2) because the test will be over!
• If you’ve got an exam with short notice (i.e., you’re told one or two weeks in advance), just skip categories 4 and 5. This way, you revise content more frequently, but still get to milk the benefits of spaced repetition by using a shorter version of the ladder.

Apply

Pay attention; this is the step that will have the biggest bearing on your grades.

If you’ve followed the two preceding steps, then you’ll be regularly testing yourself at spaced intervals. But, information on its own is usually not very helpful. When you get past primary school, the questions evolve beyond basic recall and want you to do one key thing: apply your knowledge.

Take this question from one of the November 2020 AQA GCSE English Literature papers:

It wants you to analyse two poems. If we had this question and executed the two previous steps of this framework, then we would’ve learned quotes, context and interpretations about the poems in advance. However, this questions doesn’t want us to just list quotes, context and interpretations: it wants us to apply them to the question and write a detailed response.

But how do you prepare for this? How do you learn to answer the type of questions you’re tested on in an exam?

Simple: practice questions that are similar before you sit the exam.

For example, here’s the question from the same English Literature paper but from 2019:

Sure, the poem isn’t the same as the one from 2020, but the format is identical. If you’d practiced this question before your exam, and perhaps many similar ones, imagine how much more confident you’d be compared to if you’d just learned some quotes! You’d know how to put your quotes into proper exam-style paragraphs, and pick them apart effectively to demonstrate your English analysis skills.

What this shows is that, regardless of your subject, you must practice past paper questions. You learn the key skills needed to obtain high grades, and go from knowing stuff to being able to apply it.

If you followed The Ultimate Guide on How to Study Effectively, then you’ll have a big list of past paper questions that you can answer. But, if you want more, here are my favourite ways to find them:

• Simple Google searches — Go onto Google and type in ‘[insert subject] [insert the exam board your institution works with] past paper questions’. You’ll find tonnes that way.
• Your institution’s website(s) — This mostly applies to university students. If you log into your institution’s website or learning portal (Moodle, for example), then and click on the subjects/modules you’re assigned to, chances are that there will be a section dedicated to past papers.
• Textbooks — Any good textbook contains end-of-chapter practice questions. Look for ones that say ‘revision and practice’ or ‘2-in-1’ before buying them, as you’ll get content and practice questions.
• Workbooks — If you go onto Google or Amazon and type in ‘[insert subject] [insert the exam board your institution works with] workbook’, then you’ll find entire books filled with practice questions.
• ChatGPT — If you log into ChatGPT, you can literally ask it to write you extracts and questions in the style of your exam board. It’s free and super powerful.

How frequently you choose to practice questions is up to you. A rough guideline would be to complete a random set of questions, including one long (worth >8 marks) one for each subject/module every week. If you notice that certain topics are coming up a lot in the questions you’re answering, or the questions you’re each week answering are similar, swap them out for other ones in the same style (if you’re finding them easy, that is). That way, you apply your knowledge of many topics rather than just a handful.

Review

The final step of RCAR is to review your practice questions. It’s all well and good answering practice questions. But, if you don’t know how you performed, then how will you know whether you need to adjust or not? That’s why it’s so important to check your answers.

For shorter questions (<6 marks), and for those of you answering questions in numerical terms (maths, for example), I recommend just looking up the right answers and ticking or crossing your work accordingly. These questions are either never big on technique (i.e., application of knowledge to a specific structure), or have answers that can only really be achieved in just one way. Therefore, reviewing them doesn’t require too much thought. Simply judge whether you were right or wrong, and, if you were wrong, write in the correct answers.

For longer questions (>8 marks), and those answered in essay-based subjects, reviewing is a little different. These questions are big on technique. This means that they want you to apply your knowledge in a certain way. Most of the time, this means using key skills (which are sometimes called assessment objectives) and/or certain paragraph structures.

Now, you could review these questions on your own. To do this, you’ll need what I call a reference point. This is either a top-band answer (i.e., one that got a high grade) or proven paragraph structure (i.e., a paragraph format that your teachers have told you gets high grades) that you’ll compare your answer to. If you’ve used a similar structure to the top-band answer or proven paragraph structure and included the correct knowledge in the mark scheme, then you’ve probably done well.

However, in my opinion, there are two far better ways to get feedback. I have used both an they really moved the needle for me:

• Hand in your longer essay questions to your teachers for feedback — This is the cheat code to top grades. When you answer your big essay question each week (if your subject includes them), politely ask your teacher for feedback. You may think that they’ll say no, but they won’t, as long as you’re courteous. Be like, “Hi [insert teacher/sir/ms]. I’ve been working really hard at home this week. I actually wrote a response to an essay question. Would you be kind enough to mark it for me? I want to do the best I can, and I would be really grateful if you could find the time in your busy schedule to give me some guidance.” and you’ll 100% get your essay marked.
• Get a tutor — A good tutor won’t just teach you stuff, they’ll also walk you through proper exam technique and feedback to you on practice questions. Moreover, they can actually teach you how to mark your own essays. This is great because after a few months, you won’t need them anymore. You’ll absorb their wisdom and know what a good essay looks like, as well as the skills that go into them, meaning you can start marking your own essays. If you really want to take your grades to the next level, then invest in your education! (Be careful, though, because some tutoring services are dreadful and expensive. That’s why the Strong Students team offers a premium tutoring service: to cut through the noise and get you results. If you’re going to invest, do it right. Here’s a link to our tutoring page, if you want to take the jump and boost your grades fast.)

The beauty with both options is that they provide you with reference points. After a few months of handing in essays to your teachers and getting feedback, or learning from a tutor, you begin to accumulate a bank of marked responses. Some will be worth few marks, others (hopefully) worth a lot.

When you hit the point that you instinctively know whether an essay will be worth a lot of marks, which will come from seeing a lot of negative and positive feedback, you’ll be able to mark you own effectively. Additionally, you can use the comments provided by your teachers/tutors to judge your work. For example, if they marked you down one time for not making a point that clearly answered the question, then you’ll know that not making clear points loses you marks.

Regardless of exactly how you get feedback, reviewing your work is an underrated way to master your subject and refine your technique.

Don’t neglect this step!

Final Thoughts: The Ultimate Guide on How to Revise for Top Grades

In 1987, two researchers wanted to measure the impact of how you revise on your long-term memory³.

The researchers did this by getting people to learn as much Spanish as they could in 8 hours.

However, they did something very interesting: they split the participants into two groups.

The first group got 8 hours of intensive learning for one day. By contrast, the second group, who learned the exact same content, had their time split — 4 hours on one day and then another 4 hours one month later.

The researchers then left the participants for 8 whole years. When, they came back after 8 years, however, the same participants were hit with a Spanish exam.

Both groups, as you’d expect, forgot a lot. Unbelievably, however, those from the second group, the ones that had two sessions, remembered 250% more!

This study demonstrates a very clear point: how you revise matters.

In this guide, we’ve developed a bulletproof revision formula. We’ve specifically learned the importance of active recall and spaced repetition, and uncovered the ins and outs of RCAR.

I can assure you that if you consistently implement the four parts of this framework, you will get incredible grades. You’ll never turn to social media for revision advice again, because you now know what makes for a successful revision strategy.

So, you’ve got two choices: revise like the average student and obtain average results, or revise like a Strong Student via RCAR and achieve elite results.

It’s your call, but you know what you need to do 😉

Anyway, if this article has given you any value, you can easily share it by hitting one of the social icons below. Why not send it to someone you know who’s studying like a dinosaur?

Also, because you’ve read this far and want to achieve top grades, I’d highly recommend claiming your copy of The 10 Secrets of Strong Students. You’ll learn even more amazing tips and frameworks that’ll put you on the fastlane to your dream grades. Plus, it’s totally free, so you’ve got nothing to lose.

For today, though, that’s a wrap.

Stay Strong,

Sam.

Founder, Strong Students.