With finals just around the corner, students are starting to feel the pressure and stress that comes with taking the last exams of the semester. Here are some words of advice on how to ace your test from the people who make them: NYU professors.

“Don’t study the night before. In college, I used to start reviewing very early like about a third of the way semester. I would review past material while learning the new material. The hardest questions on finals usually come from the beginning and you have to do a lot of review. Something that I tell my [Chemistry] students is to talk to one another and help each other. One thing I like to do is just remember that everyone is in the same boat as you. I remember getting nervous and I tried to remember that if my other classmates can do it, then so can I.” — CAS professor John Halpin

“Review the notes and lectures especially the homework problems that are given by the professors. Homework is a good indicator is how well you will do on the exam” — CAS professor J. Huston Mcculloch

“For math classes, it is important to be proficient and confident in your calculations. Often times, difficult math problems are made up of smaller, simple steps that you already know. It is about being quick and accurate with those small steps. I think a helpful thing is to try to take a mock final exam by taking a list of ten problems and trying to do them in a fixed amount of time. It isn’t the about the difficulty of the questions, but doing them under the time limit. ” — CAS professor Dmitry Zakharov

“One of the strangely effective ways I studied was to write key themes and ideas on notecards. It made me feel more in control. One of the most difficult things for students is to focus on the detail. You should know the small details down before getting to a more general theme. People tend to overgeneralize.” — Liberal Studies professor Joyce Apsel

Email Eva Luong at [email protected].