Has anyone ever received good marks on their finals after cramming?

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Cramming for exams can yield mixed results, as evidenced by various experiences shared in the discussion. One participant successfully crammed for a philosophy midterm, achieving a score of 90% after only three hours of study. However, others noted that cramming is less effective for subjects requiring deep understanding, such as mathematics and engineering, where rote memorization fails to translate into long-term retention or problem-solving skills. Overall, while cramming may work for some tests, it is generally discouraged in favor of consistent study throughout the semester.

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just out of curiosity, has anyone ever received good marks on their final exams by cramming all the material you learned for the class for two days?

I crammed once for a calculus class, and its no walk in the park I tell ya.
 
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It's possible, I've done it before. The problem is that now I don't remember much at all from that class. Its best to put yourself in a situation where you don't need to cram. That is, keep up with the class all through the semester.
 
Just yesterday.

I had a 2pm exam and didn't start studying until 10:00am in the morning that day.

I'm sure I got an A. I wouldn't recommend going this route though.

I normally make it a priority to actually fully understand the material. Therefore, I don't have to study that much because it all makes sense.
 
It depends on the class. I've never been success in doing that for a math exam. I crammed for about 3hrs for a philosophy midterm and got 90%.
 
I actually find cramming works best. Not so much for exams when you have a whole years worth of stuff to know but for tests and that cramming works best for me :D
 
k3N70n said:
It depends on the class. I've never been success in doing that for a math exam. I crammed for about 3hrs for a philosophy midterm and got 90%.

Man, I just remembered. I had this midterm once and started studying like 40 minutes beforehand.
 
ha ha. What class was that for??
 
It was Financial Engineering.

I was lucky though. I had a cute girl who stopped by when I just started, and we studied together. She was just in my class but I never really talked to her before. Anyways, so we just ended up testing each other non-stop for 30 minutes. I understood the material. It was just a matter of remembering the formulas.

So, as soon as the midterm started, I wrote all the formulas in the margins.

We studied again for the final along with two other girls who are really fun. If it weren't for them, I probably wouldn't have done as well as I did.
 
I definitely discourage cramming, but have I done it at one time or another? Sure. We've all made that mistake. Once in a while there's a class you can get away with doing that, because it's mostly rote memorization to answer a fill-in-the-bubble test...just hope you never need that knowledge again, because you'll forget it as fast as you learned it.

But, if you actually get challenging questions that require thinking, problem-solving, or written-out answers, you're really going to be in trouble if you cram...besides not being able to learn the material in the depth needed, you're also going to be just plain exhausted and not thinking clearly enough to even get the stuff you do know right.
 
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Just did that with a upper-level digital systems design course -- it did not help! I failed that test like no other, but so did my fellow peers, so it's all good. I guess?
 

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