You might want to reconsider your approach to studying. The fact of the matter is that if you had done a good job studying, you wouldn't have needed to review an old exam to do well, you should have been able to get the high marks without benefit of old exams being passed around.
Those who seemed to put in less time studying may simply have been more focused and efficient in their studying, not really learning less.
I'll point out where there are problems with the approach taken, as you've described it, so you can improve your study skills for future classes.
AshNZ said:
Then I spent two days in the study week and went through a 200 page book highlighting important points and taking endless notes (mind maps, brainstorms - you name it!).
Two days going through 200 pages with highlighting and note-taking? First, that is too much to be trying to cram in in only 2 days. Highlighting is not an effective way of studying; it's entirely passive and doesn't require anything you're reading to be processed by your brain in any way that is going to help you understand and remember it. The things you describe being done in 2 days of the last week of studying are things you should have done as the chapters were assigned, so that by the time you are getting around to studying, you could be thinking about the material at a higher level, processing it, applying it, and importantly, remembering it without having the book open.
I also went over past 5-6 years exam papers but made a point to not to focus on them for too much (surely they won't repeat the same questions as last few years).
Why would you not use the old exams? No, you wouldn't necessarily expect the exams to be identical, especially if old copies are released, but they are a great study tool that you dismissed for some reason. How else do you test your knowledge without testing yourself? It sounds like you probably just looked at the exams, read the answers, and put them aside. That's not an effective way of using old exams for studying. You should have sat down and taken each and every one of them as if you were taking the exam. They give you an idea of the topics your professors think are important (usually they think they are important for a reason, such as they are common things you'll encounter when you actually need to use the course material later), and how well you know them. If you sit down and work through each problem, you'll identify the areas that you still don't know well. Got the wrong answer? Got stuck on one? Focus on relearning those topics. The ones you get right, okay, you know you know those and can check them off and not waste time re-reading those notes and doing a lot of problems in those chapters.
Boy, was I wrong? The exam papers was 95% same as 2008 paper! As a result of this, the guys who ONLY went through last 1-2 exam papers the night before did a better job than I did.
Honestly, if they didn't know the subject well already, even reviewing the same exact exam the night before wouldn't have helped much, because they wouldn't have understood it all enough to remember how to do it. Those who were only reviewing a few exams the night before may have been keeping up with their studying all along, and already understood the material, so could relax and just review some old exams to confirm they were comfortable with the material already.
My mistake was to be wanting to cover everything done in class and be diverse and through in my revision.
The mistake was to be doing this on the week of the exam. And this also sounds like you're not listening and taking notes carefully in lecture either. Professors give a LOT of hints about the topics they think are most important for you to know, and these are the things they will test you on. They don't just pick random things for testing, they pick the things they think are most important to know if you are going to be successful in a career that uses content from that course. As you're taking notes in class, don't just transcribe what the lecturer is saying, really listen. If they repeat something 3 times, or their voice gets louder, or they say something like, "this is really important," or "you're going to see this over and over," then put a star next to it in your notes (or some other mark that tells you this was emphasized) and when you study, make sure you know that!
I will still probably get around 70% but the guys who studied the night before reckon they will get 85+ (when I told them I will get around 70 they were like, "WHAT?!?" because they know I worked hard on it. What a shame. I don't have anything against those guys but in general I do feel that the education system is totally screwed.
Again, you don't really know that time spent studying on the week of exams is reflective of the amount of knowledge or a lack of knowledge. There are also plenty of people who simply don't brag about how much they've been studying. They may not have studied much the week before because they already felt confident in what they had learned during the course.
So, no, it's not unfair. It doesn't feel good to get a worse grade than you thought you were going to get, but when that happens, that means it's time to seriously evaluate your approach to studying and learn from your mistakes so you don't repeat it again in other classes.
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