Start early. If you have a cumulative final for a class with seven units, cover one unit a day for a week allotting two days at the end for general review. You will thank yourself for it later.

Pick your book apart. That book you paid $200 for and never cracked open? Crack it. Crack it hard. If you are fortunate enough to have bolded key words or explanations in the margins, go through page by tedious page and copy every single vocabulary word and explanation into a word document and study from it. If you can do it easily, it helps to print it too. Odds are everything you need to know is in it. The dead giveaway is when every single question from all of your previous tests is answered in the margins. You will probably feel stupid for not doing it sooner.

1. Make some flashcards if that is your thing. If you are a visual person, flashcards might be for you. But do not take the easy way out and use an online flashcard generator, because half of the learning is in actually sitting and copying your definitions or notes into concise blurbs by hand. 
2. If you need to sleep, sleep. It seems like there is always a new “most efficient” form of napping. As a skeptic of anyone who tells me how or when to sleep or eat or exercise, I almost never listen to these people, but I have found that sleeping for fifteen-minute intervals is actually really helpful. I wake up feeling better than when I fell asleep instead of frothing with hatred like I so often do after a longer slumber and it is not long enough to make you disoriented. Set an alarm for twenty minutes to give yourself enough time to fall asleep and snooze away without fear of ruining your whole study session.
3. Use those whiteboards on wheels. Gather your comparably intelligent friends and squirrel yourselves away in The Hub for several hours at a time covering as many of those little whiteboards as you can hoard in as much information as possible without writing irrelevant information. If you need to remember individuals and their contributions to a body of thought, write every one of their names with as many one to three word snippets about them as possible, doing everything you can not to use notes to do so. Designate a secretary to type down everything being written on the board so you can study from it later. Throw in some humor to make it memorable. If it helps you remember that Emma Goldman is probably the most important anarchist thinker ever to write bae beside her name, do it. She is probably turning over in her grave as we speak.
4. Take advantage of your resources. If you are in entry level classes and are struggling, use any one of the many tutoring services you have available. Go to The Study, ask a friend who has taken the class before, or utilize your sorority or fraternity's study files. For some classes, they might actually have old tests on file if the professors release the tests. If all else fails, ask around until an older person in your chapter can help, or if it is in a particularly obscure class (like upper level foreign language—may God have mercy on your soul) rely on your professor and your classmates. They are usually more than happy to help, so long as you are not showing up to your professor’s office hours thirty minutes before your exam in a haze of coffee and tears. 
5. Switch up where you study...Supposedly, studying different places can increase the amount of content you retain. Willie T is massive with some variation in how it looks on different floors, but it more or less looks the same. Check out the many other libraries, coffee shops, all but abandoned academic buildings, and cute pastry shops on or near campus for a change of scenery. If you are fortunate enough to live in one of the new dorms, take advantage of your active learning centers and nice common areas as well. 
6. … But chew the same gum (preferably cinnamon). While you should switch up where you study, chewing a certain flavor of gum while studying material and chewing that same gum during exams allegedly increases your ability to remember what you were studying—and in addition to being delicious, cinnamon increases memory power as well, which is what I tell my friends when they make fun of me for eating entire tins of cinnamon Altoids in one sitting. 
7. Write your professors thank you notes. Turn them in before you hand in your final paper or exam and not with them so as to not look like a total brown-noser, but not so far before that he or she forgets about it. At the very worst, your professor’s day is made a little bit brighter by a simple act of kindness and you have sufficiently expressed your gratitude for someone who has taken time out of his or her life to help educate you. At the very best, your professor feels a little bit more charitable grading your final or when you ask for a letter of recommendation. There are literally no downsides. For greater effect, put them in cute little non-denominational holiday cards. 
8. Go to optional classes during dead week. Those professors who are kind enough to make dead week class optional will also take notice if you make it to class anyway. Regardless of whether or not this gets you a better grade, you are forging a better relationship with your professor. This is especially important in major classes where you might need to take the professor again. 
9. Don’t forget to shower. Nobody wants to smell you. We are all stressed out and holed up in the library together. Please love yourself or I am breaking out some soap and a loofah. 
10. Dress well, test well. Students who dress better for exams also perform better on exams, so long as they are still comfortable. I’m not saying break out your senior prom dress. Just maybe throw on the nicer leggings and a sweater with riding boots instead of your “I Have Given Up” sweat suit (which you can purchase here if your little heart so desires).  
11. If you have a final paper, your set of concerns is likely entirely different and cannot be approached exactly the same way. The writing center in The Hub is a fantastic place to go for help, but if you get down to crunch time and really need some feedback, contact me on social networking. I am a trained editor and I have never gotten below an A on a paper in my entire life. Before you do that, however, please follow these tips as closely as possible, careful to remember that I do not know anything about science writing and that this list does not apply to that type of writing: 
    I. Write an outline that encompasses everything you could possibly include as a point with your strongest points at the beginning and end.
    II. Fill in the outline with your explanations.
    III. Remove any points you did not expand upon.
    IV. Remove subheadings and replace them with transitions.
    V. Cite your sources using the appropriate form with care not to plagiarize.
    VI. Check your word count. If it is low, add supporting details and adjectives; if it is high, search for superfluous details and remove them, combine long phrases into vocabulary words that mean the same thing, and remove adjectives.
    VII. Proofread.
    VIII. Make your friend proofread because you will inevitably have missed something.*
    IX. Submit your paper.
    X. Pat yourself on the back and eat a pint of ice cream.
    * This is where you can contact me if you are becoming desperate. 
12. When finals week is over, do what you need to do to feel human again. Go get a massage, a manicure, and a pedicure on the same day. Go to the Humane Society and play with puppies (or kitties if you prefer, you weirdo). Go home and eat grandma’s fried chicken and gravy for three consecutive meals. You do you, because you deserve it.