How to make a study plan for an exam (by hand and with Filmina)

If you're wondering how to make a study plan for an exam, here's the short answer: write down the exam date and format, list everything that's covered, mark where you stand on each part, decide how many minutes a day you'll realistically study, and spread what's left across the days you have, with review sessions mixed in and the last day saved for practicing everything together. Then, each day, you do what's on the list and stop deciding.

That last part is where the payoff is. Without a plan, every day starts with the same question ("what do I study today?"), and the answer is usually whatever you like most or whatever's open on your laptop. With a plan, the question is already answered. A plan exists so you stop deciding every day, and so you find out early if you're running short.

In this post I'll walk through building one by hand, the three traps almost every plan falls into, and how it works in Filmina with the Study plan, step by step. The example is a written midterm in Principles of Management twelve days out, covering eight lectures' worth of slides and one textbook chapter.

What a plan that works has to include

A good exam study plan isn't a pretty schedule taped to the wall. It has to answer five things:

1. When the exam is and what kind it is. You don't prepare the same way for multiple choice, an essay exam or an oral.
2. What's covered, and how far. The lectures, the chapters, and whether a reading counts in full or only up to a certain page.
3. Where you stand on each part. A lecture you've never opened isn't the same as one you understood and just need to review.
4. How much time you actually have. Minutes per day you'll really put in, not the ones you wish you had.
5. What you do each day. Concrete steps ("study Lecture 4", "practice Lecture 2"), not "study Management".

Without the third, the plan splits time evenly and you burn hours on things you already know. Without the fifth, you've got a calendar with the course name written on every day, which is almost the same as having no plan. Every day on the plan should say what you'll do, with which file and for how long.

How to build one by hand, step by step

Using the Principles of Management midterm as the example:

1. Write the date and format at the top of the page. "Written, 12 days out." Count the days you can actually study: if you work Saturdays, those don't count.
2. List what's covered. The eight lectures (planning, organizing, leading, controlling and so on) and the textbook chapter. If your professor said the last lecture isn't on it, cross it out now.
3. Mark where you stand on each. Four levels are enough: haven't seen it, struggling, halfway, got it. What you haven't seen needs the most time; what you've got needs just a quick review.
4. Pick your minutes per day. Be honest: if you know you'll study for an hour, put an hour. Twelve days of sixty minutes is twelve hours, and that already tells you whether it fits.
5. Put new material first. Anything you haven't seen goes in the first few days, while there's still time to come back to it. The hard stuff gets mixed in, not stacked at the end.
6. Build in spaced review. Every topic you study comes back two or three days later in a short session of questions or flashcards. Spreading study across several sessions leads to better recall than cramming it all at once, and the plan is where that gets decided.
7. Save the last day for practicing everything. Mixed questions from every lecture, the way the exam will be. If something you don't know shows up that day, you can still fix it.

At the end, add up the time each step needs. If it's more than your twelve hours, willpower won't fix it: you need to cut something or add minutes.

The three traps almost every plan falls into

Underestimating. Almost all of us underestimate how long things take. People predict they'll finish sooner than they actually do, even when they've run late before. In a study plan, that shows up on day five, when you're two lectures behind. The fix is to leave a buffer day and track what you actually study, not what you planned.

Planning only reading. A plan that says "read Lecture 1, read Lecture 2, read Lecture 3" gets you to exam day without having answered a single question. Every topic on the plan needs a practice step, not just a reading one. If you want to build those questions, I covered it in how to make practice questions from a PDF.

Never touching it. The exam date moves, one lecture takes twice as long, you lose two days to a cold. A plan that can't adjust gets abandoned. Check it every two or three days and move things around without guilt.

If your exam is a week away and you need to start right now, how to study for an exam in a week has a day-by-day breakdown.

How it works in Filmina, step by step

In Filmina, a web app that explains your lecture slides out loud, this is the Study plan: it asks the same questions as the by-hand method and spreads what's left across the days you have. Here's how I'd set it up for the Principles of Management midterm:

1. Upload the slides to the course's space. Each course is a space, and each space has one plan. If you've already studied some lectures in Filmina, the plan knows: it's built from how far you've gotten in each file.
2. Open Study plan and tap Make the plan. It's six questions, one per screen: when the exam is (you pick the day on a calendar and it tells you how long you have), how you'll be tested (written, oral, multiple choice or problems), what material is covered (and how far, if not all of it), where you stand on each file (haven't seen it, struggling, halfway, got it), how you want to study it, and how much time per day (30 to 120 minutes).
3. Look at what it built. Your plan is ready appears, with how many days, how many steps and how many minutes a day, and Start with today's.
4. Do today's steps. The screen is called For today and shows the day's steps with your minutes goal next to it. Each step is concrete and tied to a file: study it, give it a quick read, read the summary, practice with flashcards, go back to what you missed, work through cases, explain it out loud. Tapping one takes you straight to doing it, and anything Filmina can verify gets checked off automatically.
5. See it in your week. The calendar blocks out the minutes the plan needs each day, alongside your Google, Apple or Outlook calendars.

What helps me most is that it won't let you fool yourself about time. If what's left doesn't fit in the minutes you chose, a card says so in numbers ("It doesn't all fit in 60 min a day") along with how many minutes you'd need. And the plan's final step is always the same: the day before, practice the whole exam.

When things change, and after the exam

To change the date, what's covered or your minutes, Change on the exam card reopens the same questions with your answers filled in. You can also ask Mina, the chat that answers from your own material: with the plan open, it suggests things like Will I make it with the plan? or Move today's to tomorrow. It can propose changing the date or which files are covered, but it never does it on its own: it shows you the old version crossed out with the new one next to it, and the plan only changes once you confirm.

If a step isn't useful to you, you can skip it, and you can mark as done anything you studied on your own. Next to the steps there's a to-do list for things that aren't studying (a problem set, a deadline), and the plan leaves those alone.

After the exam, you mark it as taken and it asks how it went. The exam is saved with specific feedback for next time: whether you crammed nearly everything into the last three days, whether you studied fewer minutes than you said you would, which files you never got to. If it went badly, it offers to build a plan for the retake. Every screen is covered in detail in the Study plan guide.

Worth knowing before you start

• It needs an internet connection and an account. Filmina is a web app: it runs in the browser on your computer or phone, and you sign in with your email.
• Making the plan is free; the steps count. Listening to a lecture uses explanation minutes, and practicing counts toward the free plan's limit. Pro, a monthly subscription, raises those limits: see pricing here.
• There's one plan per course. For two exams in different courses, you build one in each space and the calendar brings them together.
• It can't read a scanned presentation. If your material is photocopies, run it through OCR first or upload the original slides.

If you'd like to see the whole course at a glance before building the plan, the Study screen has the summary and a mind map of the whole course. And if it's your first time using Filmina, how Filmina works walks through the whole thing.

Frequently asked questions

How do I make a study plan for an exam?

Write down the date and format, list what's covered and mark where you stand on each part. Then decide how many minutes a day you'll really study and spread what's left across the days, with review mixed in and the last day for practicing everything.

How many days before an exam should I start studying?

It depends on how much is covered and where you stand on each topic, so it's better to do the math than to guess. Add up the time each part needs, divide it by your minutes per day and add a buffer day or two.

What do I do if I don't have time to study everything?

Prioritize what counts most on the exam and what you've never seen, and save a short review for what you already know. If it still doesn't fit, add minutes per day or accept leaving out the least important part, but decide that early, not the night before.

Does Filmina make the study plan on its own?

It builds it from your answers to six questions and from how far you've gotten in each file. You can change it whenever you want, and Mina can suggest changes, but none of them apply without your confirmation.