If you play your cards right then you might walk out with an A, well maybe not more like a B if your lucky. It can be done and you can benefit from it greatly if you know what your doing.
My definition of cramming like most people, is not studying till the night of the of the test but that doesn't mean that you have to look like a crammer. To be a crammer it takes planning and you have to actually pay attention to the teacher sometimes. Most crammers fail because they don't plan ahead thus eventually ending up wasting their time studying every single day. I don't mean to bash dedicated daily studiers since you do play an important part in a crammers lifestyle, as you will read later in this article.
If you apply these cramming tactics and you fail two exams then it's time to drop that class. Some classes drop the lowest exam score so you might want to stay in that class but remember check with your school's schedule on when is the deadline to drop classes.
You have to pay attention to the teacher or at least be semi-conscious remembering what he was wearing or what corny joke he cracked helps. Write notes in a way you'll understand them. One of the worst situations if you're a crammer is that on the night before your test you can't even understand your own notes. If you prefer not to write notes then you have to have a doormat/friend or classmate who will explain everything to you and point out the important points, you can find a lot of them since college is full of nerdy people who spend their time studying on a daily basis.
You should actually care about what is in the test if you care to pass. Enter your class early and sit in with the other early birds. The people who go in early like to discuss with others about the yesterday's lesson. Just have an open ear and ask questions. Remember those notes you took in class? You probably don't even understand. Ask your classmates to explain one area with a lot of numbers or words so you don't look too dumb. They might not be able to understand your writing either, they might think you're a genius because Einstein was always a messy guy. They will have their notebook with them, they always do and most likely they will summarize the entire lesson including the important points. Pay attention to them and keep those things in mind.
Be there during the review. If it's answering detailed homework then you really don't have to pay attention just write down the answers and later that night go through the homework that you didn't do. What's the point of doing homework on the day that it has been assigned to you if you don't understand how to do it. If he list the important things that's going to be on the exam write it down and make a square or circle around it so that you can see it.
Now it's the night before the test and you already know the important points that are supposedly going to be on the test. If you have a hard time understanding the book since it isn't in your reading level then you could search for the terms online. Google
is your best friend. If there is a word problem or formula that you don't understand then ask people online in sites like yahoo answers. There are a lot of top contributors there.
From my very own experience the more you do it you will actually see your grades get higher. Good luck to you and remember what I wrote about when to stop when my tactics don't work for you.
