Successfully Preparing for Your Comprehensive College Exams

The thought of successfully completing comprehensive examinations in pursuit of your college degree can be both daunting and overwhelming. Daunting because you know the exam date is inevitably approaching. Overwhelming because it is a culmination of all your coursework since you started the program. I do recall experiencing such feelings especially when I considered the courses that I truly did not grasp well the first time around. Yet, I had to develop my strategy of how I would tackle this next step in the pursuit of my degree. The benefit was that I had implemented my strategy long before the semester in which the comps were to take place.

I began during my first semester of courses. This strategy consisted of meeting with study groups for each of my first semester courses. Why? This helped me with the development of a support system and provided me the opportunity to hear other perspectives regarding the course materials. As I am primarily an auditory and tactile learner, hearing the perceptions of others increased my understanding of the material. In addition, engaging in study groups enabled each of us to fulfill a role in condensing the materials. For example, each person accepted responsibility to outline certain chapters from course texts and provide this to group members. This allowed each of us to have nice reference sheets of major concepts from the chapters. Therefore, we each had a comprehensive outline of all forms of course reading materials (i.e. textbooks, articles). This allowed for easy reflection during the period of study for comps.

Next, it was also important to remain organized during the start of a course rather than trying to organize when it was time to study for comps. This consisted of maintaining a binder for each class consisting of course materials. If the instructor provides materials via an online format, it is important to print out the materials as soon as possible before those materials are no longer available. Another step is to use tabs for the textbooks so you can quickly locate certain types of information that you may consistently seek. It is a benefit to keep all the information pertaining to a course in one location (i.e. binder).

As I was organized since my first course, when it came time to study for comps I was well-prepared. Now, I just needed my study group (remember, I am primarily an auditory and tactile learner). During the semester prior to the comps, I began to send emails to classmates who I felt would contribute to my learning and appeared very engaged in our courses. I also wanted to engage with those who had strengths in interacting, organization, consistency, and commitment. I was so happy to have my ideal group. In addition, I considered how important it was to keep the group small in numbers so we could maximize on our discussions. Therefore, the group consisted of three persons and lasted approximately an hour and a half per meeting. Upon the start of the semester in which comps would take place, we decided to meet weekly in order to avoid cramming. This was definitely a benefit as we had a longer period to interact with the material and better determine our strengths and weaknesses.

As a result, the steps we took to maximize on our study time included the development of powerpoints to present the material to one another, listening to archives of courses that were delivered in a distance education format, each group member teaching according to their weakness such as developing and correcting quizzes for group members on topics they had difficulty with, and developing responses to case studies according to the comprehensive question clusters. In conclusion, it is important to organize early, develop a study group, and maximize on group time with varied activities. I hope you the best as you move forward in preparing for your exams!