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- Plan ahead. e.g., make a schedule, and keep track of your progress.
- Know thyself! Identify your strength and weakness, and develop a strategy.
- Balance group study time with individual study time.
- Make summary sheets as you study, so that you have a condensed version of the most important concepts to go through for the last week or so!
- Take practise exams seriously (see John's and Mareena's responses).
- Take advantage of the senior grad students (esp. the ones in your group!) and ask plenty of questions.
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Summaries: I enjoyed summarizing/condensing material as I go through my notes. It was easy to do with Latex notes as I just start a new section at the end of a chapter and start copying and pasting. It felt great every time I did a round of editing of my notes or added in more material! More importantly, you realize as it gets closer to the qual dates, it is much more efficient to go through your condensed summaries a couple of times, than wasting a ton of time flipping through your entire notes!
Realistic practise: John and Mareena have already stressed the importance of practise exams. I practised going 4-6 hours straight using 312 past exams (there were a ton of 312 past problems), so on the exam day going 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon were not physically or mentally exhausting.
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