How to revise for IB exams without burning out

Plan in syllabus points, not subjects

'Revise Chemistry' is not a task you can finish, so it never gets started. 'Revise stoichiometry — moles, limiting reagents, percentage yield' is. Break each subject into its published syllabus points and treat the list as your checklist; it is also exactly the list the examiners sampled from.

Retrieval beats rereading

Rereading notes feels productive because the material looks familiar. Familiarity is not recall. Close the notes and answer questions from memory; the difficulty you feel is the learning. Rereading is only useful immediately after you have failed to retrieve something.

Space the hard topics, block the easy ones

Topics you find hard should come back every few days in small doses. Topics you have nearly mastered can be left for a fortnight and then checked with a short set. Reviewing everything equally means spending most of your time on what you already know.

Timed papers once a week, per subject, from about eight weeks out

Before that, timed papers mostly measure how much you have not revised yet. From roughly two months out, one timed paper a week per examined subject builds the pacing and stamina that content revision cannot.

Mark it the same day while you still remember your reasoning, and re-answer every dropped question.

Protect the coursework deadlines

IA and EE deadlines land in the middle of revision season and will eat it whole if you let them. Schedule coursework in fixed blocks and revise around them, rather than the reverse — an unfinished IA costs guaranteed marks, a skipped revision session costs probable ones.

Sleep is part of the method

Consolidation happens during sleep, so a late night spent revising frequently costs more than it adds. Stop at a fixed time, and treat the last week before exams as a taper rather than a sprint.