5 things successful students never do during exam week

Exam week is sacred time: late nights, pileups of revision, stress rising like heat. Yet, the most successful students don’t just “work harder” — they avoid certain self-sabotaging habits. These habits may feel natural under pressure, but research shows they erode performance, memory, well-being, and confidence. Below are 5 things successful students never do during exam week — along with evidence from academic studies — so that your photostory can show both the pitfall and the science behind it.

Procrastination is a classic trap. A study by Gustavson et al. published in PMC / PLOS showed that baseline academic procrastination correlates strongly with poorer goal attainment, even after adjusting for other traits. Another recent paper in Scientific Reports found that lower academic self-efficacy and difficulties in emotional regulation predicted higher procrastination among students. In exam week, delaying study tasks until the final day increases stress, reduces deep learning, and amplifies test anxiety (which also correlates with procrastination). Instead, successful students start early, break material into chunks, and follow a consistent plan.

Cutting sleep to squeeze in a few more hours of study seems tempting — but it backfires. A longitudinal study in PNAS showed that more nightly sleep in the earlier term predicted higher end-of-term GPA, even controlling for prior performance. Similarly, a study tracking students’ sleep with wearables in npj Science of Learning found that better sleep quality and consistency were linked to stronger academic performance. In another recent analysis, optimal sleep duration had a U-shaped relationship with exam scores: both too little and too much sleep hurt performance. During exam week, successful students aim for 6-8 hours (or their ideal rhythm), avoiding all-nighters, so their memory consolidation, attention, and reasoning stay sharp.

Cramming — stuffing large amounts of content just before the exam — is a widely used but flawed tactic. Educational literature (e.g. the “spacing effect”) cautions that massed learning yields shallow retention and poor integration of concepts. In fact, many studies show that distributed learning over days or weeks outperforms last-minute study. Because cramming leads to forgetting soon after the exam, it fails in both long-term and short-term retention. During exam week, top students resist the urge to do all their learning at once; they instead revisit and space out review, reinforcing neural pathways gradually.

High anxiety or hopelessness can disable performance. A study in PMC found a significant relationship between test anxiety and academic procrastination and poorer outcomes. Another work examining test-anxiety’s early indicators linked anxiety to intention to drop out or delay in tasks. When a student panics, they may freeze, skip questions, or lose clarity. Successful students maintain mental composure: they use brief breathing or mindfulness techniques (even 2–3 minutes helps), plan quick micro-pauses, and remind themselves of what they can control. In your photostory, you can show a student centering their thoughts before opening the exam booklet.

Many students feel they must sacrifice food, hydration, breaks, or short walks to “make time” — but evidence says doing so undermines cognitive performance. For example, poor sleep habits (a form of neglecting self-care) are independently associated with worse academic outcomes in nursing students. Adequate nutrition, brief physical movement, hydration, and even short rest breaks help maintain blood glucose, attention, and mood. In one sleep-study article, authors urged that consistent good sleep habits over weeks matter more than one night of extended studying. During exam week, successful students schedule short breaks, hydrate, snag healthy snacks, step outside briefly, and preserve mental energy — they don’t “run on fumes.”