A 4-Week Exam Period Plan (Built Backwards from the Date)

Exam season turns chaotic when you react day by day instead of planning backwards from the dates. Four weeks is enough to cover a module honestly. It is not enough to know everything perfectly. It is enough to have a system.

Here is a universal four-week plan. Paste in your own exam dates. In Hungarian universities the main vizsgaidőszak windows are typically January and May/June (some programmes also run December sittings). The worked example below uses a December date so you can see the backward calendar; the same logic applies to January, May/June, or any other finals window.

Write the hard constraints first

Open a blank page or spreadsheet. For each course, write:

• 1. Exam day and time.
• 2. Written, oral, or mixed — as your course requires (this is about how you prepare; ScienceIQ does not run oral exams).
• 3. Rough weight (credits × difficulty on a 1–5 scale is enough).
• 4. Where the material lives (PDF, slides, notes, problem sets).

If two exams fall three days apart, the harder or heavier course gets the morning blocks. The lighter one gets afternoons or leftover slots.

Do not promise yourself ten-hour days. Book two to four focused blocks and protect sleep.

The four-week logic

Work backwards from exam day.

Daily template for one course (90 minutes)

Copy this into your calendar.

• 1. 0–10 min: close the notes. Write today’s topic titles from memory.
• 2. 10–40 min: work one topic. Open the file only where the page was blank.
• 3. 40–70 min: questions: yours, past papers, or a quiz from that PDF.
• 4. 70–85 min: error list. Cap it at five items for tomorrow.
• 5. 85–90 min: schedule the next review.

If three courses run in parallel, do not triple the 90 minutes. Pick two lead courses per day; give the third a 30-minute retrieval pass.

December example: one exam in four weeks

Suppose the exam is 18 December and today is around 20 November:

• 20–26 Nov (−4): list 10–15 main topics. Mark each know / partial / blank. From the blanks, pick the five that would hurt most on the paper.
• 27 Nov–3 Dec (−3): one or two blank/partial topics per day. Closed-book retrieval, then check. Once a week, walk the full topic list.
• 4–10 Dec (−2): mix topics. Stop studying in syllabus order. Redo misses the next morning.
• 11–17 Dec (−1): two timed mocks. Then only gaps. Evening of the 17th: short list, then sleep. Morning of the 18th: no new chapters.

This does not promise a grade. It gives you a next action.

Checklist for day one of week −4

Copy it:

• [ ] Every exam date in the calendar
• [ ] One folder per course (PDF + slides + notes)
• [ ] Topic list of 10–20 items
• [ ] Know / partial / blank marks
• [ ] Daily blocks written with realistic hours
• [ ] Sleep floor written as non-negotiable (e.g. 7 hours)

Where ScienceIQ fits (and how we differ)

You can run the table in a spreadsheet. ScienceIQ helps when you need practice built from the files attached to each exam.

As of October 2026:

• Dated exam + attached PDFs. Create an exam with a date, attach the course files, and keep quizzes and cards next to that deadline.
• Quizzes, flashcards, and mind maps from your documents. Map first, retrieve second. Not a generic question bank.
• Hungarian UI and university focus. Our interface includes Hungarian. Several large English study apps we walked in October 2026 (StudyFetch, Quizlet, Mindgrasp, Turbo AI) did not. Astra AI has Hungarian, but leans harder into school exam prep; we build for university modules.
• A free plan with monthly limits. Enough to try the loop on one or two courses. In the same period, Knowt’s free AI was roughly one generation per month, Turbo’s free starter was one lesson, and Astra hit a daily wall quickly. See pricing for current Free / Starter / Pro numbers.

We do not guarantee marks. We will not sit the exam for you. We give you a next step beside your own materials.

Start week −4 today

Open your calendar. Enter the nearest exam. Build the topic list. Mark the blanks. Make the first 25 minutes retrieval, not rereading.