Now that you've read through your study material, it would be a mega bummer if you forgot it all the next day. When you first learn something, it's initially stored in short-term memory. In order to make it to the exam date, we need to get that information to last a little bit longer. (And who knows, maybe some of the material ends up embedded in your head for a whole lot longer!)
A great way of storing information begins with breaking down the information into sections you understand. This is called summarizing, which is compiled from paraphrasing. Try to rewrite the material in your own words and break it down into neat categories. (1)
Effective Summary Structures (3)
Like anything else, it takes practice.
Keep in mind that you tend to remember things better when you write them down! It's also not about just writing a summary, it's about writing a good summary. A bad summary is about as useless as rereading the text over and over again until it sticks.
Take it a step further by asking questions and writing down the answers. Again, these should be questions related to the material you're working through. Try to imagine what sort of questions would go on the exam. This is a good way of grouping information and making it stand out to potentially recall later.
Finally, consider getting a health amount of sleep in the days leading to an exam (and really any other day). Sleep does a lot to consolidate memory according to this study (2). While we're awake, we're taking in a lot of information from that study session to encode. While we're asleep, that information is processed thoroughly with the chance to enter long-term memory. So it's not just being super studious, it's also letting that information be organized properly.
We'll dive more into sleep in part 3