Students often underestimate how much study time is required to master course concepts for an exam (Chew, 2014). Weaker students in particular tend to be grossly overconfident about how quickly they can learn. As a result, many students wait too long to begin studying for an exam and run out of time, cramming the day or two before an exam and hoping they’ve studied the concepts that will be on it. Hope is a poor study strategy. It makes sense, then, to give students a guideline about how much they have to study to prepare adequately for exams.
