We're the team behind Flips, a flashcard app built around the idea of showing you a term right before you forget it. From people studying for certification and professional exams, we hear two complaints over and over: “there are too many terms to keep up with,” and “the material I learned earlier slips away while I'm working through the next section.”
Struggling on a high-volume exam isn't a sign that you're not smart enough or not trying hard enough. When the volume is large, the way you memorize has to change into a form that can withstand the volume — otherwise it collapses. In this article we'll lay out how to tackle term-heavy exams with a system instead of willpower.
Why it “slips away the further you go”
A common approach in exam prep is to work through the textbook once, section by section, then move on. But people start forgetting the moment they learn (the forgetting curve), so Chapter 1 fades while you study Chapter 2, and by the time you reach Chapter 5 almost nothing from the start remains. You're in a state where your speed of moving forward is racing against your speed of forgetting. No matter how many passes you make, the gaps never fill in.
On top of that, exam terms — statutes, jargon, numbers, acronyms — often have little meaningful connection and are hard to remember in isolation. The more meaningless the information, the faster it fades, so it's no surprise that “read it once through” doesn't survive until test day.
The key: keep recalling things just before you forget
To withstand the volume, you need to keep moving into new material while continually recalling earlier material at the moment it's about to fade. Recall a term once before you forget it, and the time until you next forget it grows longer. Repeat that, and your review gaps keep widening, until eventually the memory holds with very few reviews. This is spaced repetition.
Even more effective is reviewing in a recall-based form. Rather than re-reading the relevant page, practicing retrieval (active recall) — seeing the term and producing the meaning yourself, or seeing the meaning and producing the term — strengthens retention more in the same amount of time. An exam ultimately tests you on “asked, then answer,” so practicing in a recall form day to day connects directly to test performance.
Try to do it by hand, and it falls apart fast
The principle is simple, but trying to run it with paper and pen gets hard fast. Managing, for each of hundreds or thousands of terms, “when did I learn it,” “when should I review it next,” and “which ones am I weak on” — and then picking out each day's batch — and keeping that going by hand until exam day, just isn't realistic. Most people fall back into the inefficient loop of “re-reading everything from the start again.”
We built Flips because we wanted to automate that management entirely. Based on the forgetting curve, Flips calculates the next ideal review time for each individual term. Terms you get right get longer intervals; terms you miss or feel unsure about come back sooner. You just open the app each day and answer the terms it shows you. With zero effort spent deciding “which ones to review today,” the bigger the exam, the more the benefit.
Most exam terms aren't in any off-the-shelf deck, so Flips lets you create your own custom decks. Add the terms from your textbook or past papers — term on the front, meaning on the back (or the reverse) — and they immediately become part of your spaced-repetition rotation. Recall and flip in Card Mode, or answer from four choices in Quiz Mode — both are forms of retrieval practice.
High-volume exams aren't decided by a talent for memorizing, but by how you cycle through recalling things just before you forget. Let Flips take over the most tedious part of that management for you.
Flips
The flashcard app that shows you terms right before you forget them. Your own decks are managed automatically by the forgetting curve, too. Free to start.
Learn more about FlipsFrequently Asked Questions
There are too many terms — where do I even start?
Don't try to perfect everything at once. Start by adding the highest-frequency or highest-weight sections a little at a time and get the cycle going. What matters is adding new terms while continually recalling earlier ones before you forget them. With spaced repetition, reviews of terms you already know get thinned out automatically.
I've read the textbook many times but still blank on test day.
Just reading (looking) makes you feel like you know it without building the ability to recall. Switch to a recall form — see the term and produce the meaning, or see the meaning and produce the term (active recall) — and your test-day reliability improves in the same number of passes.
What about exam terms that aren't in any ready-made deck?
In Flips you can create your own custom decks. Add the terms from your textbook or past papers as front and back, and they become review targets based on the forgetting curve. The harder-to-remember items — acronyms, numbers — benefit most from automatic scheduling.
With work or school on top, I can't manage the reviews too.
That management is exactly what to hand to an app. Flips automatically picks which terms you should review today and shows them, so you just answer what appears. Spaced repetition runs simply by opening it in spare moments.