What we tell our own students. Nineteen years of watching what works in a supervised study hall, and what only looks like it's working.
Study is the easiest part of Sixth Year to get distracted from. It's also the part you have most control over.
You have plenty of time to get organised. The point of everything below is to help you get the most out of each subject while working around the life you already have — the job, the training, the music lesson — rather than pretending those things don't exist.
Read this alongside our study skills page and the study plan, which has a template you can print.
Use the exam papers. Their importance is hard to overstate — they're the most useful tool you have, both for finding out what you know and for revising.
Questions tend to resemble what has come up before. The more past questions you work through, the greater the chance you've already met a version of what appears on the day, even if it's worded differently.
At first, studying every section of every subject seems daunting. It isn't, if you stop looking at it that way. Break each subject into topic groups and take them one at a time. The effect on how manageable the year feels is out of all proportion to how simple the change is.
Then tailor how you learn to what suits you. That might be rote learning, colour-coding subsections, flashcards, posters where you'll see them, or recording your own voice and playing it back — if you find song lyrics easy to remember, that last one is worth trying.
That depends on your goals and on how much time you realistically have. But here's the part students get wrong: four hours a night is worth nothing if no learning happens in it.
Thirty minutes of intense study is often worth more than a few hours of interrupted, ineffective study. We see both every evening, and the difference in results is not subtle.
Build your plan around your existing routine. If you train for two hours on a Tuesday, don't stop training to make room for study. Time away from the books gives your brain the break it needs — you come back with more energy and better retention precisely because you focused on something else for a while.
A study plan also does something people rarely mention: it lowers anxiety. When you know exactly what you're covering and when, you stop carrying the whole year around in your head at once.
Usually the ones you enjoy — which sounds obvious but isn't always how people choose.
When you're picking subjects, assess two things honestly: your interest and your past performance. Did you enjoy it for the Junior Cert? Were you happy with the results you got in it?
Ask those questions before you decide, and be realistic about your chances of passing or getting an honour based on what's happened so far. The best combination mixes subjects you enjoy with subjects you're genuinely strong at.
If maths is the subject holding your points back, that's the one we teach. Weekly grinds in Kilkenny and online, every session recorded so nobody falls behind over a sick day, and Mathslive notes included.
And if the problem is that home isn't a place you can work, that's what evening study is for — Monday to Thursday, supervised, phones on the table.