Physics catch-up exam: how to prepare for the September test

If you have a failed subject to make up in physics (in Italian, a debito) and the exam is at the end of August or in September, the first thing to get out of your head is the idea that you have to revise the whole syllabus for the year. You don’t need to, and with the weeks you have it would even be counterproductive. What you need is to understand exactly what the exam will ask and build a plan around that.

Every summer I work with students in your situation, so what follows is not theory: it is the method I actually use in catch-up lessons.

What to expect from the exam

The format varies from school to school, but in most cases the physics catch-up exam is written, lasts between one and two hours, and mixes two kinds of request:

• Applied exercises — the same types of problem seen during the year, often simplified compared with the original tests.
• Short theory questions — definitions, statements of laws, sometimes an “explain why” question that requires having understood the phenomenon, not just the formula.

Some schools add a short oral, especially if the failed subject involves more than one subject or if the class council wants to check understanding beyond calculation. As soon as you have the official notice of the failed subject, look carefully at the exam syllabus it lists: it is the most important document you have, more important than the textbook. It tells you exactly what to concentrate on.

One detail many students underestimate: the catch-up exam syllabus almost always matches the syllabus actually covered in class, not the full table of contents of the book. If your class did not get to a certain chapter during the year, it is unlikely to appear in the September exam. It is worth asking your teacher directly, or getting the syllabus from a classmate, before losing hours studying topics that will not come up.

The mistakes that lead to a failed subject in physics

Before talking about the plan, it is worth understanding why people end up failing, because the same mistakes — if you don’t correct them — will leave you unprepared for the September exam too:

1. Learning formulas by heart without understanding the quantities. Remembering $F=ma$ is useless if you don’t know what each letter stands for and in which situations it applies. In the exam, an exercise that changes the data slightly compared with the one seen in class throws anyone who has only memorised.

2. Not doing exercises, only reading theory. Physics is learned by solving problems, not by rereading the chapter. Students who end up failing have often “studied” in the sense of having read, but have never tested their understanding with a real exercise.

3. Confusing laws and definitions. A physical law describes a relationship between quantities observed in reality — for example Ohm’s second law:

   $$R=\rho \frac{l}{S}$$

   a definition, on the other hand, is a choice about what to call something (for example the definition of average speed). Anyone who treats them all as “formulas to remember” loses track of what they are actually calculating.

If you want a fuller picture of these mistakes, with examples on the inclined plane, reference frames and conservation laws, I have written a dedicated article: typical physics mistakes in high school.

The catch-up plan for the 2-3 weeks before the exam

With two or three weeks available you do not have time to revise everything, so the plan depends on the year and on the topics actually failed. Here is how I usually structure it.

First two years: kinematics, dynamics, first laws

If the failed subject is from the first or second year, the topics that come up almost every time are:

• Kinematics: uniform and uniformly accelerated straight-line motion, with the basic formulas such as $v=v_0+at$ and $s=s_0+v_{0}t+\frac{1}{2}a{t}^2$.
• Dynamics: the three laws of dynamics, force diagrams, the inclined plane.
• Basic electricity: Ohm’s first and second laws, simple series and parallel circuits.

The typical plan: week 1 devoted to kinematics (theory + exercises every day, not crammed into a single afternoon), week 2 to dynamics, the last days of week 3 to a full timed practice test plus targeted review of the mistakes that emerged.

Last three years: thermodynamics, waves, electromagnetism

If the failed subject is from Year 3, 4 or 5, the syllabus is wider and you need to be more selective. The topics I see most often in these exams:

• Thermodynamics: the laws, the cycles, the concept of efficiency — often asked more at a conceptual level than as heavy calculation.
• Waves: mechanical waves, interference, sound waves.
• Electromagnetism: electric field, magnetic field, the Faraday–Neumann–Lenz law, depending on how much of the syllabus was actually covered in class.

Here your school’s exam syllabus counts double, because the last three years really have too many topics to revise in three weeks: you need to know for certain which ones were left out of the syllabus covered and which were not.

A mistake I often see in the last three years is trying to study electromagnetism with the same “by heart” approach that may have been used for kinematics in the first two years. It does not work: laws like Faraday–Neumann–Lenz describe relationships between quantities that need to be visualised (a changing flux, an induced current that opposes the change), not just written down. If you need a more structured review of these topics ahead of the maturità (Italy’s school-leaving exam), I have written a dedicated guide on electromagnetism for the maturità, which also works for a catch-up exam because it covers the same basic concepts.

Revise by problems, not by chapters

This is the point that makes the biggest difference in a short time. Revising “by chapters” — I open the book and reread the theory from start to finish — is slow and gives a false sense of security: while you read, everything seems clear; faced with an exercise, it doesn’t.

Revising “by problems” works the other way round: you start from an exercise of the type that will come up in the exam, try to solve it, and only if you get stuck do you go back to the specific theory you need at that moment. This way you study only what you really don’t know, and you study it linked to a concrete problem — which is also the way you will remember it best.

In practice: take 4-5 exercises for each topic in the exam syllabus, solve them with the book closed, and classify each mistake. Either you didn’t know the theory, or you made a calculation error, or you misunderstood what the problem was asking — three different problems with three different fixes, and it is worth telling them apart instead of saying vaguely “I need to study more”.

A side benefit of this method: it also gives you a realistic estimate of how much time you are missing. If out of 5 exercises on a topic you solve 4 with some uncertainty, that topic only needs a light review. If you solve 1 out of 5 and don’t even understand where to start, that topic will need a dedicated lesson, not a quick review the night before. Telling the two cases apart with three weeks available is what separates a realistic plan from one that turns out to be unrealistic only halfway through, when it is too late to change it.

Typical mistakes on exam day

Even with good preparation, points are lost on the day for reasons that have nothing to do with physics:

• Diving into the first exercise without reading the whole paper. The first minutes should be spent reading everything and estimating the difficulty, not starting to write.
• Getting stuck on one exercise for too long. If after 5 minutes you have no approach in mind, move on to the next. You come back with a clearer head.
• Not writing the units. Many teachers take off points even if the number is right but the unit is missing or wrong — it is a quick check that should always be done.
• Skipping the theory part because it is “worth less”. It is often worth more than you think, and they are easy points if you have studied the definitions precisely.

If the block you feel on exam day is not lack of preparation but real test anxiety, it is worth tackling that side too: I have written a guide with concrete techniques for managing test anxiety in physics and maths.

Realistic timescales

With a single failed subject in physics, 6-8 lessons spread over 3-4 weeks are usually enough, provided you also practise on your own between lessons — lessons are there to fill the real gaps and correct your method, not to replace daily study. If the failed subject is in more than one subject, or you are starting from far behind, plan for 10-12 lessons in total and start as early as possible: the last weeks of August go faster than they seem.

If the failed subject is in maths rather than physics (or both, which often happens), it can also be useful to try the free maths catch-up exam simulator to get a realistic idea of the format before you start revising.

Take the physics catch-up practice test (free, 20 questions in 60 minutes, instant marking): there is a version for every year, from Year 1 to Year 4 of high school. It is the quickest way to find out, before you even open the book, which topics to concentrate on in the two or three weeks you have.

If the failed subject is behind you and you just want to study better during the year, start from the Feynman technique for physics and train with the simulated physics and maths tests for high school, which follow the syllabus year by year.

How we work in lessons

The first meeting is a diagnosis: you send me the notice of the failed subject with the exam syllabus, and in the first lesson we work out together exactly what you know and what you don’t, without wasting time revising things you already master. From there we build a plan on the real topics of your exam, with targeted exercises and at least one timed practice test under conditions as close as possible to the real ones, before the exam.

Lessons are online, one-to-one; you will find up-to-date rates and packages on the pricing page — the 10-hour package is good value if you expect to need several sessions, which, for a failed subject to recover in a few weeks, is often the case.

If you want to understand where to start with your specific case, the quickest route is a free 30-minute introductory call on the contact page: you tell me the exam syllabus and how many weeks you have, and I tell you honestly how many lessons you need. You can also find the full programme of physics tutoring if you want to see how I structure the course across all the high school topics.