Total study time = hours per day × days until the exam. 2 hours a day for 30 days is 60 hours. Then check it against what the exam needs, such as the 300+ hours CFA Institute says successful candidates report for each CFA level. If the exam needs more hours than you have, study more each day or start earlier. As a rule of thumb, plan to lose about 1 day in 5 to illness and other commitments.
| Days left | 1 h/day | 2 h/day | 3 h/day | 4 h/day | 6 h/day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 days | 7 h | 14 h | 21 h | 28 h | 42 h |
| 14 days | 14 h | 28 h | 42 h | 56 h | 84 h |
| 30 days | 30 h | 60 h | 90 h | 120 h | 180 h |
| 60 days | 60 h | 120 h | 180 h | 240 h | 360 h |
| 90 days | 90 h | 180 h | 270 h | 360 h | 540 h |
Not sure how many hours your exam needs? Our exam study hours statistics list typical figures, such as 300+ hours per CFA level and 400 to 500 hours for the bar exam. To plan it day by day, use the study hours calculator.
A worked example: 30 days until a test at 4 hours a day is 120 hours. Take off 1 day in 5 for days you lose, and you have about 96 hours you can count on. That is the number to share out across your subjects. If you'd rather not do the arithmetic, make a study schedule day by day. Count only time spent testing yourself or practising, not rereading.
Plans fail when they count ideal time instead of actual time. "6 PM to 10 PM every night" shrinks once dinner, your phone and tiredness take their share. Budget for that.
Start by auditing your week. Write down your non-negotiable commitments. This includes class time, work, sleep, and commuting. If you have 168 hours in a week and 110 are taken, you have 58 hours left. Do not assign all 58 to studying. Assign 30 to 40 hours to avoid burnout. This is your weekly capacity.
Once you have your weekly capacity, multiply it by the number of weeks until your exam. If you have 8 weeks left and a 35 hour weekly capacity, your total available study time is 280 hours. This is the ceiling of your plan.
Now you must calculate how much time the material actually requires. This is where most students struggle. You cannot simply say "I will study Biology for 50 hours." You need to break it down by content volume.
Sum these numbers to find your "Required Hours." If your required hours exceed your available hours, you must either increase your daily study time or cut out low-yield materials.
Give more hours to the subjects that are harder for you or that you know least well. For a target based on your grades, see how to calculate your ideal study hours.
These exams need a lot of memorization plus applying it to questions. Plan for most of your hours to go on flashcards, question banks and full-length practice tests rather than reading or watching videos, and count the time it takes to make flashcards. StudyCards AI can turn your PDFs into flashcards, which cuts down that card-making time.
Law and accounting exams test applying rules to scenarios, so plan plenty of hours for practice questions and essays, not only learning the rules. BARBRI describes bar prep as a full-time job of 40 to 50 hours a week for 8 to 10 weeks, and says many students believe they need 400 to 500 hours.
University students often balance several subjects. Avoid splitting time equally (e.g., 2 hours for Math, 2 hours for History). Instead, use a "difficulty multiplier." If Math is a 5/5 difficulty and History is a 2/5, you should allocate 2.5 times more hours to Math. If your total study time calculation is 200 hours for the finals period, you might spend 80 hours on your hardest class and only 30 on your easiest.
Time at your desk is not all study time. Track net study time as well as gross study time.
Gross study time is the time from when you sit down at your desk to when you leave. Net study time is the actual minutes spent focusing. If you spend 20 minutes on your phone and 10 minutes getting water during a 2 hour block, your net time is 90 minutes. If your plan needs 100 hours of net work and you only track gross time, you will do less than you think.
To fix this, use a timer that you pause every time you leave your chair. This provides a real number that you can compare against your original calculation. If you see that your net time is too low, you have two choices: increase your gross hours or improve your focus.
Making study materials, like typing flashcards from a PDF, can take a large share of your hours. StudyCards AI turns your PDFs into flashcards that you can export to Anki, so more of your budget goes into testing yourself. Check the cards before you rely on them.
Calculate your hours, track your net time, and spend most of it testing yourself.
Work backwards from the exam. Take the total hours it needs, divide by the days you have left, and check you can keep that pace. For the bar exam, BARBRI describes full-time prep as 40 to 50 hours a week for 8 to 10 weeks. Spend most of the time testing yourself rather than rereading.
Use a weighted system. List your subjects and assign a difficulty score from 1 to 5. Multiply the total available hours by the weight of each subject. For example, if you have 100 hours and Subject A is a 5 and Subject B is a 2, Subject A gets 71% of the time and Subject B gets 29%.
Use a digital stopwatch or a dedicated study timer app. The most important rule is to pause the timer every time you are interrupted. That gives you your net study time: the minutes you actually spent working, which you can compare against your plan.
No. There is a point of diminishing returns where fatigue leads to lower retention. Quality of study (active recall and spaced repetition) is more important than the total number of hours. Testing yourself and spacing your reviews get more out of each hour than rereading. For a faster way, use our study time calculator.
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