They've been there, done that, worn the T-shirt. Last year's Leaving Cert students spell out what this year's crop should be doing for the next four weeks

Leaving Cert students may be feeling strapped for time as the exam approaches, but they certainly aren't short of advice about how to sit the exam. The coming month will be full of experts willing to dispense wisdom to the beleaguered masses. But maybe the people best placed to give the most useful advice, are the ones for whom the memory of the exam is still fresh.

Last year's Leaving Cert students are more than willing to lend the benefit of their experience, so The Irish Times asked some of them to advise this year's students how to make the most of the next few weeks.

Like most of her peers, Donegal native Zelda Cunningham has plenty to say on the matter. Her school, Loreto College in Letterkenny, as most others do, gave a fortnight during which students were free to study at school or at home. "I found that I did most of my best study during those two weeks," she says. "I was just too tired before that, between classes and homework to do anything proper."

Electing to stay at home during the fortnight was not a difficult decision. "I really think that study in school is a waste of time," says Cunningham. "You can't study with friends. If one person gets distracted, nobody does anything. You do about half of what you would do on your own if friends are involved." She decided to stay away from school, studying and relaxing far away from the hype.

"It's too easy to get distracted. When people are talking about what's going to come up and what they've studied, you can't help but listen to them and that sort of stress gets you nowhere," she says.

That said, Cunningham believes that too much is made of the exam. "The Leaving Cert isn't as scary as all that," she says. "You know how much you need to do yourself. I know that I don't have to study as hard as some people for certain subjects, but I need to work much harder than some for other subjects. You just have to ignore people - as hard as that may be."

Her best advice study-wise came from a teacher who told her that the Leaving Cert is not about what you know, but rather it's about beating a system. "She told us that you don't need to know every little thing. You need to approach every exam like a maths paper," says Cunningham. This is excellent advice. It is very easy in subjects such as English and history to get carried away crafting beautiful answers in questions that may only be worth a few marks.

Marking schemes, available on www.examinations.ie are, according to Cunningham, essential. "You can't study without it. I'd have the marking system written out and if something was only worth a few marks, I wouldn't spend much time on it."

Jennifer Tweed, a former student in Alexandra College, Dublin agrees with many of Cunningham's points. She also elected to stay at home during her school's study period. She certainly found she could study better but she also wanted to avoid the post-mortems that tend to happen during this time. "It's just when you get someone saying what they've learned and you find yourself running off to look it up. It's best not to get involved in all that," she says.

Her study routine was disciplined but not regimented. According to Tweed, she would limit her study to one or two subjects in a day and see how it went. The day itself was not particularly timetabled. "I'd do a few hours in the morning and take a break for lunch. Then I'd go back and do another few hours," she says. "I know you're not supposed to study for more than half an hour at a time, but I just found it easier to keep going once I got into it. If I got to the end of an hour and felt I could do more, I did. If I had enough I took a break.

"I found I couldn't study into the night like I had with other exams," says Tweed. "I went to bed earlier because I was so tired, but I think that helped. I don't think that I overworked for it."

Friends are always important at these times and Tweed found that because her friends were doing similar levels of study, it was easier to concentrate and not to get too stressed. "I tried to ignore the hype. . . It's important not to get too worked up about the whole thing."

As a student in St David's Secondary School, Greystones, Co Wicklow, Simon Harris took full advantage of the resources available to him - his teachers. "The main piece of advice I could give to any student at this stage is to utilise their teachers," he says. "Spend a few minutes every evening checking over subjects which you have in class the next day and then see if you have any questions relating to that subject which you can put to your teacher."

He wasn't shy in using the experience of others. Simon's advice is to ask questions. "If you have a question or a worry no matter how trivial it may seem, ask it now - it'll be too late in the exam hall 10 minutes into your Leaving Cert paper!" he says.

The advice to use exam papers and marking schemes is something that all the students mentioned. They should form the core element of your study, according to Harris. "The best notes you can have is in the form of answers to exam questions. Also, you can hand these up to teachers and get them to cast their eye over your answers and pick up tips on ways to improve," he says.

Tweed, Cunningham and Harris are all now firmly ensconced in college life and are preparing for their first-year exams. "I know it was only last year, but it's really hard to remember what it was like," says Tweed. "It seems like the distant past when I think about it. Once it's over, that's it."

All of the students emphasise the importance of keeping things in perspective. "Just stay calm," says Harris. "Keep doing what you're doing. Don't radically change to new methods of studying or anything like that at this stage - rely on the methods you know." Cunningham agrees. "It's better to do what you feel like doing. If you make a big chore of the study you'll dread it and you won't make the most of it."