With final exams beginning on Saturday, students can look to a wide range of academic and wellness-related tools and resources offered by Cornell.
Resources range from online articles detailing effective study techniques, drop-in counseling and even animals who will listen to your presentation.
Learning Strategies Center
Many resources available to students during final exam season are provided by the Learning Strategies Center, which is “the central academic support unit for undergraduates at Cornell” according to their website. The LSC’s resources range from tutoring, articles on effective individual and group study techniques, study plans, a customisable “Homestretch Calendar” and much more.
“For finals it's really important to think about using [the Homestretch] Calendar for how you're going to use the days,” said Amy Godert, the director of the LSC and executive director of academic student success programs. Students should “think about…building in time for the things that you also really need to do for your own personal wellbeing and balance.”
“The most important [factor] that students, when they're really conscious of time, tend to put off is the sleep,” Godert added. “Everyone is a little different, but seven to eight hours is a good amount of sleep for people.”
In one article, the LSC emphasizes the importance of strategies that require active engagement of the brain.
“The more active the strategy is — when you're actively recalling, actively writing, actively talking to somebody about something — it's going to be more embedded and you're going to remember it better,” Godert said.
One strategy which both Godert and the website promoted was “blank page testing.” This method “involves you thinking about whatever the topic is, writing down everything you can think of and then looking back at your notes or the course materials and see[ing] what am I missing? What did I get wrong? What do I need to go back and review?” Godert said.
Another option for studying is to work in a group. To ensure a productive group studying session, students should “develop a plan and know what you’re going to do during the time that you’re working together,” Godert said. For example, she recommends “assigning a person to come up with an agenda, having someone be a time keeper during the meeting and then having someone just continue to ask questions.”
In addition to providing resources for effective study techniques, the LSC holds office hours and tutoring sessions for a variety of subjects. For example, popular courses including the general chemistry sequence and calculus have tutors available every day during both the study days as well as the exam week, offering a mix of drop-in and scheduled appointments for students.
“Our tutoring that we do is drop-in group tutoring … you can learn a lot from hearing the questions,” said Godert. “That’s one of the hallmarks of the work we do.”
If you cannot make it to the office hours or tutoring sessions, the LSC also helps students find study partners for their classes.
“In 2024-25, the LSC Study Partner Matching Tool had about 4,000 study partner requests from 1100 unique students,” Godert wrote.
“I would advocate that if people are thinking about what they want to do for the fall, they think about study partner matching,” Godert said. According to Godert, the matching is a process that usually occurs at the start of the semester.
“I used [LSC’s study partners] last semester, and it was really helpful for me, because I got paired with one of my friends now,” Santiago Alonso ’27 said. "It was nice to be paired with somebody to study for those classes with.”
“One of the really effective ways of studying is to explain things to other people”, Godert said. However, if you do not have someone to present to, the LSC also has Presentation Support — aka “Practice Your Talk on a Dog.” Rosa, a Bernese Mountain Dog, is the LSC’s own public speaking tutor and will lend you an ear to soothe your presentation-induced nerves.
School-Specific Support
Individual schools and departments across Cornell also offer various tutoring programs for students involved in their subject.
The College of Engineering provides “two hours of free tutoring each week through the Tutors-on-Call program” to all Duffield Engineering undergraduate students, according to its website.
Additionally, the Cornell Math Support Center based in Malott Hall provides help for any student enrolled in an undergraduate mathematics course.
For Hotelies, The Nolan School of Hotel Administration Communication Center provides “free consulting for written and oral assignments,” according to its website.
When in need of soft skills, Cornell offers its current students, faculty and staff free access to over 11,000 online courses on LinkedIn Learning, which is an educational platform providing training videos for skills such as leadership, technology, interviewing, design, photography and more.
The Knight Writing Center, which is free to all students, “provides support for individuals at any stage of the writing process.” The last day of the normal tutoring schedule is Tuesday and limited exam tutoring will be available from Wednesday to Friday and May 11 to 13.
External Resources
Outside of Cornell, Student Agencies Tutoring is a “student-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization completely managed by Cornell students,” according to their website. Some of their tutoring services include the Cornell Group Study and the Cornell Course Tutoring.
Beyond academics, many programs also offer resources for health and wellbeing during the finals period. The LSC has a sensory room, described on their website as “a welcoming space for all students, especially those who identify as neurodivergent … to have a greater control over their level of sensory input.”
“It's nice to have a place where you can step back, take a deep breath, close your mind and maybe focus on something else,” Godert said. “Making sure that you build that time into your day is important.”
“[Going] on walks or runs with friends, going to the gym and having alone time” are great ways to take a break from studying, said Makenna Devoy ’27.
“I think that finals can be a really fun time where you meet a lot of people you wouldn't normally meet through the year,” Devoy said. “There's no classes, so you just meet random people while you're studying. I think it's nice to enjoy meeting people, making connections and not making it all about studying.”
Additionally, Cornell Health provides Counseling and Psychological Services to help students “live well and learn well” at Cornell. CAPS offers drop-in consultations, workshops and individual and group counseling according to their website.
“Students need to believe in themselves and their abilities and their capacity to learn and grow when things don’t go well,” said Godert. “You’re not expected to know how to do all of the things in your classes. You are expected to ask questions and try to push yourself to learn things.”
Ultimately, “you can’t use someone else’s ruler to measure your own success. So you have to figure out what success means to you,” Godert emphasized.
Maya Johansen can be reached at mhj49@cornell.edu.
