Student Trove
Subject Priority Ranker
Enter your subjects with exam dates, current marks, and difficulty. Get a ranked list of what to focus on first.
Your Subjects (up to 6)
Study Priority Order
How the ranking works
Deciding what to study first is a question about marginal return: which hour of work moves your results the most. Two things drive that, and they pull in different directions. An exam that is close makes work urgent regardless of how well you are doing, and a mark far below the pass threshold makes work valuable regardless of when the exam is. This tool scores both and weights them equally.
urgency = 1 ÷ days until examgap = (50 − current mark) ÷ 50, floored at 0score = (urgency × 0.5 + gap × 0.5) × difficulty × maintenance factor
Urgency is a reciprocal, so it climbs steeply rather than smoothly — an exam four days away is twice as urgent as one eight days away, and the curve gets sharper as the date approaches. That is the behaviour you want, because the cost of postponing work rises much faster in the final week than it does in the first.
The gap term measures distance below the 50% pass mark, expressed as a fraction of it. A subject at 35% has a gap of 0.3; a subject at 50% or above has a gap of zero and is ranked on urgency alone. Difficulty multiplies the result by 1.0, 1.3 or 1.6 depending on what you select. Finally, any subject already sitting more than 15 points clear of the pass mark is halved — it needs maintenance, not rescue, and letting it compete on equal terms with a subject you are failing would be misleading.
A worked example
Four subjects, four different situations. This is the case where intuition tends to get it wrong.
| Subject | Days | Mark | Difficulty | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Statistics | 4 | 42% | Hard (1.6) | 0.33 |
| Chemistry | 12 | 38% | Hard (1.6) | 0.26 |
| Economics | 3 | 58% | Medium (1.3) | 0.22 |
| History | 9 | 74% | Easy (1.0) | 0.03 |
Statistics, step by step
The interesting result is Economics, which has the nearest exam of all four and still ranks third. It is already passing at 58%, so its gap term is zero and only urgency carries it. History ranks last despite an exam inside two weeks, because a 74% triggers the maintenance discount — it is the subject you would enjoy revising and the one with least to gain.
Where a ranking helps and where it does not
A priority order is a decision aid, not a verdict. It is deliberately blind to several things that should still influence you.
- Assessment weight. A subject whose exam is worth 70% of the module deserves more than one whose exam is worth 30%, and the ranking does not know the difference.
- Volume of material. Two subjects equally far below the pass mark are not equal if one has four chapters left and the other has fourteen.
- Prerequisites. Failing a module that gates next year's curriculum costs more than failing an elective, even at identical marks.
- Diminishing returns within a day. The ranking says what to start with, not that you should spend nine consecutive hours on it.
Use it to break the deadlock at the start of a study session, which is where most of the wasted time actually goes, and then apply judgement to the rest.
Frequently asked questions
Which subject should I study first?
Study the subject where an hour of work changes your outcome the most. In practice that means combining two things: how soon the exam is, and how far your current mark sits below the mark you need. A subject you are failing with an exam in three days outranks everything else, and a subject you are comfortably passing with an exam in three weeks can wait — even if it is the one you enjoy most, which is usually the trap.
How does this ranker score subjects?
It gives each subject an urgency component of 1 divided by the days remaining, and a gap component measuring how far below the 50% pass mark your current mark is. Those two are weighted equally, then multiplied by a difficulty factor of 1.0, 1.3 or 1.6. Subjects already sitting more than 15 points above the pass mark are halved, on the basis that they need maintenance rather than rescue. Subjects are then ranked from the highest score down.
Why does the ranker sometimes put an easy subject above a hard one?
Because urgency and the size of your mark gap both outweigh difficulty in the scoring. Difficulty is a multiplier of at most 1.6, so it breaks ties and nudges the order, but it cannot lift a comfortable subject with a distant exam above one you are failing next week. That is intentional: difficulty tells you how hard the work will be, not how much the work is worth.
Should I always study the subject I am worst at?
Only up to a point. Marginal return is highest when you are just below a threshold — moving 45% to 52% is worth far more than moving 20% to 27%, because one crosses the pass mark and the other does not. If a subject is so far behind that passing is no longer arithmetically possible, the honest move is to protect the subjects you can still pass and speak to your faculty about the one you cannot.
How often should I re-rank my subjects?
Weekly during term, and every few days once exams start, because the urgency term changes every day by definition. Re-rank immediately whenever a mark comes back, since a single result can move a subject from comfortable to critical or the reverse. A ranking you produced three weeks ago is describing a situation that no longer exists.
Does this replace a study timetable?
No. Ranking tells you the order to work in; it does not tell you when the hours are available or how many each subject needs. Use the ranking to decide what goes at the top of the list, then use a revision schedule to place the sessions into the days you actually have free.
From an order to a plan
Knowing the order is the first half. The second half is putting the work into specific days, around the classes and commitments you already have — which is the part that decides whether the plan survives contact with a real week.
Study Planner builds study sessions around your actual timetable and deadlines, so the highest-priority subject gets scheduled into the gaps you really have rather than the ones you hoped for.