In general, college learning requires giving verbal answers to verbal questions. For example, if you were asked to paraphrase the Principle of Contiguity, you might say (correctly) that, "things that happen at about the same time become associated with each other." If I further asked you what you meant by "things," you would hopefully be able to explain that they could be stimuli that you see, hear, or feel, or they could be responses that you do, think, or feel. Great! That very principle implies that the likelihood that you will be able o remember those answers depends on where you learned the principle in relation to where you are asked the question. You will do best if you re tested in the same place that you learned.
The context--the room, the people and objects around, your own physical and mental state, even the time of day--is contiguous with the verbal material being studied. The context becomes a part of what is learned. How big a part depends on how well you can keep your selective attention focused on the verbal material, which in turn depends on how distracting the contextual environment is. This rule applies to BOTH the learning and the testing environments. That is to say, your score will be lower if the learning context is distracting while the testing context is not distracting, or vice versa. Furthermore, if both are distracting, your score will be lower if the type of distraction is different. Specifically, if you study with background music playing, and if you are tested in a cold room, learning while being distracted by sounds will not help your score when tested while being distracted by cold.
Accordingly, you should set up one study context that is as comparable to the test context as feasible Classroom chairs are not very comfortable, so use a hard chair in your study context. As a rule, there will be some moderate noises in the test environment so you don't need absolute quiet while studying. You wear street clothes when taking an exam, so don't wear pajamas when studying. Also, consider all peripheral sources of distraction such as center-fold pictures on the walls when designing a study environment.
Then, don't do anything but study in your study context. Recall that your mental state can become associated with a context. If you don't develop competing habits, sitting down in your regular study environment will lead to attentive study behavior. So never permit yourself to day-dream, write personal letters, or doze off while you are at your desk. If you feel such mental activities coming on, get up and take a break until you can return intent upon studying. Soon, study habits will become strongly associated with your regular study context.
There is a diametrically opposite recommendation: Don't study only in your regular study context. In some--hopefully many--cases, the goal is more than just remembering the material when taking a course exam. The information might be useful in various later contexts and studying just to do well on the exam is usually poor strategy. To insure that verbal knowledge is context-free, so that you can remember it in any context, study in a variety of contexts. If you learn something in various contexts, you will know it in various contexts.