How To Come Top In Exams

You do not have to be ultra bright to come top in exams. Sometimes even the ultra bright fail them. The cleverest person I knew as a student failed his exams. Undeterred he went off to Africa, built a boat and sailed across the Atlantic with his pregnant wife. He delivered the baby in mid ocean with one hand on the tiller, and went on to found a successful boat building business in North America. Jeff was not stupid. What he lacked was exam technique, so he failed. Know exam technique and you are more than half way to success. These are just a few things to keep in mind.

Get your priorities right. Jeff got lucky on his transatlantic trip. His priorities were, conceive baby, build boat, cross ocean. The project would have been more likely to succeed if it had been, build boat, cross ocean, conceive baby. But it would not have made such a good story. If your program for an exam is, work, party, take exam, pass exam, you may be disappointed. Work, take exam, pass exam, party, is more likely to give you the result you want.

How important is the exam? All exams are important, but you need to know if most of your marks will come from course work or the exam. If you need to do brilliantly in your exam to make up for some shaky marks in coursework make sure you do.

Revise. You must revise a lot. It is a good idea to revise your course notes immediately after you have written them. That way you can get them into order and be in a position to ask questions at the next tutorial if there is anything you do not understand. A couple of weeks before the exam begin serious revision. Try to abstract the important points from your notes and concentrate on these. Revise your weak subjects hard. But don’t forget everything else. Take breaks, have an afternoon off every so often. Have a good read through of your notes a day or so before the exam. Then relax and go to bed early. Do not wait outside the exam room frantically reading your notes. It is deeply un-cool and will not work anyway.

Read the paper. Spend five minutes reading the paper before you start. Work out how much time you have to do each question. Try to make sure you answer all the questions you know as a priority. Don’t get bogged down puzzling over anything you have difficulty with. Leave it until the end - if you have no time don’t worry, you would probably have got it wrong anyway. But whatever you do don’t answer the first two questions perfectly and run out of time for the next eight.

It is well worth your while learning examination technique. I have only given you a few tips, there is a lot more to find out and the information is easily available. Remember to come top in exams you do not have to be ultra bright - you just need to work hard, be well prepared and you can’t lose.



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