Success in exams involves two ingredients - having a thorough knowledge of the subject matter AND making the most of your knowledge in the exam through effective answering technique.
Here are four golden rules to apply to all your papers.
1. Allow time to read the paper carefully
The importance of reading the paper carefully and choosing your questions wisely cannot be emphasised enough at this stage. The natural inclination is always to start writing immediately and launch into a favoured topic.
Resist the urge. Take your time. Be smart and size-up the paper before answering.
2. Stick to your game plan
An overall strategy should have emerged from your revision and exam preparation in each subject.
This covers the areas you will tackle, the topics you will avoid if they appear on the paper, the sequence in which you will tackle the various sections, the style of answering you will employ in each subject, the amount of time you will allocate to answering each section. In some cases, this plan will work like a dream but there will always be surprises to deal with in some papers. Don't get flustered. Stick to your game plan, trust your judgment, and move on.
3. Sweep up any mistakes
In the pressure of the exam hall, it is easy to make elementary errors. These will sometimes have the potential to lose you a lot of valuable marks. Misreading the instruction on a question can render an entire answer invalid. You might have known the correct answer, but you didn't put it down.
A simple miscalculation can lose you valuable time as you try to figure out the balancing item. Be disciplined with your time. Always leave a few minutes at the end to tidy-up errors. Simply changing a definition/formula/calculation at this stage could be the difference between a B1 and an A2 grade.
4. Attempt all questions
It is amazing how many exam scripts are handed up unfinished. Every year, easy marks are lost by capable students who just didn't get time to finish the paper. Don't fall into this trap. Work on the basis that you will get an answer written for the required number of questions.
Remember that it is much easier to get the first 20 per cent of the marks for any question than the final 5 per cent. You can always polish an answer further but, if there is no attempt made at part of a question, the examiner can't give you any marks.
* Courtesy Skoool. ie - Ireland's leading education website.