MCQ or short answer first?

[hearteyes4u]

hi guys!! i was just curious whether u guys start w mc or short ans and which way is best ??

i tend to struggle quite a bit with short ans and its worth more marks than mc so should i do it before mc?? however, many ppl said its best to start off with mc bc it kinda warms up ur brain and gets u ready for short answer so idk which to do first pls help!!

[Evolio]

Hello! 
It all depends on you and whatever you feel comfortable with starting first. Have you tried both ways, as in starting with MC first and starting with SA first? If you haven't, then it may be a good idea to gauge which works for you by comparing the two conditions.

Personally, I start with the multiple choice questions and then complete short answer because yeah, for me because this exposure does warm up my brain and get me thinking about all the biological processes that are involved. Personally, I also struggle with short answer so I find that doing multiple choice first is like taking baby steps until you are ready to full on answer questions with sentences where you have to consider so many things such as what do I need to write to get all the marks and the key detail you need to add. But, for multiple choice, it's more straight-forward.  If I start with short answer first, I feel like I'm missing something and jumping into the deep end.

[Bri MT]

Test it yourself and try a few tactics to see what works better for you

What I did for my exam:
- Read through whole exam in reading time
- Once reading time was finished I wrote time allocations giving myself a minute per mark each. I.e. I wrote 9:35 after MCQ question 20 & 9:55 after MCQ question 40, then wrote the time I expected it to be after short answer question 1,2,3...
- Then I went through and did the questions in chronological order, if I struggled with a question I tried to get something down anyway before moving on
- This left me 40 minutes to go back through, check my answers and reattempt any questions I struggled with

What I found useful with this strategy is that it slowed me down, and I found I made less silly errors + I was more confident about using my time wisely & being in control

[Sconey]

I use reading time to do the first 20-30 MC questions. Then I start with MC and I can get it done in 30 minutes, because I've already worked out a majority of them. Then the rest of the time is SA; I skip around heaps, just doing what's easy, and narrowing down the one's I struggle with. Then check over and bam... done.

[PhoenixxFire]

I read the short answer questions in reading time so that I had an idea of what to expect, then started from the multiple choice and worked through the exam. I found that this meant that by the time I got to the short answer, having read them first, I was more prepared to do them and was a lot calmer.