Exam Strategy

[Wizard]

Hey guys, lol, its about 5 months early to ask this, but I need to know it because of past experiences in Unit 1,2. What I need is some advice on how I should approach the Unit 3 Chem Exam paper. You see, I find Short Answer quite easy, but on Multiple Choice, I tend to make stupid errors. On an assessed Unit 2 trial exam, I did Short Answer first, then Multiple Choice, and I found that I got full marks for Short answer, but lost 5 marks in multiple choice. In the real exam, I did Multiple Choice first, and Short answer second, and I made careless errors in both sections.

So what should I do?

Also, how long should each multiple choice question take on average if you want to finish 15 minutes early? (not likely), and does anyone have any tips for me on how to do MC?

Thanks

[Hielly]

my chem teacher and all my other teachers told me to do short answers first always! Because if you run out time on the short answers you can't guess, whilst multiple choice you can, there is about a 1/5 chance you might get it.

[NE2000]

Well your teacher will probably tell you what Hielly said, do short answer first and then multiple choice. But it also depends in my mind on how you've been going on trial exams and which exam it is. If you generally finish with time to spare I would do multiple choice first because that's where the careless errors can be made under pressure at the end of an exam, but I would leave out any questions I get stuck on. Then I would do short answer later.

[/0]

Depends, it's very important to get an idea of how long questions will take you in reading time so that you can complete every question. I usually do multiple choice first then short-answer... don't ever want to have to guess a question unless I really don't know the answer.

[shinny]

Just do trial exams and see what works for you. Personally for unit 3, I did all the non-stoichiometry questions first i.e. theory questions, since these are the ones which you are unlikely to make errors from. After that, I was able to take my time on the stoi questions without much pressure. Unit 4, not so much stoic, but I did a similar thing where I just basically did any question which I could answer instantly first, and any which required thinking, I'd skip. My unit 4 approach is what I use in all subjects as it takes off the pressure on you in questions where you need to think and take your time. It'd also often leave my friends thinking wtf when I reach the back page of an exam in 20 minutes or so (obviously because I've skipped about half the paper).

[jackinthepatch]

Lol @ shinny, that is exactly what I do. In all my year 11 exams and my year 12 one I was jumping all over the place - people must have thought I'd forgotten everything because I was leaving that many pages blank! But yeah, I find that way of going about things works the best. Go from the start of the exam to the finish, and any question that takes longer than 30 seconds for you to write anything down, just skip and return to after all the 'easier' questions are answered. As shinny said, this just takes the pressure off when tackling the harder questions.
In an exam I jump around so much that I'll probably go from the first page to the last page about 3 times during the whole thing checking for questions I've left blank lol