Arcadia Ireland

It is that time of year again.

As the days are getting longer and the weather is heating up, many people are tenuously beginning to bring out their summer wardrobes and to look forward to the summer holidays. For students, however, the time around Easter is also associated with one of the least appealing – possibly the least appealing – aspects of student life: final exams. They come around with the predictability of the first bouts of hay fever that some of us also suffer during this season – and they hold even less appeal than the watery eyes and runny nose of that seasonal affliction.

By the time Irish undergraduates get to this point in their first year at university they get pretty nervous about the first major test of their academic careers. But at least they have the experience of their school-leaving exams (the “Leaving Cert”) still relatively fresh in their memories, and lecturers teaching and assessing first-year modules are well adjusted to what to expect from a group of first-years till getting to grips with the transition from secondary school to university.

For visiting students spending a semester or a full academic year abroad, the experience is a little different. At Arcadia Ireland, we are aware that the students on our programmes are coming to Irish university life out of a different educational system, where some things may be done a little bit differently. This can make the approaching end-of-term exams even more daunting. For this reason, we thought it would be a good idea to post a brief guide to Irish university exams how to approach them in the blog this week to set your minds at ease.

I am not going to tell you how to study for an exam. Everyone has different techniques that work for them but not for any of their classmates. (Although generally it is a good idea to keep up with your coursework during the term and not to only open your books and lecture notes for the first time two nights before the exam and then try to cram everything in … and even if that wasn’t obvious it is too late to point that out now.)

Instead, the purpose of this blog is just to emphasise how the venues work, and (more importantly) to suggest some key things to remember when you are actually sat down in the exam hall with your paper in front of you. That second section reiterates things I have told many students during a previous career as a lecturer in English literature in a number of Irish universities. They are all self-evident, but it doesn’t hurt to just stop and think about before your exams start. I am hoping you will find them useful.

The exam hall:

There has long been a debate in Higher Education about the relative merits of final exams versus forms of continuous assessment taking place throughout the year. Some cultures (like the USA) are prone to favour continuous assessment, while others (like Ireland) are still weighted more heavily towards a final exam. In the Irish higher-education system, the assessment method chosen for any module can depend on various factors, and can vary greatly between different universities, different subjects, different departments, and even different modules. For smaller optional modules, the assessment methods used are often left up to the preferences of the module coordinator or the lecturer teaching a particular subject. Many lecturers will prefer some form of continuous assessment (like an essay or a project or even a learning journal) over a written exam (either out of pedagogical convictions, or simply because they prefer grading neatly typed essays to deciphering handwritten exam scripts). For big core modules especially, the final exam often still makes up a significant portion of the final module grade.

Visiting students may be daunted by the scale of the final exam – by the magnitude of the occasion as well as that of the venue. Depending on the customs of their home institutions, they have either been used to exams taking place in smaller venues like seminar rooms or lecture theatres, or they have been assessed exclusively through forms of continuous assessment.

So if you have been taking modules that are assessed by a final exam, what should you expect?

In most cases, exams take place in large halls that serve different purposes during the rest of the year. These can be large lecture theatres, indoor sports halls somewhere on campus (which can sometimes come with that lingering scent of PE changing rooms), dining rooms in campus restaurants, or even off-campus locations. UCD exams famously take place in the RDS, a huge venue that hosts fairs and conventions during the rest of the year.

Your university will send you details about the date, time, duration and venue of all your exams in advance. This notice will in most cases also include a seat number. The seat number is important. Seat numbers are linked to specific courses, and the invigilators on duty will know which exam paper to deliver to each individual seat. This is how universities manage to run several different exams at the same time in the same venue.

The fact that exams for each module do not necessarily take place in individual rooms is something that most surprises those of us who came to an Irish university from a different educational system. So be mentally prepared for the size of these venues, and for sitting your exams in a room where exams for other subjects and other departments are taking place at the same time! Once you are seated at your own allocated table in the exam hall it is not as bad as you first thought it would be. The universities employ invigilating staff to ensure quiet and order so you will be able to retreat into your own private mental space and concentrate on the task at hand.

In many cases (although you should ask your module lecturer or tutor about this beforehand) lecturers from each of the modules being examined will be available for the first twenty minutes or half hour of an exam in case any student has any questions about any of the questions. So despite the size of the venue and the mix of different subjects all being examined simultaneously, you will still have a chance to clarify any details about ambiguously phrased questions if you should need to.

Exam strategies:

Once you are in your assigned seat and the exam has started, remember the basics:

1. Read the instructions

2. Read all the questions (and, where relevant, pick which ones you will be answering)

3. Manage your time wisely

4. Answer the question!

Let’s just look at those three points in turn:

1. Read the instructions on the exam paper

This seems obvious, but make sure that you know what you are expected to do. The instructions on the first page of your exam paper will usually tell you whether you should answer all the questions, or only a certain amount of questions.

Make sure to read these instructions clearly! You do not want to end up answering all the questions on an exam paper when you were only supposed to answer two or three! When this happens, the person grading your exam can only grade the specified number of answers. Even if they decide to grade you on your best answers, those answers will be much shorter and much less detailed than the answers of a student who has spent the same amount of time only answering the number of questions they were supposed to.

2. Read all the questions

Regardless of whether you are supposed to answer all the questions on the exam paper or only a selection, it is good practice to read all the questions before you start answering them.

If you are asked to answer all of the questions, it is a good idea to read over all the questions so that you will know what to expect. Each exam is laid out differently, but it is not uncommon for more difficult or more time-consuming questions to be placed at the end of a paper. Reading all the questions at the start will ensure you will not use up lots of time on simple or short-answer questions early in the exam paper and then get caught out when you get to these more time-consuming questions somewhere down the line.

If you are asked to only answer a selection of questions (the exam paper will say something like “answer two out of the ten question in this section”), it is a good idea to read all the questions from which you are choosing before committing to which ones you are going to answer. Don’t rush yourself: it is better to take a couple of minutes to think about which questions you will be able to answer best, than to rush into the first question you see only to find you run into difficulty and could have given a much more complete answer to a different question. Once you have decided which questions to answer, circle them on the question sheet so that you can clearly see what you have decided to do.

3. Manage your time wisely

Always make sure you know how long your exam is (if in doubt, the duration will usually be printed on the first page of the exam paper), and that you have a way of telling the time while you are sitting your exam. You will need to be able to know how much of your allocated time has elapsed and how much time you still have left.

Most exam venues should have a clock mounted somewhere visibly, but it may help your peace of mind going in if you knew you have a time-keeping device on you. This is particularly relevant today, when many young people rely on their phone to tell them the time. If you have a watch, wear it! If you don’t, see if you can borrow a watch or even get yourself a cheap battery-operated clock somewhere.

It is always a good idea when you are reading the instructions and the questions to think about how much time you will need for each section, and to allocate yourself enough time to complete the number of questions you are asked to answer. For example:

Example 1: if you are sitting a two-hour exam, and you are asked to answer three questions, you should probably allocate 30 minutes for each question. This will leave you an additional 30 minutes for reading the instructions and the questions, for contingency if you spend a bit longer on one of the questions, and to check over your work or return to any points you weren’t sure about at the end of the exam. (And it is always worth reading over your answers again before submitting your exam paper if you have the time … You never know what you might notice!)

Example 2: if you are sitting a two-and-a-half-hour exam, consisting of ten multiple-choice questions and two essay-style questions, you should probably allocate 20 minutes to the multiple choice section, and 50 minutes each to the two long-form questions. This will again leave you with some contingency time to read the instructions and the questions and to allow for any questions taking longer than expected.

You may find it useful to write down the times when you intend to start each section or each question somewhere on the exam paper (for example at the top of your answer sheet, or beside each of the questions you have decided you are attempting). This way you have a clear plan of action, and you don’t have to worry about running out of time … which will allow you to focus on the question(s) at hand more fully!

Allocating your time, and sticking to your time plan, is crucial. During the many years I spent correcting exam papers at various Irish universities, I came across many papers where it was obvious that a student was more than capable of performing really well, but spent way too much time on their answer to the first question. All too often, a really thorough answer was followed by an answer to another question that showed promise but did not go into nearly enough detail because the student had clearly ran out of time.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember to settle your nerves before an exam is this: Whoever grades your paper will know that you are working under time constraint. They will not be expecting to read a publishable answer. They are looking for a certain standard of knowledge and understanding, and a certain level of detail that can be achieved in a limited amount of time … Remember this to take some of the pressure off.

4. Answer the question!

This one sounds obvious, but let me explain. It is important to read the question properly, to understand what it is you are being asked, and then to answer the question you are actually being asked – not the question you think you are being asked, or the question you think you should have been asked, or the question you would have liked to be asked. You would be surprised how often an examiner has to write the phrase “Not relevant to the question” in the margin of an exam paper!

Your answer should be relevant and to the point. Do not spend lots of time writing about something that is not relevant to the question you are being asked. If you spend long sections of your answer on material that is not relevant to the question, that limits the amount of time you have left to write about something relevant that would have earned you points.

Really, this is connected to the previous point about time management. You do not have time to go into irrelevant matters, so stick to what is relevant to the question you are being asked and you will be all right!

*

If you have kept up with your coursework and you try and stick to these simple guidelines you will be all right in any exam.

So good luck!