4. Study Hard and Smart (Part 2)

The next important thing is past examination papers and reports/commentaries which you can find at:

http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/current_students/programme_resources/lse/exams.shtml

It depends on what year you are viewing right now. You will get at most 3 years x 2 zones = 6 papers which are not enough. So, where can we find more ? We can use "time machine" to download older papers at

http://waybackmachine.org/

copy paste the link to past exam papers above and you will probably get nothing (if you do this in year 2011). The reason is because London International Programme is a new name. The old name was London External Programme. So, change the word "international" to "external"

http://www.londonexternal.ac.uk/current_students/programme_resources/lse/exams.shtml

and paste it to the wayback machine, you will see that the oldest paper you can download is from year 2003 (link is given below)

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20051028203413/http://www.londonexternal.ac.uk/current_students/programme_resources/lse/exams.shtml

I recommend that you download all the exam papers and reports that you need RIGHT NOW before they are gone.

Now, there is a reason why UOL only post the latest 3 years papers and reports. The reason is that syllabus change and old exam papers may not be relevant anymore and hence misleading. But do not worry, changes of syllabus do not apply to all subjects. Most questions in old exam papers are still relevant. In fact, you can see some questions are recycled after 3-4 years.

Having said that, you have to be careful as there are some subjects that have changed completely in terms of examination style and syllabus. For example, Introduction to Sociology had been changed to Principle of Sociology in 2006. Always check out the latest papers for latest exam's instructions.

Past exam papers are good for practicing before you sit for real main exam. Practice as many papers as possible until you get the feel of the answers that the examiners are looking for. 

Next piece of advice is always try to understand instead of memorising. Memory is volatile and it often let you down if you rely too much on it. Recall that in maths 1, you have to remember all the basic differentiations and one of them is 

It is much better if you know how to derive the formula above. Here is one way to do it.

Notice that it is actually ln a NOT ln x. If you didn't notice that in the beginning, it's the problem that I am trying to point out.

Another advantage of understanding is to prevent you from making silly mistakes. For example, if you don't understand what demand and supply curves mean, you can label them wrong in your diagram. The same thing goes for IS (Investment-Saving) and LM (Liquidity preference Money supply). I have seen many of my peers make mistakes in labeling the curves.

Another best example I could think of relates to Oligopoly. Oligopoly is everyone's favourite topic in Microeconomics and Managerial Economics. If you are not taking either subject then please skip to the next part. Otherwise, recall that in the standard Cournot duopoly model (homogeneous product), Firm 1's (or 2's doesn't matter) best response (or reaction) function should take the following form:

So, if your best response function end up with something like

then you should be alarmed. The positive coefficient tells us that if our competitor increase their production, we should follow suit. Clearly this does not make sense since the products are assumed to be homogeneous, if two players flood the market with their products then price will decrease because of excess supply.  This is definitely not good for both parties.

Careless mistake like this will cost you "25 marks" in exam which you could have scored easily.