6. On the Battlefield

In exams, time is diamond especially if you are sitting for a 2-hour paper. You will be surprised that time flies very fast. Make sure you always bring a watch or a stopwatch if you like. The following are common stupid things that may cost your precious time but they can be minimised:

1. Answer is too long for a 5 marks question.
   The amount of time that you should spend on a x marks question is x / 100 * duration of exams. So if it is a 5 marks question for an economics paper, then you should not spend more than 5/100 * 180 = 9 minutes.
   Speaking of economics, you should always include a diagram for every answer whenever possible instead of waffling a full page answer. I usually draw a diagram (half a page) and then explain how it answers the question (half a page). Always remember to ANSWER the QUESTION. When you are answering True/False question, always start with the statement is true/false and then followed by your diagram and explanation. Sometimes it's easy to see whether it's true or false, but sometimes it's not clear. For the latter case, leave the true/false blank after "the statement is" and do not forget to fill it after you have figured out the answer! The reason of doing this is to show the examiners that you understand economics, you already knew the answer just by reading the statement although most of us know the answer only after we draw and analyse diagrams.

   
   

   Remember: if a picture is worth a thousand words, a diagram is worth a lot of marks.
   
   
2. Spend too much time on drawing diagrams.
   I have been asked many times whether we can use pencils to draw diagram. The answer is YES ! I don't see any reason why we can't. Drawing diagrams using pens is very risky if you make a mistake. You have to cross out the whole diagram and redraw again whereas with pencils, we can use eraser to correct the mistake.  
   
   
   Also, make sure you already know the measurement; how long should the y-axis and x-axis be, scale, etc. Don't spend time figuring those in exams. If your diagram requires steep budget constraint or IS or LM curve,  you should know roughly what the gradient should be.
   
   
3. Run out of paper and being idle for few minutes.
   I had seen the case where a student who sat next to me in exam had her time wasted for about 10 minutes. She waved her hand to get attention from invigilators for about a minute until she was noticed. The invigilator took his time walking to approach her. She asked for an extra answer sheet but the invigilator thought she wanted to go to toilet so he didn't bring any blank answer sheet with him. So, he took his time again to get the answer sheet and to get back to her. This case can be quite common if you are sitting for an exam where there are thousands of candidates.
   
   
   Ladies and gentleman, the moral of the story is don't ask for extra answer sheet only when you are run out, you should anticipate worst case scenario when the invigilator don't have any answer sheet in his/her hand. Keep your idle hand up if you need something from invigilator while your other hand keep writing.

It is expected that exam questions will be difficult but sometimes the difficulty can be totally beyond our expectation. Let me share with you all that this has happened once.

In 2009, the chief examiner for paper 133 (advanced statistics : distribution theory) left the LSE and a new guy took his position. The questions he set are absofuckinglutely difficult. The standard was way too high compared to subject guide and the previous exams. I still remember when I looked around, everyone was panicking. It was our first exam (for year 3 BME students) and we were already screwed. 

My friend who sat behind me said that I kept shaking my head and she even heard me cursing. I saw about half of the candidates who took the exam left the hall after an hour. Honestly, I wanted to join them because I was very sick on that day and I already secured my first class honours even though I fail the bloody paper. But then I remembered that I was competing for the LSE scholarship, so giving up was not really a good option. So, I decided to sit through the 2 hours torture. I only managed to do half of each questions and was expecting to get at most 40 marks.

After the exam was over, many people complained and one of my friends claimed to solve all questions. We agreed that whoever passed this exam must be bloody genius let alone getting a distinction. Three months later, results were released. From SIM , there were only 2 people who got distinctions. Surprise surprise, I was the world top scorer with 87 marks. 

Here are my advices should this happen to you in the future:

1. Take 1 minute to spit out vulgarities (but not too loud) if that helps.
2. Everyone around you is now your competitors. Pray that they leave early because you have high chances of scoring higher than these people. Even 1 mark means a lot in this scenario. You want to make sure you belong to at least top 40% percentile in case the examiner want to fail 60% of the candidates. Remember, there is no such a thing called re-examination. Instead moderation will be applied.
3. Specific to maths units; note that each question usually consists of 3 parts. Most of the time, part (a) asks you to state theorem. Part (b) asks you to prove something. Part (c) asks you to use theorem in (a) and result in (b). Make sure you state the theorem CORRECTLY ! It's the easiest part to score. Part (b) may be difficult. Part (c) should be easy so you better answer it even though you did not manage to prove part (b).
4. Write down your thought process. Let the examiners know what you were thinking so that they can give you some credit. If you hand in blank paper, even God can't help you.