How to pass exams

1. Don't start attending lectures and think that you are learning for learning's sake. Start thinking about the exam from the first minute of the first lecture. The point of studying is to pass exams and get qualifications, if you happen to remember something later on, then great, but that's a bonus, not a feature.

2. If the exam is internally set, suck up to your lecturers from day one and try and wheedle out of them what the exam questions will be. You have to be a bit subtle about this, i.e. ask leading questions like "If this topic comes up in the exam, what is the best way of approaching it?", if the lecturer goes into a long spiel, then assume the topic will come up, if he says "Oh, this is just background stuff" then it won't. Of course this doesn't work for externally set exams.

3. Keep your notes up to date, read the chapter from the book before and after the lecture, while it's fresh in your mind, try and condense each lecture down to one or two pages of A4. If there's anything that's not clear, ask the lecturer about it the next week. At this stage, he will be impressed at how keen you are and, if you are lucky, will tip you off whether or not that topic will be in the exam. Don't kid yourself that you'll have time to come back to it later.

4. Most courses are divided into one topic for each week. Get hold of past exam papers and analyze carefully how often each topic comes up and work out the usual structure of the exam - is it answer any four from eight? Is it one compulsory and then three from seven?

5. Let's say (for sake of example) that's it's any four from eight; there are twelve possible topics; of which three nearly always come up and nine come up half the time, you actually only have to revise the main three topics and three others (i.e. half the syllabus) to be fairly sure of being able to answer four questions. i.e. out of the regular topics, you'll be able to answer two or three questions, and of the other three topics you choose, you should be able to answer another one or two (this strategy can blow up in your face, of course, maybe do three topics plus four to be on the safe side - it's not an exact science).

6. If a topic seldom comes up, then even if you like it, don't bother revising it. If there is a topic that usually comes up but you can't make head or tail of it, don't bother either. An exam hall is no place for actually thinking - you should be on auto-pilot by that stage.

7. Everybody has their own tricks how to revise. I like to condense my lecture notes down to a couple of pages, then condense that down to a few lines, then condense those few lines down to a few mnemonics. I also find doing practice exams, in real time, very helpful, not just jotting down key points but actually writing out answers long-hand. And then marking it objectively. But each to his own.

8. Try and get a half-way decent night's sleep before the exam, wake up early-ish and drink at least one litre of coffee. Be there well on time (do a dry run the day before if necessary). Keep revising until you get to the door of the exam hall and they tear the notes from your hand. It is amazing how much you can memorize in a short space of time once the pre-exam adrenalin has totally kicked in. You'll have forgotten it all half a day later, but by that stage, who cares?

9. The coffee is important, because not only does it keep you alert, after an hour or so you will be bursting for the toilet. Say to your body "You are not going to the toilet until you have answered half the questions" it is amazing how much this speeds things up.

10. Read the exam paper from front to back before you start - this is trite but v. important! - and work out which questions you are going to do. Some people like 'problem' or 'logic' questions; some people prefer 'Discuss', which is a bit more demanding than 'write down everything you know'. I once did an exam (four our of eight) and chose four out the first seven. The dead easy question was right on the back page and I didn't see it until right at the end. Bugger.

11. Space your time. If it's three hours, four questions of equal marks, that's forty-five minutes per question. The first few marks on each question are the easiest, after a while you get bogged down, after forty minutes or so, move on to the next question. Keep an eye on the clock.

Similarly, there may be a compulsory question worth forty marks and three optionals worth twenty marks - get out your calculator (always take a calculator) and type 60 minutes x 3 x 0.4 = 72 minutes, then make sure you spend 72 minutes (one hour and twelve minutes) on the first question. And then pace yourself for 36 minutes each for the next three. Adding odd numbers like this to a random start time of (say) 10.45 am is in itself quite tricky, so it's best to actually jot down somewhere visible 10.45 (start), 11.57 (start Q2), 12.33 (Q3), 1.09 (Q4) and 1.45 (end). If the last gap looks too long or too short, go back and check your figures!

12. Write clearly and neatly, leave a line or two empty between paragraphs (the 'ticking zone' - markers abhor a vacuum and will fill judiciously positioned blank lines with ticks), especially handy if you remember something later and need to squeeze it in. Don't start a new paragraph one or two lines from the bottom of the page - the paper's free! - turn over and start on the next page. Leaving lots of blank space is v. important with calculations, don't start on a right hand page, leave that blank so that you have two facing pages for workings. Often you get to the end of the workings and the answer is clearly wrong. At least you have space to re-work the answers in the gaps and arrive at something sensible.

Do not use Tippex in an exam. Cross out neatly with a ruled line, move on.

13. Let me restate The Golden Rule - an exam hall is no place for thinking. The only mental effort that should be required is to decide which questions to do, timing and so on. Everything else has to be on auto-pilot. If you can't answer the questions in long hand in auto-pilot mode in the required time in the peace and quiet of your own home, then don't imagine you can do it in panic-mode in an exam hall. I once had a weird experience in an exam, watching myself writing out, very neatly, a text-book answer to a text-book question and realised that I wasn't actually thinking, it was just pouring out, the same as when you play a tune on an instrument and your mind starts to wander ...

14. I personally have no truck with 'checking your own answers at the end'. You sometimes come back to the first question two hours later to check it, and you can't make head or tail of your own answer. If it's wrong it's wrong, by that time you are mentally frazzled and are in no state to check anything. I used to have a macho pride in finishing exams half an hour early and walking out of the hall early to demoralise the opposition, but actually that's daft.

15. If it's multiple choice and you aren't sure, then just guess - that way at least you have a one-in-five chance of getting it right. Leave it blank and you've potentially wasted a mark.

16. Do not take the exam paper out of the hall with you. It's over and done, you'll only waste time torturing yourself about whether you chose the right questions and so on - in exactly the time when you should be revising for the next exam, or getting pissed, assuming it's your last exam of the season.

17. Some lecturers may actually think that you care about their topic. If there is a chance that they will be useful to you later on (are they on the exam review board or disciplinary committee? will you be having them for other courses?), then keep them 'warm'. If not, then do no more than give a friendly nod for the next few weeks, followed by a curt nod, and soon they will have forgotten you existed. And you them.