Original post by jamietopp21Some advice for you!
Before the exam:
1) Revise tonight things you're not certain on, but leave plenty of time to wind down before you sleep, and try and get a good sleep
2) Make sure you know pseudo code, 3rd normal form, and BNF/syntax diagrams as these almost always come up and if you can nail them all, its around 15 marks already sorted
3) Tomorrow morning have some breakfast
4) I've heard doing exercise for 20 minutes has been shown to increase performance for up to 2 hours after the exercise, unsure if this is true though
In the exam:
1) Before you start doing any of the questions, read through the whole question paper once or twice, this lets you prepare for all the questions, and with the exam 3 hours long, it hardly puts any pressure on you time wise
2) When answering the questions make sure you answer what they are asking, the problem with doing past papers is that, at least i find, that you can familiarise yourself with questions and then answer them incorrectly, for exam in a past paper it asked me which logical operation was used in masking and my answer was "mask" because i lost concentration, be sure to answer the question they ask
3) Make sure to give examples, even if they don't ask for one, this can be crucial in getting a whole 2 marks in a 2 mark question, or can turn a 8 mark answer into an 11 or 12 mark answer if you explain all points with examples
4) Use correct technical terms through-out, some marks are only given if certain words are used
5) If you don't know the answer, have a go, you are unlikely to lose marks for writing something which is incorrect so you might as well have a go, you may pick up a few marks
6) Take in a bottle of water in the exam to stay hydrated, if you panic, you can sit back, relax and have a drink to calm down before looking again at the question