University Exams

How do they work?

My entire life so far exams, no matter what course, has been a big paper where you put your candidate number and centre number on and have about 1hr 30 mins to do.

That's secondary school and college. You'd have easier 1 mark questions at the front and harder 5/6 mark questions towards the back, sometimes more

But uni exams aren't like this, I do Biology and have found out there are no exam boards anymore, no AQA, no Edexcel or OCR. The exams are multiple choice!

Multiple choice!! How does that even work? Also how do I know what I need to know and what I don't need to know, since textbooks aren't catered towards the exam they're just general biology books.

Help?

Reply 1

mackemforever

Original post by PillsIV

Firstly, multiple choice exams make up a very small minority of University exams. Most subjects are still "school style" papers, comprised of a number of smaller questions and then one or two large questions.

Secondly, of course there are no exam boards. As every University teaches their own variation of a subject there are always differences between what is taught at each Uni. Any exam board would need to be doing a hundred different papers for each subject, not exactly possible.

Lastly, how do you know what you need to learn? Well you go to lectures and learn what they teach you, it's not complicated. They're not going to examine you on things which you haven't been taught, so if you go to your lectures, do the work that you're set, and read around the course content then you'll have learnt everything you need to.

Reply 2

DailyMailIsALiar

I'm only in my first year at uni and I can't say how much I miss good ol' AQA, EdExcel and OCR!

Reply 3

Helloworld_95

Exam style usually depends on the lecturer, some will prefer multiple choice as they'll think problem solving by elimination is just as important as knowing the topic, whereas others will prefer more full answers to show you can recall the information. Most will be somewhere inbetween those by asking for explanatory answers but giving greater context in the question as they know you could look those things up in a work situation.

Reply 4

Klix88

Agree with the above. It would be very unusual for all exams to be multiple choice.

However, I found that preparing or revising for a multiple choice exam wasn't different to essay or question-based exams so they shouldn't be a problem. Essentially you still figure out your own answer to a multiple choice question. The issues occur when a) your answer doesn't match any of the options (in which case at least you know you're wrong and can try re-working it) or b) you match one of the options but start dithering because you're not sure and the other options distract you.

I'm afraid that many schools "teach to test" - you're essentially taught specifically what you need to know to pass A Levels. Unis are a step on, where you are expected to have a much broader understanding of your topic from both lectures and independent work on reading lists (which will be the bulk of your learning experience).

Some lecturers may drop hints about exam content (although beware those like the joker we had, who liked to mix false leads in with genuine hints...). You can also look at exam papers from previous years to check out the question formats and topics. Some key core subjects might recur every year and they're worth knowing about. Some crop up every two or three years, which are again worth some focus in revision.

Reply 5

Olderandwiser23

The whole point of university is you're meant to know a lot about the subject. you can't just learn a syllabus and memorise like when at college.

Multiple choice is harder than you think, single best answer even harder. Most unis have a mix of paper types.MCQ's,SBA's , short answer and essay style