- It means you've only learnt a small proportion of the course and are at risk of being tripped up in the exam.
- Lectures are lazy and want to reuse questions but still be satisfied that you kind of learnt the course.
My department, SBCS, has a policy of releasing the past three years of exam papers. I know that at Barts, the policy is to release none, completely preventing exam spotting.
Three years is unfortunately or fortunately enough to spot patterns.
Three years is unfortunately or fortunately enough to spot patterns.
Rule 1 - If you are provided with practice or exemplar MCQs in high quantities, these will be used in the exam.
Rule 2 - If you are given a FAQ booklet about exams and they explain how to do calculations or answer particular questions, they will 99% come up in the exam.
Rule 3 - If you have essay portions like me, then try and find the common themes in the essays. Setting mark schemes for essays in long winded so lecturers will tend to pick four or five topics for essays, saving the rest for shorter questions.
Based on my results, using question spotting for some modules appears to have gained me a C. That means that less than a week's worth of revision for one module has allowed me to pass with a comfortable grade. I don't recommend it as it's a risk that tripped me up in one or two exams but it helped me cut out a lot of crap. I promise I won't do it in medicine (mainly because its impossible as they don't release past papers to stop this)
Based on my results, using question spotting for some modules appears to have gained me a C. That means that less than a week's worth of revision for one module has allowed me to pass with a comfortable grade. I don't recommend it as it's a risk that tripped me up in one or two exams but it helped me cut out a lot of crap. I promise I won't do it in medicine (mainly because its impossible as they don't release past papers to stop this)
Oh they really do disapprove of the question spotting, though I can't say I haven't tried it. Sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn't :( This year however I plan to learn it all so that I don't need to take risks like that :)
ReplyDeleteOh they really do disapprove of the question spotting, though I can't say I haven't tried it. Sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn't :( This year however I plan to learn it all so that I don't need to take risks like that :)
ReplyDeleteAlso I suppose once you are studying medicine you will 'need' to know the answers, otherwise you would be a rubbish doctor on graduating :P
ReplyDeleteDespite that, most people do it to some degree - studying 'smart' makes grades better and gives less work...
If you can spot the patterns, you are proving you are smart enough (which means you should get bonus marks IMO :P )