4 Common Exam Mistakes

Students often do a variety of mistakes. Here are four of them:

1. Inadequate preparation: In order to effectively conquer an exam, we should learn to use the formulas and skills. Many students simply memorize sentences and formulas, without really using them. Exams are often designed to be complicated and students won’t be asked to use formulas in straightforward manners. There will be some twists, such as combining the use of multiple formulas in a problem. Without enough preparation, students won’t be able to complete this. Also, without asking fellow students to make questions for one another, it will take too long for us to write proper responses. For many students, they simply can’t afford to make this kind of blunder and it is really important for us to be fully prepared.
2. Overwriting and Oversimplifying: There should be a proper balance when we want to prepare ourselves for an exam. In this case, we should prepare ourselves deal with the delicate balance. When asked to explain and describe something, students should avoid saying too little or too much. In this case, we should check last year’s exam and try to get comfortable with the complex fact pattern. Many students are having difficulty with this balance. When overwriting, we spend a disproportionate and inappropriate amount of time when answering a question. When oversimplifying, we only focus on things that we perceive and we may even leave our things that are actually considered as essential.
3. Failing to consider both sides of any issue: Many exam questions have complex fact pattern and it can be difficult to deal find the real answers. When trying to solve complex legal problems, we should try to analyze the whole thing properly. Maybe our analysis will render an effective solution, but sometimes it won’t. So, it is important for us to practice properly. In many cases, we should cut our analysis short without oversimplifying. It means that we should be familiar with all plausible arguments and this can be achieved only if we have read all the books thoroughly. It is also important to be more creative and it means, we will be able to derive multiple results.
4. Failing to manage time: When completing exams, we will need to deal with the heavy time pressure. There are specific time-constraints that we need to deal with. We should be able to complete exams in time, if we are well organized and adequately prepared. We could try to complete previous years’ exams and try to complete them in allotted time. Time should be budget methodically and we need to stay to within that budget. As an example, if we take a two-hour exam, it is important to correlate it with the number of questions completed. It means that we shouldn’t spend too much time with one question. The most common method is to complete the easiest questions first, followed with the moderately-difficult and finally the difficult ones.