Six practical principles for any maths or science exam — easily adapted to almost any subject.
1) Timekeeping
In my view, timekeeping is the single most important element of exam technique.
The advice is simple: do not go too slow.
The reasoning is just as simple. Missing entire pages in an exam costs far more than the occasional careless error introduced by a faster pace. I consider this skill so important that I have written a separate article devoted to it — well worth reading if you haven't already.
2) The opening minutes
Start the exam properly — do not open the paper and begin writing straight away.
Take a few minutes (or even just one, if you are tight on time) to skim through the whole paper before starting. This can feel counter-intuitive, particularly for younger students, but the value is significant. Four reasons:
i) You walk in without a map of the exam. Without skimming, you have no sense of its length, the topics covered, where the long-form questions sit, or how many of them there are.
ii) You are not obliged to work through the exam in order. If you spot that a topic you handle well makes up the last 20% of the paper, you may choose to tackle it first.
iii) One section can sometimes help you with another. It does not always happen, but occasionally it does. For example, a later question on Newton's First Law may serve as a useful reminder while answering an earlier question on the Second.
iv) There is good evidence that a quick glance at a question is enough to start your subconscious working on it while you focus on other problems.
To be clear: this is not deep reading of each question. It is a swift browse — something like "right, a few short questions on electrolysis… two six-markers on covalent and ionic bonding… an experiment on titration… and so on."
3) Presentation
By presentation I do not mean elegant handwriting. I mean organising your work in a way that is easy for an examiner to follow.
A clear example is boxing or underlining your final answer in A-level Maths exams. There is nothing more frustrating, as an examiner, than scanning a page of working and trying to guess which figure is the intended final answer. Make the examiner's life easier and the benefit-of-doubt marks tend to fall your way.
Good layout also helps you when you come back to check your work later in the exam.
A few additional points on presentation and notation:
i) Avoid writing vulgar fractions with a sideways slash — it is rarely clear where the numerator ends and the denominator begins.
ii) Use a pen that does not smudge. Smudged exponents and small numbers are easily misread.
iii) Cross your 7s so they cannot be confused with 1s, 2s or Zs; and cross your Zs to distinguish them from 2s. These small details matter at the grade boundary. Every week I see students misread their own 1s as 7s, or 2s as Zs.
iv) Do not scribble out mistakes — strike through with a single line. You may want to revisit that working, or the examiner may award some marks for it.
v) Avoid stringing operations together with overloaded equals signs. For example, on the question "what is 2 multiplied by 3, added to 7?":
Incorrect: 2 × 3 = 6 + 7 = 13 (the equals sign is being misused)
Correct:
Step 1: 2 × 3 = 6
Step 2: 6 + 7 = 13
When in doubt, start a new line.
4) Read the whole question
It seems obvious, yet many students still skip it. A few things to keep in mind:
i) Every question has a structure. Parts (a), (b), (c) and (d) are connected and tend to lead you toward a final conclusion. Reading all parts before starting any of them is genuinely useful. It is striking how often students answer part (a) only to realise some of what they wrote actually belongs in part (b).
ii) Skipping the introductory text and jumping straight to the mathematical content is a common and costly habit, particularly in mathematics. The introductory text often defines a variable, sets a constraint, or specifies the context — information that is essential to answering correctly.
Taking the time to read the full question is the cheapest way to avoid losing marks to misunderstanding.
5) Play the game
Sometimes you will face a question you cannot do, or one that simply does not make sense. In those moments, play the game:
- Convinced your answer is nonsense? Write it down anyway. You would be surprised how often unusual-looking answers in exams are exactly what was wanted. Unless the exam is negatively marked, you have nothing to lose.
- A six-mark question that you think can be answered in two marks? Pad it out. Add closely related information around the topic. Aim for seven marks of content so that, if one point is invalid, you still cover the six.
- Learn how to approach questions that look impossible at first glance. This is a separate technique covered in another article.
6) The end-game
This is covered in more depth in the timekeeping article. In brief, the end-game is how you allocate any remaining time between checking answered questions and re-attempting unanswered ones.
There is no fixed rule — the aim is simply to find the marks. My own approach:
- Start with the unanswered questions. That is usually where the largest remaining marks are.
- Follow the three-minute rule. If three minutes pass without progress, move to a different question. Returning later with fresh eyes is often what's needed.
- When the remaining unanswered questions look unsalvageable, switch to checking your completed answers.
- If you are fully satisfied with everything answered, devote the rest of the time to the difficult ones until time runs out.