How to Get a Good Degree: Making the Most of Your Time at University

How many exams have you already done in your life? You may feel that you have done so many that you have nothing to learn about how to go about preparing for exams, and how to perform during them so as to pass them. However, the nature of your next exams may be somewhat different, and their importance may be more crucial. This time, the quality of your overall degree may depend significantly on your revision strategies and on your exam technique. You may have just one shot at getting a good degree. The quality of your degree will be important for the rest of your career, whether or not you go on to get higher degrees later. Even if you feel you've got revision and exams really cracked, and that they pose no problems for you, it is worth checking through this chapter, and ticking off all the sensible things you already do. In this chapter, I'll start with some thoughts about revision, then we'll look at exactly what is measured by different kinds of exams, as a basis for planning how best to revise. We'll end by looking at some of the things you can do during exams to get those extra few marks which could make that vital difference and secure for you your good degree.

Revision is probably the wrong word. Revision could be taken to mean 'looking again', and the learning pay-off of just looking again at lecture notes, textbooks, handouts, practical reports, tutorial exercises and any other course material is not tremendously high. There are other words in

-181-