Who isn’t scared of exams? We have been taking exams for like 16 years, yet we get unnerved, confused, cry, procrastinate – do everything right before our exam. Here are a few tips that might make your exam day slightly more bearable.

Night before Exam

• Here’s where I am hoping that you have studied as much as possible during your study vacation. And today you have made a list of all the important topics in order of priority of study.
• Check your exam timing again!
• Work on topics that you know need time. Revise whatever you can.
• Pack your exam bag / book bag with your hall entry ID if applicable, your stationery items like pens, staplers, calculators, technical drawing kits, any journals/projects to be submitted on the examination day etc.
• Eat a healthy, but light dinner and sleep when you are done revising. Don’t stay up too late.
• Don’t stay up on the phone discussing and palpitating about what you haven’t studied. Especially, don’t pay attention to people who claim they just received some sort of a magical ‘question bank’!
• You must have studied the format of the question paper by now. Prepare yourself accordingly. Try and work out a schedule for how long you wish to dedicate to each question type.
• Relax, visualise yourself appearing for the exam confidently and calmly. Go off to sleep.

Before Exam

• Get up at a comfortable time and get ready. If you have allotted time to study, go through your notes.
• Don’t try and study anything new right now. Instead just concentrate on sharpening whatever you know very well right now. It’s nearly impossible to attempt to remember something new today. Don’t try it, because you’ll end up confusing yourself and probably even forget what you actually knew well in the first place.
• Eat a light, nutritious breakfast. Don’t over eat or stay hungry. Neither is going to help.
• Carry water, a snack, chocolates or whatever you think you might require during the exam.
• Don’t forget to wear your watch!
• Leave from your home/ hostel in good time. Allow for delays in traffic, trains, buses, and sudden spurts of discovering religion (hey students in India discover religion on a regular exam basis!), rains or any other natural causes for delay. This will ensure you reach in good time to your examination venue. Also allocate time to finding a place to park if you drive yourself.
• Carry your notes along with you, but realize that carrying ALL your notes and your texts and the reference books is not going to help.
• Reach the venue before time and find your seat or the classroom which is allocated to you.

On Arrival at Test Center

• Once you have reached, stay away from being in a large boisterous group in which everyone’s talking about how the exam will be.
• Meet with a few friends, share thoughts by all means but don’t get bogged down.
• If you like being alone, just find a comfortable spot, sit and read through your books.
• Don’t get anxious. I know it’s easier said than done, but imagine that you are doing well and you know everything in the exam. Just keep calm and read through or silently revise and you will be okay.

During Exam

• Often, you have to be in your seat at least 20 to 30 minutes before the actual start of the exam.  Get to your seat, put all books away, and keep yourself cool.
• When the answer sheets are handed out, read the instructions on them and follow accordingly.
• Sign the attendance records.
• Once they hand out the question papers, go through the whole paper. Check for instructions like “Answer only 3 out of 5 from section A” or “Answer either section A or section B”. Please make sure you have understood the instruction properly.
• Check which questions you’re most comfortable with. Start off by answering those.
• Keep an eye on the watch. At times, a lot of time is spent answering a few questions and then suddenly you realize you’re left with very little time for the rest of the questions.
• If you’re comfortable with attempting numerical first, go ahead and finish those. To some people, numericals are a great confidence booster. To some others, they feel it’s better to get them out of the way and get onto other questions later.
• If you have to make any diagrams, be neat and label them as required.
• Don’t look at others and think of what they are writing about. Many students see their friends taking a lot of answer sheets and get worried!
• If you run out of time, but still know a few answers, quickly write down the answers as points. They may fetch you a few marks at least.
• Finish off your test, put your papers together and go through it if you want to.

After Exam

• Submit your papers, and be happy with whatever you have done.
• Avoid doing a detailed post mortem of the exam.
• If you have any more exams to study for, forget about this one, it’s behind you now. You might be very happy with the way you attempted it or you might feel that you could do better. Whatever it is, just focus your energies on your next exam. If you feel that you needed to do better, channelize this into your preparations for the next exam.
• Take some time off and unwind yourself before you start further preparations.
• If this was your last exam, just be happy and have fun!

Whatever you might think of them, examinations are a sort of necessary evil. They have to be taken as that’s the way people evaluate what you have learned. These are tips to help you get through what students unnecessarily make into a stressful time.

I have made the forums live again after some changes. Forums are a great way to share information and connect with each other. Make full use of them.

Let me know if you have any suggestions like what catogories you want to see in the forum. As of now only the years of engineering are listed in the forums.

I am going to add the various disciplines offered as forums with sub forums for each year.  The question I face is that the general forums for year second to final year will not be very active but I think we would still need them for common collaborations. So I wil let them be for now.