Exam help

Hi all,

I wanted to seek advice from you regarding one topic about the exams. During the exams especially in qualitative questions (in macroeconomics for example) with multiple-choice answers, I tend to overthink the answers. And this leads to changing my answers which in most cases results in choosing the wrong answer. It does not happen because of lack of study (I burn a lot of midnight oil while studying), however this tendency to overthink the answers create a lot of problems for me. And it happens in qualitative questions not in quantitative ones.

Your help will be very useful as my final weeks are coming.

Thank you.

35 Comments
 

Yeah, it happens to me all the time. Pretty ridiculous that you must stick with one economic theory as a god-given fact. Just another example of academic studies being a poor reflection of the real world.

Array
 

Overthinking? Wtf lmao. You either know the material or you don't. And from your post, it's clear you don't. Don't overcomplicate the very simple problem at hand--that you're not studying enough--with this "overthinking" nonsense

 

What exams do you have in consulting? It sounds like you don’t know the material well enough. Many times you have to master the material, not just know it well.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

For example, in my macroeconomics midterm. When the questions are like in calculus or microeconomics where questions are either calculations or graphical analysis I am doing well. In macroeconomics there are also qualitative questions like, what will be the implications of policy x. I select the answer but then start to overthink the other answers a lot. Like, there was a trivial question like what is the opposite effect of export subsidies. I picked tariffs. But then start to think maybe there is some trick in the question etc. Sometimes I just misread the question despite reading it several times or sometimes I concentrate so much that I am overthinking.

 
Most Helpful

Gibbon@

For example, in my macroeconomics midterm. When the questions are like in calculus or microeconomics where questions are either calculations or graphical analysis I am doing well. In macroeconomics there are also qualitative questions like, what will be the implications of policy x. I select the answer but then start to overthink the other answers a lot. Like, there was a trivial question like what is the opposite effect of export subsidies. I picked tariffs. But then start to think maybe there is some trick in the question etc. Sometimes I just misread the question despite reading it several times or sometimes I concentrate so much that I am overthinking.

So basically you’re not in consulting and you don’t know the material well enough.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

You would do better if you shifted all the effort you put into writing this sad post into actually studying the material and practicing the problems.

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Seriously? You're in college and you're still asking "how do I study and take tests" questions? Come on man, these questions should've been taken care of in middle school. Because the answer is always the same: You study. End of story

 

What helped me was when I stopped cramming and started thinking. Basically, try and understand everything you learned as opposed to cramming a fact into your head. If you do this properly it'll be extremely easy to maintain a 4.0.

 

It's pretty tough to swap over to thinking as opposed to cramming, it's not what schools teach. It sounds nuts that I'm advocating thinking in schools, but that's just the way the education system is (at least in Ireland).

 

Do everything you normally do to study, and THEN get last year's exam on CourseHero.  Solve it.  See what you did wrong.  Get the year before's exam.  Solve it.  See what you did wrong.  Repeat until you get perfect scores.

 

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