This goes back to what I said the other day… “writing stuff down is not a sign of weakness”.

Besides, once you start writing stuff down and figuring things out from the problem statement, you give the opportunity for the professor to give you partial credit. If you write nothing, there’s no reasonable way it could happen.

On that note, when I took my Emag Fields final in my undergrad, the professor (David Voltmer, Rose-Hulman) handed out the test and shared this story:

“A few years ago when I gave this final, I got back one of the tests and found a $100 bill clipped to it with a note. The note said, ‘A dollar for every point.’ I thought ‘great!’ and gave him $31 in change.”

Yes, obviously one has to be careful about negative marks, but from my experience those are usually limited to multiple choice tests, and are meant to statistically offset marks one is expected to get with guessing.

@Bashar – Philosophically, bonus questions are kind of weird. Maybe I should save this for another post.. Though good job on connecting soccer to OS

And this post does show up on /blog’s front page. Though because it’s in the “aside” category, it’s actually at the very bottom.

Then he revealed his dark side and got into religious questions that has public conflicts. This is when things started get out of control and turned into chaos.

As to what I used to do, i would go and write long answers and give examples from soccer on a OS exam

I used to leave exams as soon as I had finished writing. Then I got into the habit of re-reading my work. After a while I realized when I got my results back that I had made some very silly errors which I should have caught up on the proof read. That’s when I started marking my own stuff. Just to make sure I was reading it carefully.

The other trick I picked up was to always write something. Never leave a question unanswered. I have picked up marks in an exam where my response was “I’m not sure of the answer but my gut feel is that I will need a stack in my algorithm.” Not too convincing but my lecturer was happy that:

a) I had recognized the fact that I didn’t know the answer (believe me as a professional, this is FAR more important than stabbing wildly in the dark) AND

b) My gut instinct would have led me down the right path eventually.

Of course, this all depends on the lecturer. Some are not particularly forgiving. In some scenarios, you will lose points for incorrect answers so be careful how you use this advice.

@Mike – that’s a fairly good idea for spending excess time, but it could depend on a prof. I especially recall a particular question for an Algorithms & Data Structures exam I’ve had. 6 marks (lets say 5~10% of exam’s weight) full page of space to write out code. The main idea was to get a hold of a certain pointer inside the void foo(void) function. It’s tricky. Full 6 marks were given for “can’t be done” answer – that’s 2 marks per word. Perfect answer does not, at all, seem reasonable.

Though to make this particular example even more fun, consider that I was awarded the majority of marks for scanning the memory for a unique feature to get a hold of the location, while others have also performed reasonably well with the use of global variables.

Anyways, bonus points for Lost reference!

I have also been known to mark my own tests when I’m done. This will often include notes to the marker along the lines of “I think this could be clearer but I can’t think of a good way to explain it”, along with an actual percentage grade.

In at least one instance, the marker had responded to most of my comments starting a dialogue with me about why he felt my comments were too harsh, too forgiving and when they were spot on.

It sounds wierd when I tell people about it, but it really is a good way to make sure that you understand what you wrote and ensure that you think it is reasonable. It will also make you aware of where you think you need to improve your answers and what you need to study up on for the next test.

It should also subtly affect your marker psychologically but don’t tell anyone I said that

Of course, in grade 12, when I needed a high mark, I started doing the homework…all of it…the night before. So I’d end up doing a few weeks of Physics homework before a test. That was FUN! — It also made it so I got A’s on the tests. It turned out that teachers like to use problems from homework….a sad realization of mine.

I was never much of a doodler.