A-Level Economics Week 5 Exam Preparation Tips

Mentally Preparing for an exam

For the final week leading up to your exam, it is vital to keep doing past papers! I know I sound like a broken record but it’s now or never! We want to continue to replicate the feel of the actual exam environment as much as possible so that when we walk into that exam room for real it feels like second nature.

This blog will focus on mentally preparing for the exam to keep us calm and ready for the day. One of the most common issues students face in the final days approaching the exam is feeling like they haven’t don’t enough, they do not know enough, they won’t be able to complete the exam paper in time, they will forget everything as soon as they enter the exam hall and the exam itself may be too difficult! Below are a few of the best techniques to tackle these worries effectively:

- Remember to stick to the format of doing/reviewing past papers we’ve previously discussed. Remember to get yourself into that ‘exam room’ headspace, no phones, no screaming siblings or no distractions of any kind, just you and the paper.

- After completing an exam paper mark it! Be harsh, be realistic, it’s for the best.

- Continue to identify questions that you do incorrectly and review the corresponding topic. Use the colour code method to pinpoint your ability level on certain topics. (For all of this refer to my last previous blogs).

- Don’t forget to reflect on each paper you finish, doing the paper is the first step, but we can gain a huge amount of knowledge from our reflection. Look at how much time it took you, were you writing till the last minute? Did you spend too much time on a certain section or topic area or question type etc. We usually tend to overcomplicate answers if we feel that we don’t know enough about the topic it’s on and waffle while dancing around it. Reflection helps us pinpoint these areas and draws our attention to the problem so we can address it. Note down what we find, a few things that we did well and more importantly the things we need to improve on next time, this helps us track progress and hold ourselves accountable for mistakes we keep making.

- With the time you have left it’s helpful to try a technique called visualization, when you try a practice paper really try to visualize that you are in the exam room and that this is the real deal! This is where you can start to practice your SMART goals. So, naturally, we need to start to create these. You should aim to set 5 goals to try to accomplish during the exam.

o your goals need to be specific to that one specific exam! Think about topics or problem areas and how you will aim to tackle them.

o The goal needs to be measurable. Such as aiming to finish the paper 15 minutes early to review key questions you struggled with.

o The third goal needs to be achievable. This needs to be something that you can actually complete within the exam. An example could be to aim to complete all the 6 or fewer mark questions first in a certain time and then leave more time for the large 10 plus mark questions.

o The goal needs to be relevant to the exam at hand, avoid generalizing for all your exams. You could aim to tackle all questions on a topic that you are confident in half the time.

o Finally, the goal needs to be time-specific. This is an easy one as you have to complete any goals that you set within the duration of the exam!

- Try adding your SMART goals one by one as you go through past papers, see how they feel and if they’re helping you with certain problems you’ve noticed. You can then adjust them as necessary so that these goals are optimized to best help you in your real exam.

- Finally, most importantly LOOK AFTER YOURSELF! You can’t sit your exam if you’re so exhausted you get ill or so tired you sleep through your alarm, or worse end up like Will from The Inbetweeners… Remember to eat well and sleep well, the payoff for this is massive in the long run! Lack of sleep triggers stress hormones in the brain and prevents us from thinking clearly. Eating well gives you sufficient energy before an exam to power through those few hours of intense thinking and writing. Remember there are no naps or snacks in the exam so make sure you go in feeling 100% ready!

As you walk into your exam, instead of thinking about what you could have done better or what you’re most worried about, instead, think about all the work you’ve put in, be proud of this effort and everything you achieved this far, this exam is just one more step and likely to be one more success you’ll look back on!

Good luck.

You got this!

Have any questions about how to prepare for your A-Level exams? Having problems with any hard to understand content or tricky past exam questions? Then ask Mehnaz. Mehnaz will be hosting a series of Q&A webinars in the 2 weeks before final exams. Post your questions here, and Mehnaz will answer them in these sessions.