Welcome to another blog post of the Organic Chemistry Academy.
Today, I’m going to show you what I consider the best technique. Today, I’ll reveal how I take organic chemistry tests. Here at the Organic Chemistry Academy, we strive to make sure that you have the tools you need to succeed academically. These secrets will help you to ace any exams you take in school. Today, we’re going to use what I call the 80-10-10 rule.
Let’s pretend you have a one-hour exam, so let’s begin. The first thing that you need to do is to get acquainted with the test. The professor took his time to write this document.
This is the first time you see it, so you need to act quickly and you need to get familiar with the exam as soon as possible. You’re going to survey the exam to assess the task ahead of you, and you need a strategy to overcome the exam. First, take three minutes of your time to survey the exam, then you’re going to use your knowledge wisely.
You’re going to survey the questions in the following order. There are three types of questions, the ones that you know, the ones that you sort of know, and the ones that you don’t know. So you’re going to start with the ones that are worth more points. So hopefully those will be in the 80% block. Now you’re going to mark these three types of questions really quick with three dots for the ones that you know, two dots for the ones that you sort of know, and one dot to the ones that you don’t know. Let’s begin with the questions that you know. They should consist of at least 80% of the test.
Now your brain is really fresh, and you’re going to invest 30 minutes of the exam. And let’s say you got 78% in this block, then you do the questions that you sort of know, and they will consist of about 10% of the test. Here these questions you can complete, but you just need a little time to work on them.
So spend about 15 minutes of your time here, and let’s say that out of this 10%, you got
an 8% right. Finally you’re going to do the questions that you don’t know. By this time your brain is tired, you really want to finish this test, but now this is the time where you want to push it and try to get to the next letter grade.
It is towards the end of the exam. And you’ve spent about 10 minutes in this block. Let’s say for example that you don’t know everything. If you have a multiple choice test, guess systematically. For example, pick all B’s, or pick all C’s, but not both. You want to get points. And so let’s say you get like 7% out of this 10% block.
Check for completion, and do not leave anything unanswered. Try to give your best educated guess at all times. You’re going to take about 2 minutes to do so. You want to wrap it up, and you want to make sure that exam in front of you is completed. At the end of these 60 minutes, if you count your percentages, you’re going to see that you got a 93%, which represents an A.
