Semester 1 Exams, Tips and Tricks

As the end of semester one wraps up, four big examinations loom for health sci students with added pressure with COVID-19 inducing extra stress. Although I haven’t kept up with the content or the exam structure this year; I am here to give you guys some advice as well as some tips as you head into your first major exams of the year (at least from my perspective from last years exams). I’ll share a few tips to help ease the stress (or add to it) for each of the four papers as well as some uplifting advice if you’re struggling.

HUBS191: The way that this exam is structured is heavy multi choice orientated as you have to answer 90 of them as well as 4 essays. The best way to prepare for this paper is to rote learn everything, follow the learning objectives and learn the main pathways (nervous system, endocrine, immunology etc). Absolutely abuse quizlet or anki to force feed the content into your brain especially as the examsoft software doesn’t let you search stuff up, thus you need to know the content. In terms of the essays practice writing plans for each question rather than starting from scratch, otherwise you’ll miss a point here and there. There’s probably no excuse for running out of time for the essays as you can type them but be careful not to overwrite, remember each essay only 7-8 marks. As for revision use the past exam papers as they will give you gauge for the types of essays that they tend to give. Get a group together and all write essays together and bounce ideas off of one another as there is bound to be something that someone else thinks of that you won’t. 

CHEM191: Past papers are you’re best go here, I’m not sure how they’ll mark short answer questions as there is a significant number of diagrams and calculations required for example in the organic and kinetics modules. Focus on making sure you understand the concepts and how to do apply that concept to every question rather than the question itself as they tend to change the content each year. Forget about the labs or the bestchoice as they have very little to no relevance in the final exam.

CELS191: Similar to HUBS rote learn the hell out of the slides, learning objectives are a great start as the lecturers sit down and write the questions based off of the objectives. Make sure that you understand the diagrams and the pictures that they give you in the slides as more than likely you’ll have to do some naming or labelling of some sort. The third module at least in 2019 given which contains the lectures on CRISPR and stuff like that were pretty irrelevant in my opinion compared to other concepts such as the lectures given by Sergio or Greg in the microbiology module which are content heavy and they tend to ask quite a few SAQ questions on that as well as MCQs. Overall CELS and HUBS are the exams where you get given the most foreign content from year to year so it would pay to study up for these two (also most of it is new content from high school).

PHSI191: In our year we were allowed a singular A4 double sided cheat sheet which we absolutely abused. I’m not sure how this will be moderated but if you are still allowed one I would put all definitions, laws, unfamiliar formulas and diagrams that you can on there. Past papers are you best friend here, the department tends to ask similar types of questions year to year with the same concepts and calculations. The calculation questions typically in my opinion are more straight forward than the theory questions so I would say if you feel like you are comfortable with the calculations then studying the theory and the conceptual questions would be the direction I would take. The problem with this exam is that there are only 55 questions this means that there is little room for error as one incorrect answer could lead to a loss in 2% of your final grade due to plussage. In short do every past exam question, leave no stone unturned unfortunately.

Now for some non-academic advice: Your exams don’t define who you are as a person, your grades at the end of the day is just a number, we would all like to get into medicine and score 100% on every paper but realistically this is going to be everyone and that’s ok. Especially in the given times and environment studying is hard and your personal circumstances definitely influence each person’s ability to study. Don’t study all day and night, you’ll burn out, there are some robotic like people out there who will do this but in short, your mental and physical health and your friendships are equally as important as your goals. Finally, you have to go in with a positive attitude, if you get into the exam and panic then that will dictate how the rest of the exam will go, take a deep breathe, relax and trust your revision. It’s like going to into the finals of whatever sporting code you play and you have to rely on what got you there in the first place. If you have any questions feel free to comment or message me directly. 

Good luck, you’ll smash it!

PS: have fun studying for the UCAT after your exams haha (I have UCAT blog as well so feel free to check that out).