Your primary goal when taking the exam is to get enough points to pass. At the end of the day, all points are equal. This means you should spend your time during the exam on questions you know and can answer more quickly than questions that you are not as familiar with and will take longer to complete.

Taking an exam is much like a sporting event. In addition to learning all the content, you need to have the mental fortitude to sit for 5 hours and complete problems, and you need to be able to do math questions efficiently in Excel.

Exam graders want to give you partial credit, but cannot do so if you don't write down your thoughts in a clear manner. If you are stuck on the beginning of math problem, write down a simplifying assumption and continue on. You will earn far more points than skipping the problem entirely.

In other words, spend 3 minutes per point.The number of points allocated to each problem are proportional to the amount of time and effort it takes to solve the problem. A good rule of thumb is that you should spend 3 minutes per 1 point allocated to each problem. This will certainly vary from student to student and problem to problem, but it can be a helpful heuristic to prevent yourself losing too much time on a single problem.

In other words, write 1 sentence per 1/4 point. It's sometimes difficult to know how much one is expected to write for a problem based solely on how the problem is worded. While looking for keywords in the problem such as "list" or "describe" can be helpful to know how to answer the problem, another useful heuristic is to write approximately one sentence per 1/4 point the problem is worth. Naturally, this really only applies to conceptual problems, this varies from problem to problem, and there are certainly exceptions. One should always use their best judgement at the end of the day than rely too heavily on heuristics.

Within reason, exam graders will not typically dock you points for listing irrelevant items on a notecard. This means it is in your best interest to write down as many items you can think of that may even be slightly relevant. For example, if a question is asking for relevant ASOPs, #23 and #41 are pretty much always valid answers.

Studying is much more fun when you have someone to do it with. While our course instructors are available for your every need, sometimes you want someone who is closer to being your peer. Feel free to ask us, we can introduce you to other students who are also looking for study buddies!

Stressing out about not knowing the first 2 questions on the exam won't help you pass. Take a deep breath, skip these questions to come back to later, and do the ones you know first.

You need all the mental energy you have for the exam. Any studying at this point is not going to help you do any better.

Stick to a consistent sleep schedule 2 weeks before the exam and plan out as many details as possible for exam day. This way, there are far fewer variables on exam day that can go wrong and distract / stress you out on exam day, leaving you more energy to focus on the exam itself.

Studies have shown that having fun can improve performance. Gamifying studying and test-taking can be effective. Plus, who doesn't want to be having fun?