Common mistakes students make in exams

Vijay Garg
Be it CBSE, ICSE or any other state board, exams are considered to be the most important phase of a student’s academic career. Sometimes the marks obtained in the board exams play a crucial role in deciding future of a student’s life. Board examinations create a lot of panic and stress among students who are going to appear for exams. Some feel extremely terrified while others remain tensed.
Even though a student would have spent the whole year effortlessly preparing for exams, but the pressure of the examinations lead students to make some common mistakes while attempting board exams. There is no doubt that the key to excel in any exam is hard work and tough preparation, but to score well in the exam, avoiding certain mistakes is equally important.Things you must do after getting exam paper in board exams. Here, we are enlisting some most common mistakes which students make while writing the board eaxm:

1. Not utilising 15 minute reading time properly
   Students going to attempt CBSE board exam are given 15 minutes time before they start writing exam. These 15 minutes are allotted to take make a strategy to attempt paper well in time. Instead most of the students make a mistake by simply reading the questions and not deciding a sequence in which they are to be answered.
2. Fail to understand exact question behind a question
   Exam stress and nervousness in students reduce their thinking ability. Out of fear and hurry to attempt the paper in time, they read a question quickly and start writing the answer without knowing what actually has been asked in the question. Eventually, they write an answer in which they missed the actual fact or concept.
3. Not taking care of word limit for each answer
   Mostly students have a mindset that longer the answer, more will be the marks given to it. This is completely untrue. Examiners only look for the meaningful answers which include important facts and crisp knowledge. They get irritated by the long essay type answers in which they struggle to find the key point. Moreover, spending large time on writing a wrong answer will ultimately leave you with less time to cover all remaining questions.
4. Lack of time management
   Time management is crucial for acing the board exams. Even knowing this fact very well, students still fail to manage time while writing the exam. Again the credit goes to exam stress and nervousness due to which students forget about the time limit and word limit they are allocated for attempting questions of different weightage. They should plan in advance that how much time is to be dedicated to each question and category.
5. Copying incorrect data
   Sometimes students copy the data given in the question paper incorrectly specially, in the numerical questions and then solve the question resulting in wrong answer which will ultimately lead to a zero score in that question though you had written the whole procedure and calculations correctly. Students should take extra care as it might save a couple of marks in the exam.
6. Leaving easy questions for last hour
   Most of the students have an idea to attempt the difficult questions first and then write the easy questions at last which is not always a good idea. Students must answer those questions first which thay think can be answered easily. This way, student will secure some sure marks in the exam. On the other hand, if a student picks difficult questions first then he/she may end up spending a lot of time thinking for those questions, leaving little or no time for ones who could have earned him/her more marks.
7. Miss to write proper units in answers
   Students often miss to write the proper units in answers wherever required. Sometimes they are asked to write the answer in a converted unit which they miss due to panic and hurry to finish exam.
   Each single unit, if missed, will lead to a loss of a half mark which is really important while calculating overall percentage.
   So, the afore mentioned are some mistakes which students often make while writing on the most important exam of their life, CBSE Board Exam. Students can avoid these mistakes by keeping calm, alert and focused in the examination hall. Stress and fear are your biggest enemies, maintain a fair-distance with them. Stay positive and confident.Good luck for exams!