Hey Aqualim and Rasika,
Bit of an older thread, but hasn't been answered yet - so I'll give it a crack haha.
Hello everyone,
I know this is a very common question and seems pretty straight forward, but I'm very curious to know (I'm sure a lot of others would be too) what the high performing students do in terms of study and more importantly how do they know what to study when it comes to achieving overall scores in the 90's. I know there are a lot of members on here who seem to have an average around 90 and I'm curious as to how you know exactly what to cover when it comes to assessment. Let's face it, if you score 95 overall, you're basically not losing any marks at all and the unit coordinator is just adjusting for their bell curve due to the performance of other students.
Probably depends on course a little bit. Like, in some courses it's much more common to score 90+ for a unit, whereas in others that's a... pretty amazing feat haha. But it's probably not stricter the numbers you're curious about. For transparency: I studied Arts. Stereotypically easy, but anecdotally harder to score 90+ (correct me if I'm wrong).
In terms of
what to cover for assessment, how stringently are you following unit guides/assessment criteria? I've had a few units where assessments haven't been explained very well, but they're outlined more clearly in the unit guide. Typically I'd just follow whatever was in there to an absolute tee (like, ridiculously closely), because at the end of the day, that's what
should be assessed. And if it's not, you can bring it up with the unit coordinator or whoever else, because it's codified in the unit guide. It's a little harder to do that if you're basing your assessment on tutors' advice, which has no paper trail.
Definitely shit. That's not to say to ignore what your tutors say lol - that's still super important. But if they're inconsistent with the unit guide, it's probably worth bringing up.
I know personally, I've had marks taken away for reasons which seem extremely stupid such as 'you were supposed to talk about X even though the question didn't ask for it' and the most annoying one, 'I wanted more depth, even though there was a word limit of 200'.
Super frustrating, no doubt. The "write me a full and complete essay in 30 words" thing used to get to me a lot, so definitely feeling for you here haha. Would it be possible to get essay drafts or whatever to your tutor before actually submitting it? My experience with tutors have been varied, but generally I've found them pretty happy to help if you're keen.
I guess this contradicts my previous point a little, but I've definitely found just... talking with the assessors pretty useful.
Also when it comes to exam time, I feel like I study everything except the types of questions they ask, as you can imagine, this is very demotivating as I spend hours trying to make sure no marks are taken away, yet I will always walk away from an exam knowing exactly where I lost marks. Or even worse, I've walked away from exams thinking I've lost next to no marks and end up finding out I lost 10-15. At present, my highest score at university is a 91 which I received for a first-year undergraduate accounting subject and most recently in my masters degree, it has been an 88 in a Financial markets subject.
I feel like I already know how your going to answer what I'm asking, but maybe there is something I'm not doing which you guys are. I must admit, I'm not one to take notes in lectures or even begin typing up my notes until a week or two before exam time. I also normally only give myself just over a week to complete an assessment task. Maybe that's where I'm going wrong.
I reckon you've answered your own question, here. Note-taking and exam preparation is definitely an individual thing. I know some people can just wing it and still get great scores - I'm not that sort of person lol.
So I usually prepare well, which involves fairly extensive note-taking and consistent exam preparation.
That's not to say that it's easy to do. Have you tried, at the start of the semester, planning out all of your assessment tasks? I used to make an Excel spreadsheet with each of my units, each of its assessment tasks, what they were worth, and when they were due. During the semester, I'd tick them off one by one. It allowed me to a) keep track of how I was going, and b) make sure no assessment task snuck (sneaked?) up on me. So, due to mild anxiety lol, I'd usually start assessment tasks pretty early - and that gave me time to edit and refine (involving talking with tutors, as previously mentioned).
Also, I do understand that scoring in the 90's isn't the 'norm' and we do have some freakishly good students on here, however, it would be nice to at least score something which reflects the amount of hours of study I do for a subject. I've known people to score close to 100 with minimal study, whilst I may spend two weeks studying 13 hours a day up until exam time and maybe pull a 75-85 overall.
EDIT: I know this has probably been covered somewhere before, so even if you redirect me to another thread where this has been addressed, that would be amazing!
Thank you,
Aqualim
Hope it's all going okay - sorry for the late reply!
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