How to cheat at exams

It doesn’t often come up directly, but people sometimes hint at it – can you, should you cheat at exams, and if so how can you get away with it?

Well I have to say at the outset that I’m not a fan of cheating, because I think it’s…well, cheating. Like stealing or lying, I think it’s wrong. But you might well say, it’s all very well for someone who’s passed all the exams to say that – I’m not in the desperate position that you are.

OK, so let’s look at cheating. Cheating basically means doing something to give you an unfair advantage over others in the exam. Now you could argue that employing someone like me to coach you gives you an unfair advantage over those who try and do it by themselves. And in a sense that’s true – remember the scene from the film ‘Chariots of Fire’ where Sam Mussabini, the professional coach of 1924 Olympic champion Harold Abrahams had to hide away in a Paris hotel room whilst Abrahams won the gold medal? For many athletes of the time, having a professional coach was seen as cheating, nowadays it is normal practice.

Methods of cheating in professional exams vary from getting someone else to take the exam in your name; having cheat sheets up your sleeve or texting someone for the answer; through to copying the answers from your neighbour on the next desk. The exam boards are wise to all these moves - for example, the RCP employs a statistical computer programme to look for similar patterns of answers from people sitting at adjacent desks. Getting caught cheating in a professional exam means possibly ruining your hard-won career, or at least making for a very embarrassing conversation with your boss.

So if you are going to cheat, whatever system you come up with needs to be:
1. Novel – so the examiners aren’t expecting it
2. Foolproof – so that you won’t get caught
3. Deniable – so that if you are caught, they can’t prove anything
4. Effective – make enough difference to your marks to be worthwhile

Now it may well be that you are ingenious enough, clever enough and determined, you may well be able to come up with a system which meets these criteria. However, if you really are that ingenious, clever and determined surely it makes more sense to use your talents to plan and execute a good exam preparation programme?

And to be honest, most people who think they are that clever just aren’t. That’s why people regularly get caught cheating. Cheating well is like being a good criminal – if you’re good enough to get away with the crime, you’re good enough to get what you want honestly. And if you’re not good enough to do the exam properly, you’ll probably not make a very good job of cheating either!

Interesting University opportunity

I had an interesting and potentially important meeting last week with the head of the External Courses department of a London university – I won’t give details of where and who just yet, but hopefully if things develop, you’ll be reading more about it in the coming weeks and months.

Basically UK universities have been encouraged over the past few years to expand not only the number of students, and the diversity of background that students come from, but also to expand the opportunities available to local communities for education and personal development. I have spoken previously in these blogs about the challenges of these changes, which are seen by some within the university world as ‘dumbing down’ and a dilution of standards.

However, many universities have taken up the challenge and developed courses not only for the students on campus, but also for adults in the local community. I met up with the university to discuss offering short courses or workshops on Exam Preparation and Performance. Tackling exams is a universal study skill, but for many people is a source of unnecessary anxiety and so a barrier to otherwise good people accessing education. The skills developed from tackling exams are also highly transferrable to other situations where people are assessed and judged in a short time, such as interviews or public speaking.

So I had a very productive meeting with an extremely enthusiastic head of department, which was quite refreshing to see, given the loss of morale and general spirit of gritted-teeth one so often finds in the academic world today. We are going to look at how I can structure a course which will incorporate Exam Coaching - my unique combination of research-grounded, educational psychology (‘left brain’) and imaginative, intuitive techniques (‘right brain’) into their programme of external courses for the upcoming academic year. It’s an exciting project, and from what I’ve seen so far, an enthusiastic partner to work with. Watch this space!

The Exam Knack

Some people seem to find exams easier than others – and are said to have got ‘the knack’. Now if someone finds an exam difficult because they haven’t put in the work and actually learnt the subject matter, well that’s just an ‘own goal’. Exams are designed to fail those people and rightly so.

No, I mean people who have put in the work and still struggle with exams – they lack the knack. I read a great piece in a local paper from Wicklow in Ireland (isn’t the internet a great tool!) about a high achieving student called Katie Sherlock (Link: http://www.wicklowpeople.ie/news/technique-the-key-says-scholar-katie-1344524.html) who describes the exam knack really clearly:

It's just a knack I have for focusing on what I need to answer an exam question and paring down all the information to what is relevant, which is a formula that seems to have worked for me so far!

Remember the exam axiom I mentioned a few weeks ago? Young Katie has got it sussed and is really just re-stating the exam axiom (To pass any exam, score more points than the pass mark) – it’s all about being really clear about what needs to be done and then focusing on just that.

Haven’t got the knack yet? Don’t fret. Like any skill, it is learnable. If you can learn an academic subject, then you can learn study and exam performance skills. But like any skill it also requires awareness, focus and a bit of work on your part.

Get the exam knack, and you might even start enjoying exams. Yes, that really is possible!

Exam Preparation – working efficiently

I was asked a question yesterday by someone preparing for a post-graduate medical exam: “What do you mean by working efficiently?” I did my best to answer the question ‘on the hoof’, so thought I would share it and try to expand on it here.

You’ll notice that I usually talk about ‘exam preparation’ rather than ‘revision’ or ‘study’ – that’s for a reason. This is because I feel that it reflects an important change of focus that helps people work more efficiently. To talk about studying doesn’t imply any end-point or goal. Revision suggests a second view, a ‘re-look’ at something, which suggests that exam preparation starts late in the day, just before the exam.

So I use the term exam preparation as I think that this creates a better idea of how to work efficiently. Being efficient means getting maximum outcome from minimal effort. In any serious exam, this ‘minimal effort’ for most people will be a hell of a lot of hard work. Here are my top five tips to make sure your hard work bears fruit:

1. Time management starts by giving yourself time to do the job. Exam preparation starts as soon as you decide (or realise!) that you want/need to do the exam. Ideally this should be several months (by which I mean six, rather than two) before the event. If you’ve left it to the last minute, you really need to ask yourself if it wouldn’t be better to wait for the next sitting.
2. Time management continues by actually using the time you’ve got well. You’ve got 24 hours in every day, just like everybody else. You need to focus and prioritise. What in your life doesn’t contribute to your exam preparation? As far as possible, either: do it, dump it, downsize it or delegate it.
3. Don’t confuse lack of motivation with lack of time. Many people complain that they have ‘no time’, and yet seem to find time to watch TV, sit chatting with friends, or surfing the net. You do need some leisure time to recharge your batteries. But beyond that, many people’s lack of time is actually lack of energy or motivation to use their time. Find something about taking the exam that really, really matters to you – the kudos of having the letters after your name, the great new job you’ll get, or time to commit back to your family. Whatever it is, remind yourself of why you are doing this whenever you find yourself wasting time.
4. Know yourself and work with your natural strengths and weaknesses – if you’re a morning person, get up early and work in the early hours; if you think visually, use pictures and diagrams to help you learn; if you need external motivators, get your spouse or housemate to check your progress.
5. Plan to pass the exam. The axiom of exam preparation is that you need to work out how to get more marks than the pass mark. So get the curriculum, handbook and past papers, and work out the best way to focus your effort, so as to maximise the marks you get for each minute of effort.