essay examination what is

Essay Exams

What this handout is about.

At some time in your undergraduate career, you’re going to have to write an essay exam. This thought can inspire a fair amount of fear: we struggle enough with essays when they aren’t timed events based on unknown questions. The goal of this handout is to give you some easy and effective strategies that will help you take control of the situation and do your best.

Why do instructors give essay exams?

Essay exams are a useful tool for finding out if you can sort through a large body of information, figure out what is important, and explain why it is important. Essay exams challenge you to come up with key course ideas and put them in your own words and to use the interpretive or analytical skills you’ve practiced in the course. Instructors want to see whether:

• You understand concepts that provide the basis for the course
• You can use those concepts to interpret specific materials
• You can make connections, see relationships, draw comparisons and contrasts
• You can synthesize diverse information in support of an original assertion
• You can justify your own evaluations based on appropriate criteria
• You can argue your own opinions with convincing evidence
• You can think critically and analytically about a subject

What essay questions require

Exam questions can reach pretty far into the course materials, so you cannot hope to do well on them if you do not keep up with the readings and assignments from the beginning of the course. The most successful essay exam takers are prepared for anything reasonable, and they probably have some intelligent guesses about the content of the exam before they take it. How can you be a prepared exam taker? Try some of the following suggestions during the semester:

• Do the reading as the syllabus dictates; keeping up with the reading while the related concepts are being discussed in class saves you double the effort later.
• Go to lectures (and put away your phone, the newspaper, and that crossword puzzle!).
• Take careful notes that you’ll understand months later. If this is not your strong suit or the conventions for a particular discipline are different from what you are used to, ask your TA or the Learning Center for advice.
• Participate in your discussion sections; this will help you absorb the material better so you don’t have to study as hard.
• Organize small study groups with classmates to explore and review course materials throughout the semester. Others will catch things you might miss even when paying attention. This is not cheating. As long as what you write on the essay is your own work, formulating ideas and sharing notes is okay. In fact, it is a big part of the learning process.
• As an exam approaches, find out what you can about the form it will take. This will help you forecast the questions that will be on the exam, and prepare for them.

These suggestions will save you lots of time and misery later. Remember that you can’t cram weeks of information into a single day or night of study. So why put yourself in that position?

Now let’s focus on studying for the exam. You’ll notice the following suggestions are all based on organizing your study materials into manageable chunks of related material. If you have a plan of attack, you’ll feel more confident and your answers will be more clear. Here are some tips: 

• Don’t just memorize aimlessly; clarify the important issues of the course and use these issues to focus your understanding of specific facts and particular readings.
• Try to organize and prioritize the information into a thematic pattern. Look at what you’ve studied and find a way to put things into related groups. Find the fundamental ideas that have been emphasized throughout the course and organize your notes into broad categories. Think about how different categories relate to each other.
• Find out what you don’t know, but need to know, by making up test questions and trying to answer them. Studying in groups helps as well.

Taking the exam

Read the exam carefully.

• If you are given the entire exam at once and can determine your approach on your own, read the entire exam before you get started.
• Look at how many points each part earns you, and find hints for how long your answers should be.
• Figure out how much time you have and how best to use it. Write down the actual clock time that you expect to take in each section, and stick to it. This will help you avoid spending all your time on only one section. One strategy is to divide the available time according to percentage worth of the question. You don’t want to spend half of your time on something that is only worth one tenth of the total points.
• As you read, make tentative choices of the questions you will answer (if you have a choice). Don’t just answer the first essay question you encounter. Instead, read through all of the options. Jot down really brief ideas for each question before deciding.
• Remember that the easiest-looking question is not always as easy as it looks. Focus your attention on questions for which you can explain your answer most thoroughly, rather than settle on questions where you know the answer but can’t say why.

Analyze the questions

• Decide what you are being asked to do. If you skim the question to find the main “topic” and then rush to grasp any related ideas you can recall, you may become flustered, lose concentration, and even go blank. Try looking closely at what the question is directing you to do, and try to understand the sort of writing that will be required.
• Focus on what you do know about the question, not on what you don’t.
• Look at the active verbs in the assignment—they tell you what you should be doing. We’ve included some of these below, with some suggestions on what they might mean. (For help with this sort of detective work, see the Writing Center handout titled Reading Assignments.)

Information words, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject. Information words may include:

• define—give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning.
• explain why/how—give reasons why or examples of how something happened.
• illustrate—give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject.
• summarize—briefly cover the important ideas you learned about the subject.
• trace—outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form.
• research—gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you’ve found.

Relation words ask you to demonstrate how things are connected. Relation words may include:

• compare—show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different).
• contrast—show how two or more things are dissimilar.
• apply—use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation.
• cause—show how one event or series of events made something else happen.
• relate—show or describe the connections between things.

Interpretation words ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Don’t see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation. Interpretation words may include:

• prove, justify—give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth.
• evaluate, respond, assess—state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons (you may want to compare your subject to something else).
• support—give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe).
• synthesize—put two or more things together that haven’t been put together before; don’t just summarize one and then the other, and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together (as opposed to compare and contrast—see above).
• analyze—look closely at the components of something to figure out how it works, what it might mean, or why it is important.
• argue—take a side and defend it (with proof) against the other side.

Plan your answers

Think about your time again. How much planning time you should take depends on how much time you have for each question and how many points each question is worth. Here are some general guidelines: 

• For short-answer definitions and identifications, just take a few seconds. Skip over any you don’t recognize fairly quickly, and come back to them when another question jogs your memory.
• For answers that require a paragraph or two, jot down several important ideas or specific examples that help to focus your thoughts.
• For longer answers, you will need to develop a much more definite strategy of organization. You only have time for one draft, so allow a reasonable amount of time—as much as a quarter of the time you’ve allotted for the question—for making notes, determining a thesis, and developing an outline.
• For questions with several parts (different requests or directions, a sequence of questions), make a list of the parts so that you do not miss or minimize one part. One way to be sure you answer them all is to number them in the question and in your outline.
• You may have to try two or three outlines or clusters before you hit on a workable plan. But be realistic—you want a plan you can develop within the limited time allotted for your answer. Your outline will have to be selective—not everything you know, but what you know that you can state clearly and keep to the point in the time available.

Again, focus on what you do know about the question, not on what you don’t.

Writing your answers

As with planning, your strategy for writing depends on the length of your answer:

• For short identifications and definitions, it is usually best to start with a general identifying statement and then move on to describe specific applications or explanations. Two sentences will almost always suffice, but make sure they are complete sentences. Find out whether the instructor wants definition alone, or definition and significance. Why is the identification term or object important?
• For longer answers, begin by stating your forecasting statement or thesis clearly and explicitly. Strive for focus, simplicity, and clarity. In stating your point and developing your answers, you may want to use important course vocabulary words from the question. For example, if the question is, “How does wisteria function as a representation of memory in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom?” you may want to use the words wisteria, representation, memory, and Faulkner) in your thesis statement and answer. Use these important words or concepts throughout the answer.
• If you have devised a promising outline for your answer, then you will be able to forecast your overall plan and its subpoints in your opening sentence. Forecasting impresses readers and has the very practical advantage of making your answer easier to read. Also, if you don’t finish writing, it tells your reader what you would have said if you had finished (and may get you partial points).
• You might want to use briefer paragraphs than you ordinarily do and signal clear relations between paragraphs with transition phrases or sentences.
• As you move ahead with the writing, you may think of new subpoints or ideas to include in the essay. Stop briefly to make a note of these on your original outline. If they are most appropriately inserted in a section you’ve already written, write them neatly in the margin, at the top of the page, or on the last page, with arrows or marks to alert the reader to where they fit in your answer. Be as neat and clear as possible.
• Don’t pad your answer with irrelevancies and repetitions just to fill up space. Within the time available, write a comprehensive, specific answer.
• Watch the clock carefully to ensure that you do not spend too much time on one answer. You must be realistic about the time constraints of an essay exam. If you write one dazzling answer on an exam with three equally-weighted required questions, you earn only 33 points—not enough to pass at most colleges. This may seem unfair, but keep in mind that instructors plan exams to be reasonably comprehensive. They want you to write about the course materials in two or three or more ways, not just one way. Hint: if you finish a half-hour essay in 10 minutes, you may need to develop some of your ideas more fully.
• If you run out of time when you are writing an answer, jot down the remaining main ideas from your outline, just to show that you know the material and with more time could have continued your exposition.
• Double-space to leave room for additions, and strike through errors or changes with one straight line (avoid erasing or scribbling over). Keep things as clean as possible. You never know what will earn you partial credit.
• Write legibly and proofread. Remember that your instructor will likely be reading a large pile of exams. The more difficult they are to read, the more exasperated the instructor might become. Your instructor also cannot give you credit for what they cannot understand. A few minutes of careful proofreading can improve your grade.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind in writing essay exams is that you have a limited amount of time and space in which to get across the knowledge you have acquired and your ability to use it. Essay exams are not the place to be subtle or vague. It’s okay to have an obvious structure, even the five-paragraph essay format you may have been taught in high school. Introduce your main idea, have several paragraphs of support—each with a single point defended by specific examples, and conclude with a restatement of your main point and its significance.

Some physiological tips

Just think—we expect athletes to practice constantly and use everything in their abilities and situations in order to achieve success. Yet, somehow many students are convinced that one day’s worth of studying, no sleep, and some well-placed compliments (“Gee, Dr. So-and-so, I really enjoyed your last lecture”) are good preparation for a test. Essay exams are like any other testing situation in life: you’ll do best if you are prepared for what is expected of you, have practiced doing it before, and have arrived in the best shape to do it. You may not want to believe this, but it’s true: a good night’s sleep and a relaxed mind and body can do as much or more for you as any last-minute cram session. Colleges abound with tales of woe about students who slept through exams because they stayed up all night, wrote an essay on the wrong topic, forgot everything they studied, or freaked out in the exam and hyperventilated. If you are rested, breathing normally, and have brought along some healthy, energy-boosting snacks that you can eat or drink quietly, you are in a much better position to do a good job on the test. You aren’t going to write a good essay on something you figured out at 4 a.m. that morning. If you prepare yourself well throughout the semester, you don’t risk your whole grade on an overloaded, undernourished brain.

If for some reason you get yourself into this situation, take a minute every once in a while during the test to breathe deeply, stretch, and clear your brain. You need to be especially aware of the likelihood of errors, so check your essays thoroughly before you hand them in to make sure they answer the right questions and don’t have big oversights or mistakes (like saying “Hitler” when you really mean “Churchill”).

If you tend to go blank during exams, try studying in the same classroom in which the test will be given. Some research suggests that people attach ideas to their surroundings, so it might jog your memory to see the same things you were looking at while you studied.

Try good luck charms. Bring in something you associate with success or the support of your loved ones, and use it as a psychological boost.

Take all of the time you’ve been allotted. Reread, rework, and rethink your answers if you have extra time at the end, rather than giving up and handing the exam in the minute you’ve written your last sentence. Use every advantage you are given.

Remember that instructors do not want to see you trip up—they want to see you do well. With this in mind, try to relax and just do the best you can. The more you panic, the more mistakes you are liable to make. Put the test in perspective: will you die from a poor performance? Will you lose all of your friends? Will your entire future be destroyed? Remember: it’s just a test.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Axelrod, Rise B., and Charles R. Cooper. 2016. The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing , 11th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Fowler, Ramsay H., and Jane E. Aaron. 2016. The Little, Brown Handbook , 13th ed. Boston: Pearson.

Gefvert, Constance J. 1988. The Confident Writer: A Norton Handbook , 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Kirszner, Laurie G. 1988. Writing: A College Rhetoric , 2nd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Woodman, Leonara, and Thomas P. Adler. 1988. The Writer’s Choices , 2nd ed. Northbrook, Illinois: Scott Foresman.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Taking an essay exam.

You may often be asked in college to take essay exams. In certain ways, the same principles for writing good out-of-class essays apply to writing good in-class essays as well. For example, both kinds of essays are more successful when you take into consideration your purpose, audience and information; when you develop a thesis with support; when you prove your assertions with evidence; when you guide your readers with transitions, etc.

However, there are some differences to keep in mind as you prepare to write. The most important one is the purpose for writing. Usually you write a research paper, for example, to learn more about your selected topic; however, you write essay exams to demonstrate your knowledge. You are not only conveying information, but also proving to your audience--the examiner--that you have mastered the information and can work with it. In other words, your purpose is both informative and persuasive. Keeping this purpose in mind will help you both prepare for and write the essay.

PREPARING FOR THE EXAM

Study connections between ideas. Your instructor is not looking for a collection of unrelated pieces of information. Rather, he or she wants to see that you understand the whole picture, i.e., how the generalizations or concepts create the framework for the specific facts, and how the examples or details fill in the gaps. So, when you're studying, try to think about how the information fits together.

Prepare practice questions. Try to prepare for questions that are likely to be asked. If your instructor has given you the questions themselves or a study sheet in advance, practice answering those questions. Otherwise, try to anticipate questions your instructor is likely to ask and practice those. At the very least, outline how you would answer the test questions; however, it's better to actually write out the answers. That way, you will know where you need to study more.

TAKING THE EXAM

Again, while you're taking the exam, remember that it's not simply what you say or how much you say, but HOW you say it that's important. You want to show your instructor that you have mastered the material.

Plan your time. Although you will be working under pressure, take a few minutes to plan your time. Determine how many minutes you can devote to each answer. You will want to devote most of your time to the questions that are worth the most points, perhaps answering those questions first. On the other hand, you might want to answer first the questions that you are best prepared for.

Read the questions thoroughly. Take a few minutes before writing your essay to read the question carefully in order to determine exactly what you are being asked to do. Most essay exam questions, or "prompts," are carefully worded and contain specific instructions about WHAT you are to write about as well as HOW you should organize your answer. The prompt may use one or more of the following terms. If you see one of these terms, try to organize your essay to respond to the question or questions indicated.

classify: Into what general category/categories does this idea belong? compare: What are the similarities among these ideas? What are the differences? contrast: What are the differences between these ideas? critique: What are the strengths and weaknesses of this idea? define: What does this word or phrase mean? describe: What are the important characteristics or features of this idea? evaluate: What are the arguments for and against this idea? Which arguments are stronger? explain: Why is this the case? identify: What is this idea? What is its name? interpret: What does this idea mean? Why is it important? justify: Why is this correct? Why is this true? outline: What are the main points and essential details? summarize: Briefly, what are the important ideas? trace: What is the sequence of ideas or order of events?

Plan your answer. Jot down the main points you intend to make as you think through your answer. Then, you can use your list to help you stick to the topic. In an exam situation, it's easy to forget points if you don't write them down.

Write out your essay, using good writing techniques. As was said earlier, essay exams are like other essays, so use the same good writing strategies you use for other kinds of writing. Keep in mind that your purpose is to persuade your reader—the examiner—that you know the material.

First, create a thesis for your essay that you can defend. Often, you can turn the questions stated or implied on the exam into an answer and use it as your thesis. This sentence also functions as an introduction.

For example, suppose you are given the following prompt in your psychology class:

Define "procedural knowledge" and describe its relationship to the results of studies of amnesic patients.

The implied question is:

What is "procedural knowledge" and how is it related to the results of studies of amnesic patients?

Note how you can turn the answer to that implied question into the thesis of your exam essay. This paragraph might serve as your introduction.

"Procedural knowledge" is knowing how to perform a task, such as tying a shoe or driving a car, and studies of amnesia have shown that this type of knowledge or memory is often retained by amnesic patients. Even in amnesic patients who have lost most of their declarative memory capacity, the ability to form new procedural memories is often intact...

Then, proceed immediately to explain, develop, and support your thesis, drawing upon materials from text(s), lectures, and class discussions. Be sure to support any and all generalizations with concrete evidence, relevant facts, and specific details that will convince your reader that your thesis is valid. Make your main points stand out by writing distinct paragraphs, and indicate the relationship between them with transitions.

For example, in response to this prompt from a social work class,

Identify and give an example of four alternative solutions available in cases of family conflict.

a student wrote the following paragraph. Note the transition phrase and the generalization supported by specific evidence.

. . . The fourth alternative open in cases of family conflict is violence, and this is not an uncommon response. 25% of all homicides in the U.S. involve one family member killing another; half of these are spouse homicides. Violence usually takes one of two forms: explosive or coercive. Explosive violence is not premeditated. When the son takes and crashes the family car, for instance, the father may explode and beat him. Coercive violence, on the other hand, is pointed and intentional; it has the goal of producing compliance or obedience. Thus, a blow delivered with a threat not to repeat certain behaviors would be coercive. . . .

Finally, sum up your argument with a brief conclusion that lends your essay a clear sense of closure.

Finishing the Exam

Proofread your answer. Reserve a few minutes after completing your essay to proofread it carefully. First, make sure you stick to the question. Always answer exactly the question asked without digressing. If you find you have digressed, neatly cross out the words or paragraphs. It's better to cross out a paragraph that is irrelevant (and to replace it with a relevant one if you have time) than to allow it to stand. In this context at least, quality is always preferable to quantity. Also check sentence structure, spelling and punctuation.

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• Essay Exams

Essay exams provide opportunities to evaluate students’ reasoning skills such as the ability to compare and contrast concepts, justify a position on a topic, interpret cases from the perspective of different theories or models, evaluate a claim or assertion with evidence, design an experiment, and other higher level cognitive skills. They can reveal if students understand the theory behind course material or how different concepts and theories relate to each other. 

+ Advantages and Challenges of essay exams

Advantages:

• Can be used to measure higher order cognitive skills
• Takes relatively less time to write questions
• Difficult for respondents to get correct answers by guessing

Challenges:

• Can be time consuming to administer and to score
• Can be challenging to identify measurable, reliable criteria for assessing student responses
• Limited range of content can be sampled during any one testing period
• Timed exams in general add stress unrelated to a student's mastery of the material

+ Creating an essay exam

• Limit the use of essay questions to learning aims that require learners to share their thinking processes, connect and analyze information, and communicate their understanding for a specific purpose. 
• Write each item so that students clearly understand the specific task and what deliverables are required for a complete answer (e.g. diagram, amount of evidence, number of examples).
• Indicate the relative amount of time and effort students should spend on each essay item, for example “2 – 3 sentences should suffice for this question”.
• Consider using several narrowly focused items rather than one broad item.
• Consider offering students choice among essay questions, while ensuring that all learning aims are assessed.

When designing essay exams, consider the reasoning skills you want to assess in your students. The following table lists different skills to measure with example prompts to guide assessment questions. 

+ Preparing students for an essay exam

Adapted from Piontek, 2008

Prior to the essay exam

• Administer a formative assessment that asks students to do a brief write on a question similar to one you will use on an exam and provide them with feedback on their responses.
• Provide students with examples of essay responses that do and do not meet your criteria and standards. 
• Provide students with the learning aims they will be responsible for mastering to help them focus their preparation appropriately.
• Have students apply the scoring rubric to sample essay responses and provide them with feedback on their work.

Resource video : 2-minute video description of a formative assessment that helps prepare students for an essay exam. 

+ Administering an essay exam

• Provide adequate time for students to take the assessment. A strategy some instructors use is to time themselves answering the exam questions completely and then multiply that time by 3-4.
• Endeavor to create a distraction-free environment.
• Review the suggestions for informal accommodations for multilingual learners , which may be helpful in setting up an essay exam for all learners.

+ Grading an essay exam

To ensure essays are graded fairly and without bias:

• Outline what constitutes an acceptable answer (criteria for knowledge and skills).
• Select an appropriate scoring method based on the criteria.
• Clarify the role of writing mechanics and other factors independent of the learning aims being measured.
• Share with students ahead of time.
• Use a systematic process for scoring each essay item.  For instance, score all responses to a single question in one setting.
• Anonymize student work (if possible) to ensure fairer and more objective feedback. For example students could use their student ID number in place of their name.

+ References & Resources

• For more information on setting criteria, preparing students, and grading essay exams read:  Boye, A. (2019) Writing Better Essay Exams , IDEA paper #76.
• For more detailed descriptions of how to develop and score essay exams read: Piontek, M.E. (2008). Best Practices for Designing and Grading Exams, CRLT Occasional Paper # 24.

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• Online Guide to Writing

Writing Essay Examinations

Read and Understand the Question

Imagine you have received an essay exam. If there is more than one prompt from which to choose, you have chosen it. Now you are ready to begin the writing process. What do you do first? The title of this page suggests that you should read closely, and you definitely should do that. However, you must understand your prompt, too. 

Understanding an essay exam prompt can be difficult. In order to understand your assignment, there is one thing you should do first.

Remember that you will be writing an essay.

Strangely, forgetting this one basic fact is remarkably easy. Essay exams throw a lot of requirements at you, and correctly sorting them is part of the test. Keeping the nature of the test in mind is important for reading and understanding your essay prompt.

• Prioritizing the Parts of an Essay Prompt
• Key Words for Application

Key Words Associated with Analysis

Most essay prompts require a number of tasks. Not all of them are central to essay-writing. In fact, professors will mix in other activities to see if you can sort out the central essay-writing task from peripheral tasks you should perform in the course of writing your essay.

There are two types of tasks you will encounter in an essay prompt:

Application

You will want to sort the “application” tasks from the central “analysis” tasks. 

You might find it helpful to create two columns on a piece of paper: one for application tasks, the other for analysis tasks. 

In the first column list tasks associated with “application.” These are tasks that provide an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge.  If you are asked to list, describe, explain, summarize, classify, apply, illustrate, use, calculate, sketch, or perform an operation, you are expected to apply the particular knowledge you have acquired.

In the next column, list the key words for tasks associated with “analysis.” Analysis is central to essay-writing. Because these comprise the main task of your essay, there will be fewer of these key words, probably just one. Some prompts will simply ask you to analyze. Other prompts will use general terms like “discuss” or “reflect on.” A professor will use these to give you the freedom to pick a particular analytical strategy in your essay. 

In most instances, a professor will identify a particular analytical writing strategy (one associated with analysis) for you to use. You can see these listed below. As we have explained on the pages devoted to these terms, these are all types of analysis. The pages devoted to each term can help you understand what to do when you encounter them in an essay-exam prompt.

• Compare and Contrast
• Explain why
• Demonstrate

Key Takeaways

• Once you have sorted out the analytical task (or tasks) from the application tasks, it will be time to begin organizing your thinking about how to answer your exam prompt.
• Always look for keywords in order to know what is expected of you in your essay answer.

Mailing Address: 3501 University Blvd. East, Adelphi, MD 20783 This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License . © 2022 UMGC. All links to external sites were verified at the time of publication. UMGC is not responsible for the validity or integrity of information located at external sites.

Table of Contents: Online Guide to Writing

Chapter 1: College Writing

How Does College Writing Differ from Workplace Writing?

What Is College Writing?

Why So Much Emphasis on Writing?

Chapter 2: The Writing Process

Doing Exploratory Research

Getting from Notes to Your Draft

Introduction

Prewriting - Techniques to Get Started - Mining Your Intuition

Prewriting: Targeting Your Audience

Prewriting: Techniques to Get Started

Prewriting: Understanding Your Assignment

Rewriting: Being Your Own Critic

Rewriting: Creating a Revision Strategy

Rewriting: Getting Feedback

Rewriting: The Final Draft

Techniques to Get Started - Outlining

Techniques to Get Started - Using Systematic Techniques

Thesis Statement and Controlling Idea

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Freewriting

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Summarizing Your Ideas

Writing: Outlining What You Will Write

Chapter 3: Thinking Strategies

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone: Style Through Vocabulary and Diction

Critical Strategies and Writing

Critical Strategies and Writing: Analysis

Critical Strategies and Writing: Evaluation

Critical Strategies and Writing: Persuasion

Critical Strategies and Writing: Synthesis

Developing a Paper Using Strategies

Kinds of Assignments You Will Write

Patterns for Presenting Information

Patterns for Presenting Information: Critiques

Patterns for Presenting Information: Discussing Raw Data

Patterns for Presenting Information: General-to-Specific Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Problem-Cause-Solution Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Specific-to-General Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Summaries and Abstracts

Supporting with Research and Examples

Writing Essay Examinations: Make Your Answer Relevant and Complete

Writing Essay Examinations: Organize Thinking Before Writing

Writing Essay Examinations: Read and Understand the Question

Chapter 4: The Research Process

Planning and Writing a Research Paper

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Ask a Research Question

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Cite Sources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Collect Evidence

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Decide Your Point of View, or Role, for Your Research

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Draw Conclusions

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Find a Topic and Get an Overview

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Manage Your Resources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Outline

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Survey the Literature

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Work Your Sources into Your Research Writing

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Human Resources

Research Resources: What Are Research Resources?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Electronic Resources

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Print Resources

Structuring the Research Paper: Formal Research Structure

Structuring the Research Paper: Informal Research Structure

The Nature of Research

The Research Assignment: How Should Research Sources Be Evaluated?

The Research Assignment: When Is Research Needed?

The Research Assignment: Why Perform Research?

Chapter 5: Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity

Giving Credit to Sources

Giving Credit to Sources: Copyright Laws

Giving Credit to Sources: Documentation

Giving Credit to Sources: Style Guides

Integrating Sources

Practicing Academic Integrity

Practicing Academic Integrity: Keeping Accurate Records

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Paraphrasing Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Quoting Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Summarizing Your Sources

Types of Documentation

Types of Documentation: Bibliographies and Source Lists

Types of Documentation: Citing World Wide Web Sources

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - APA Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - CSE/CBE Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - Chicago Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - MLA Style

Types of Documentation: Note Citations

Chapter 6: Using Library Resources

Finding Library Resources

Chapter 7: Assessing Your Writing

How Is Writing Graded?

How Is Writing Graded?: A General Assessment Tool

The Draft Stage

The Draft Stage: The First Draft

The Draft Stage: The Revision Process and the Final Draft

The Draft Stage: Using Feedback

The Research Stage

Using Assessment to Improve Your Writing

Chapter 8: Other Frequently Assigned Papers

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Article and Book Reviews

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Reaction Papers

Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Adapting the Argument Structure

Writing Arguments: Purposes of Argument

Writing Arguments: References to Consult for Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Anticipate Active Opposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Determine Your Organization

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Develop Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Introduce Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - State Your Thesis or Proposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Write Your Conclusion

Writing Arguments: Types of Argument

Appendix A: Books to Help Improve Your Writing

Dictionaries

General Style Manuals

Researching on the Internet

Special Style Manuals

Writing Handbooks

Appendix B: Collaborative Writing and Peer Reviewing

Collaborative Writing: Assignments to Accompany the Group Project

Collaborative Writing: Informal Progress Report

Collaborative Writing: Issues to Resolve

Collaborative Writing: Methodology

Collaborative Writing: Peer Evaluation

Collaborative Writing: Tasks of Collaborative Writing Group Members

Collaborative Writing: Writing Plan

General Introduction

Peer Reviewing

Appendix C: Developing an Improvement Plan

Working with Your Instructor’s Comments and Grades

Appendix D: Writing Plan and Project Schedule

Devising a Writing Project Plan and Schedule

Reviewing Your Plan with Others

By using our website you agree to our use of cookies. Learn more about how we use cookies by reading our  Privacy Policy .

• Subject Guides

Academic writing: a practical guide

Examination writing.

• Academic writing
• The writing process
• Academic writing style
• Structure & cohesion
• Criticality in academic writing
• Working with evidence
• Referencing
• Assessment & feedback
• Dissertations
• Reflective writing
• Academic posters
• Feedback on Structure and Organisation
• Feedback on Argument, Analysis, and Critical Thinking
• Feedback on Writing Style and Clarity
• Feedback on Referencing and Research
• Feedback on Presentation and Proofreading

Examination writing is an essential element of most degree programmes. The resources on this page provide advice and guidance to help to ensure examination success. 

Types of examinations

An examination is: 

• an assessment of academic ability that contributes to the overall grades in a module within a degree.
• a test of a student's abilities in controlled conditions.
• a part of most degree programmes.
• an experience that few enjoy!
• a type of assessment that has many iterations and question types.

The information on this page will help you think through and make decisions about how you can succeed in university-level examinations.

Let's start by considering the different types of exams you may encounter: 

Types of Examinations [Google Slides]

Examination writing styles

There are many types of examination questions. They differ by subject area, where the exam is completed and according to what exactly is being examined. 

Each question type requires different techniques. You should always check the guidance issued within your module and department . The advice and guidance on this page is generic and does not replace that in your department. 

The main types of exam questions are explored in the resources below: 

Short answer questions [Google Slides]

Essays in examinations [Google Slides]

Using evidence in examinations

Using evidence in examinations is different to using it in reports, essays, dissertations and projects . This is because many exams are completed under controlled conditions there the student must rely on memory and so directly using evidence, with citations, is difficult. The amount and types of evidence required in exams varies considerably, and is obviously greater in an open book exam. 

The resources below offer generic advice and guidance on using evidence in exams. Please find the specific guidance within your modules. 

Using evidence in closed book examinations

In a closed book examination , the only information you have available is what you have learned and what you can remember. Therefore, there is a more limited expectation to cite specific sources of evidence. 

Many areas of knowledge, particularly the sciences expect you to remember a large number of facts and the relationship between the facts. For example, in a physics or engineering exam you might be expected to know what the second law of thermodynamics is; the emphasis is on what it is and how you use it, not citing a source you learned it from. 

See the resources below for ideas on how to prepare for using evidence in closed book examinations.

Using evidence in open book examinations

In open book examinations you are allowed to take materials that may be notes, books, articles or other named materials into the examination room. Or, this could be an examination that is completed at a distance where you have all possible information available.

Due to you having the information available, there is often an expectation that you will cite your sources, much as you do in assignments and reports. The guidance for each exam will specify the type of referencing required and exactly which sources are permitted and not allowed.

Using pre-released materials

Using evidence in exams that have pre-released materials is arguably the most difficult type of evidence use in exams . It is expected that you will have engaged with the materials, and there is often guidance on what you should do with them in advance. This means that when you answer the questions in the exam itself, you are expected to use the evidence provided and whatever you have gathered independently to support your argument, justify your thinking, and link to key theories/ideas in the questions.

Each exam will have guidance on how you should refer to the materials, be it by formal referencing, or directing the reader to ideas and facts derived from the materials, or other sources. Read the guidance carefully.

See the resources below for ideas on how to prepare for using evidence in exams involving pre-released materials.

Using evidence in exams completed remotely

In almost all cases that you complete an exam remotely (24 hour examinations for example) there is no limit to the information you have access to. There may however be limits to the sources you are allowed to cite and use in the exam. You must check the guidance for each exam carefully.

Due to you having access to materials, there is often an expectation that you cite sources. The assessment is also often focussed on how you use information, not what you can remember. This means that in essays the quality of your argument is even more important than in closed book exams, whilst in short answer questions/problem questions, your ability to apply methods and concepts is what is being assessed.

See the resources below for ideas on how to prepare for using evidence in exams completed remotely.

Also see our dedicated Criticality page for more information on using evidence to construct arguments:

What does the exam question want me to do?

A crucial part of success in examinations is to understand what the question is asking you to do. Within each question there are instructions and there may be ideas, theories, concepts and details. To succeed you have to unpack the exam question to determine what is and is not required. 

The resources below provide advice and guidance on how to unpack and explore different types of exam questions. As with all sections of this guide, please find the specific guidance within your module and/or programme. This is generic guidance. 

Instruction words in examinations

Instruction words in examination questions tell you the sort of answer you need to give. List or explain? Summarise or compare? Define or evaulate? Be descriptive or critical?

The resources below explore what each instruction word is asking you to do. You can practice your ability to follow the instructions by completing past papers, where available. 

Decoding examination questions

It is important to spend time dissecting and decoding examination questions, particularly those that require an essay-style answer. You need to be clear what exactly is being asked of you and what you need to include if you are to achieve high marks. 

The resources below are designed to offer support and guidance that is generic, to establish basic approaches that can be applied in all subject areas. But, it is very important that you check the guidance and advice in your department and in each specific module, to ensure that you are fulfilling what is expected by the particular exam you are sitting. 

Assessing exam answers

A crucial element of success in all examinations is knowing how they are marked. There are a few simple things that you can do to familiarise yourself with the mark schemes and styles for your exams. 

• Find past examinations in your subject area, ideally with mark schemes. They may be in your module VLE, the Library exam archive , or in some other departmental repository. If you cannot find them, speak to your academic supervisor, module tutor or programme leader. 
• Attend all preparation lectures, workshops, seminars, labs, tutorial sessions and/or problem classes. Often hints and tips are given and you have the chance to learn what is required. 
• Ask people in higher years what they know about the exam.  But, check that the exam has not changed for this year! A good source can be students that lead peer support classes, GTAs, or your assigned college and course buddies. 
• Ask your module tutors how the exams are assessed.  Many will tell you anyway, but if not, do ask. The more you know about the marking, the better able you will be to provide what the examiner is looking for. 
• Ask for feedback when you have completed an exam or mock exam . It may be available and it can be really useful to see exactly where you gained marks and where you went wrong. 
• Talk through past papers with your fellow students. This can cause you to look more closely and ask more questions about what is required that you can then ask your tutors, or check support materials to find answers. 
• Don't assume that an new exam is the same as one you have already done. There may be similarities, but it is safer to assume each is unique and that you have to learn what is required. 

Concise writing

All examinations have a time limit. As a result, it is essential that you write concisely. This means writing using the minimum number of words required to convey the meaning required, at the level of detail that will gain maximum marks. This is a skill that requires practice. The resources below are designed to help you develop your ability to be concise. 

Other support for exam writing

The university has lots of guidance available in relation to examinations. The links below point to some web pages. Please also check your departmental handbooks, VLE sites and other information sources for information specific to your degree and modules. 

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• Last Updated: Apr 3, 2024 4:02 PM
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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Writing Essays for Exams

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What is a well written answer to an essay question?

Well Focused

Be sure to answer the question completely, that is, answer all parts of the question. Avoid "padding." A lot of rambling and ranting is a sure sign that the writer doesn't really know what the right answer is and hopes that somehow, something in that overgrown jungle of words was the correct answer.

Well Organized

Don't write in a haphazard "think-as-you-go" manner. Do some planning and be sure that what you write has a clearly marked introduction which both states the point(s) you are going to make and also, if possible, how you are going to proceed. In addition, the essay should have a clearly indicated conclusion which summarizes the material covered and emphasizes your thesis or main point.

Well Supported

Do not just assert something is true, prove it. What facts, figures, examples, tests, etc. prove your point? In many cases, the difference between an A and a B as a grade is due to the effective use of supporting evidence.

Well Packaged

People who do not use conventions of language are thought of by their readers as less competent and less educated. If you need help with these or other writing skills, come to the Writing Lab

How do you write an effective essay exam?

• Read through all the questions carefully.
• Budget your time and decide which question(s) you will answer first.
• Underline the key word(s) which tell you what to do for each question.
• Choose an organizational pattern appropriate for each key word and plan your answers on scratch paper or in the margins.
• Write your answers as quickly and as legibly as you can; do not take the time to recopy.
• Begin each answer with one or two sentence thesis which summarizes your answer. If possible, phrase the statement so that it rephrases the question's essential terms into a statement (which therefore directly answers the essay question).
• Support your thesis with specific references to the material you have studied.
• Proofread your answer and correct errors in spelling and mechanics.

Specific organizational patterns and "key words"

Most essay questions will have one or more "key words" that indicate which organizational pattern you should use in your answer. The six most common organizational patterns for essay exams are definition, analysis, cause and effect, comparison/contrast, process analysis, and thesis-support.

Typical questions

• "Define X."
• "What is an X?"
• "Choose N terms from the following list and define them."

Q: "What is a fanzine?"

A: A fanzine is a magazine written, mimeographed, and distributed by and for science fiction or comic strip enthusiasts.

Avoid constructions such as "An encounter group is where ..." and "General semantics is when ... ."

• State the term to be defined.
• State the class of objects or concepts to which the term belongs.
• Differentiate the term from other members of the class by listing the term's distinguishing characteristics.

Tools you can use

• Details which describe the term
• Examples and incidents
• Comparisons to familiar terms
• Negation to state what the term is not
• Classification (i.e., break it down into parts)
• Examination of origins or causes
• Examination of results, effects, or uses

Analysis involves breaking something down into its components and discovering the parts that make up the whole.

• "Analyze X."
• "What are the components of X?"
• "What are the five different kinds of X?"
• "Discuss the different types of X."

Q: "Discuss the different services a junior college offers a community."

A: Thesis: A junior college offers the community at least three main types of educational services: vocational education for young people, continuing education for older people, and personal development for all individuals.

Outline for supporting details and examples. For example, if you were answering the example question, an outline might include:

• Vocational education
• Continuing education
• Personal development

Write the essay, describing each part or component and making transitions between each of your descriptions. Some useful transition words include:

• first, second, third, etc.
• in addition

Conclude the essay by emphasizing how each part you have described makes up the whole you have been asked to analyze.

Cause and Effect

Cause and effect involves tracing probable or known effects of a certain cause or examining one or more effects and discussing the reasonable or known cause(s).

Typical questions:

• "What are the causes of X?"
• "What led to X?"
• "Why did X occur?"
• "Why does X happen?"
• "What would be the effects of X?"

Q: "Define recession and discuss the probable effects a recession would have on today's society."

A: Thesis: A recession, which is a nationwide lull in business activity, would be detrimental to society in the following ways: it would .......A......., it would .......B......., and it would .......C....... .

The rest of the answer would explain, in some detail, the three effects: A, B, and C.

Useful transition words:

• consequently
• for this reason
• as a result

Comparison-Contrast

• "How does X differ from Y?"
• "Compare X and Y."
• "What are the advantages and disadvantages of X and Y?"

Q: "Which would you rather own—a compact car or a full-sized car?"

A: Thesis: I would own a compact car rather than a full-sized car for the following reasons: .......A......., .......B......., .......C......., and .......D....... .

Two patterns of development:

• Full-sized car

Disadvantages

• Compact car

Useful transition words

• on the other hand
• unlike A, B ...
• in the same way
• while both A and B are ..., only B ..
• nevertheless
• on the contrary
• while A is ..., B is ...
• "Describe how X is accomplished."
• "List the steps involved in X."
• "Explain what happened in X."
• "What is the procedure involved in X?"

Process (sometimes called process analysis)

This involves giving directions or telling the reader how to do something. It may involve discussing some complex procedure as a series of discrete steps. The organization is almost always chronological.

Q: "According to Richard Bolles' What Color Is Your Parachute?, what is the best procedure for finding a job?"

A: In What Color Is Your Parachute?, Richard Bolles lists seven steps that all job-hunters should follow: .....A....., .....B....., .....C....., .....D....., .....E....., .....F....., and .....G..... .

The remainder of the answer should discuss each of these seven steps in some detail.

• following this
• after, afterwards, after this
• subsequently
• simultaneously, concurrently

Thesis and Support

• "Discuss X."
• "A noted authority has said X. Do you agree or disagree?"
• "Defend or refute X."
• "Do you think that X is valid? Defend your position."

Thesis and support involves stating a clearly worded opinion or interpretation and then defending it with all the data, examples, facts, and so on that you can draw from the material you have studied.

Q: "Despite criticism, television is useful because it aids in the socializing process of our children."

A: Television hinders rather than helps in the socializing process of our children because .......A......., .......B......., and .......C....... .

The rest of the answer is devoted to developing arguments A, B, and C.

• it follows that

A. Which of the following two answers is the better one? Why?

Question: Discuss the contribution of William Morris to book design, using as an example his edition of the works of Chaucer.

a. William Morris's Chaucer was his masterpiece. It shows his interest in the Middle Ages. The type is based on medieval manuscript writing, and the decoration around the edges of the pages is like that used in medieval books. The large initial letters are typical of medieval design. Those letters were printed from woodcuts, which was the medieval way of printing. The illustrations were by Burn-Jones, one of the best artists in England at the time. Morris was able to get the most competent people to help him because he was so famous as a poet and a designer (the Morris chair) and wallpaper and other decorative items for the home. He designed the furnishings for his own home, which was widely admired among the sort of people he associated with. In this way he started the arts and crafts movement.

b. Morris's contribution to book design was to approach the problem as an artist or fine craftsman, rather than a mere printer who reproduced texts. He wanted to raise the standards of printing, which had fallen to a low point, by showing that truly beautiful books could be produced. His Chaucer was designed as a unified work of art or high craft. Since Chaucer lived in the Middle Ages, Morris decided to design a new type based on medieval script and to imitate the format of a medieval manuscript. This involved elaborate letters and large initials at the beginnings of verses, as well as wide borders of intertwined vines with leaves, fruit, and flowers in strong colors. The effect was so unusual that the book caused great excitement and inspired other printers to design beautiful rather than purely utilitarian books.

From James M. McCrimmon, Writing with a Purpose , 7th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980), pp. 261-263.

B. How would you plan the structure of the answers to these essay exam questions?

1. Was the X Act a continuation of earlier government policies or did it represent a departure from prior philosophies?

2. What seems to be the source of aggression in human beings? What can be done to lower the level of aggression in our society?

3. Choose one character from Novel X and, with specific references to the work, show how he or she functions as an "existential hero."

4. Define briefly the systems approach to business management. Illustrate how this differs from the traditional approach.

5. What is the cosmological argument? Does it prove that God exists?

6. Civil War historian Andy Bellum once wrote, "Blahblahblah blahed a blahblah, but of course if blahblah blahblahblahed the blah, then blahblahs are not blah but blahblah." To what extent and in what ways is the statement true? How is it false?

For more information on writing exam essays for the GED, please visit our Engagement area and go to the Community Writing and Education Station (CWEST) resources.

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The ultimate essay test guide: achieve top grades with ease.

An essay test, a fundamental tool in academic assessment, measures a student's ability to express, argue, and structure their thoughts on a given subject through written words. This test format delves deeper into a student's critical thinking and writing skills unlike other conventional exam types.

What is an Essay Test?

An essay test is a type of assessment in which a student is prompted to respond to a question or a series of questions by writing an essay.

This form of test isn’t merely about checking a student’s recall or memorisation skills , but more about gauging their ability to comprehend a subject, synthesise information, and articulate their understanding effectively.

Types of Essay Tests

Essay tests can be broadly classified into two categories: Restricted Response and Extended Response .

• Restricted Response tests focus on limited aspects, requiring students to provide short, concise answers.
• Extended Response tests demand more comprehensive answers, allowing students to showcase their creativity and analytical skills.

Advantages and Limitations of an Essay Test

Essay tests offer numerous benefits but also have certain limitations. The advantages of an essay test are :

• They allow teachers to evaluate students’ abilities to organise, synthesise, and interpret information.
• They help in developing critical thinking and writing skills among students.
• They provide an opportunity for students to exhibit their knowledge and understanding of a subject in a broader context.

And the limitations of an essay test are :

• They are time-consuming to both take and grade.
• They are subject to scoring inconsistencies due to potential subjective bias.
• They may cause the students who struggle with written expression may face difficulties, and these tests may not accurately reflect the full spectrum of a student’s knowledge or understanding.

Join over 90% of students getting better grades!

That’s a pretty good statistic. Download our free all-in-one learning app and start your most successful learning journey yet. Let’s do it!

Understanding the Structure of an Essay Test

Essay tests involve a defined structure to ensure organised, coherent, and comprehensive expression of thoughts. Adhering to a specific structure can enhance your ability to answer essay questions effectively .

The 7 Steps of an Essay

Writing an essay test typically involves seven steps :

• Understanding the question
• Brainstorming ideas
• Creating an outline
• Crafting a thesis statement
• Writing the essay body
• Formulating the conclusion
• Revising and editing for clarity and conciseness

The First Sentence in an Essay

The initial sentence of an essay, often termed a hook , plays a crucial role.

It aims to grab the reader’s attention and provoke interest in the essay topic. It should be engaging, and relevant, and set the tone for the rest of the essay .

The 5-Paragraph Essay Format

The 5-paragraph essay format is commonly used in essay tests, providing a clear and organised approach for students to articulate their ideas. In this format, the introduction and the conclusion include 1 paragraph, while the body of the essay includes 3 .

• Introduction : The introduction sets the stage, providing a brief overview of the topic and presenting the thesis statement – the central argument or point.
• Body : The body of the essay contains three paragraphs, each presenting a separate point that supports the thesis statement. Detailed explanations, evidence, and examples are included here to substantiate the points.
• Conclusion : The conclusion reiterates the thesis statement and summarises the main points. It provides a final perspective on the topic, drawing the essay to a close.

How to Prepare for an Essay Test?

Preparing for an essay test demands a structured approach to ensure thorough understanding and effective response. Here are some strategies to make this task more manageable:

#1 Familiarise Yourself with the Terminology Used

Knowledge of key terminologies is essential. Understand the meaning of directives such as “describe”, “compare”, “contrast”, or “analyse”. Each term guides you on what is expected in your essay and helps you to answer the question accurately.

To make it easier, you can take advantage of AI technologies. While preparing for your exam, use similar essay questions as prompts and see how AI understands and evaluates the questions. If you are unfamiliar with AI, you can check out The Best Chat GPT Prompts For Essay Writing .

#2 Review and Revise Past Essays

Take advantage of past essays or essay prompts to review and revise your writing . Analyse your strengths and areas for improvement, paying attention to grammar , structure , and clarity . This process helps you refine your writing skills and identify potential pitfalls to avoid in future tests.

#3 Practice Timed Writing

Simulate test conditions by practising timed writing . Set a specific time limit for each essay question and strive to complete it within that timeframe. This exercise builds your ability to think and write quickly , improving your efficiency during the actual test.

#4 Utilise Mnemonic Techniques

To aid in memorisation and recall of key concepts or arguments, employ mnemonic techniques . These memory aids, such as acronyms, visualisation, or association techniques, can help you retain important information and retrieve it during the test. Practice using mnemonics to reinforce your understanding of critical points.

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Strategies to Pass an Essay Test

Passing an essay test goes beyond understanding the topic; it also requires strategic planning and execution . Below are key strategies that can enhance your performance in an essay test.

• Read the exam paper thoroughly before diving into writing : read the entire exam paper thoroughly. Understand each question’s requirement and make a mental note of the points to be included in each response. This step will help in ensuring that no aspect of the question is overlooked.
• Answer in the First Sentence and Use the Language of the Question : Begin your essay by clearly stating your answer in the first sentence. Use the language of the question to show you are directly addressing the task. This approach ensures that your main argument is understood right from the start.
• Structure Your Essay : Adopt a logical essay structure , typically comprising an introduction, body, and conclusion. This helps in organising your thoughts, making your argument clearer, and enhancing the readability of your essay.
• Answer in Point Form When Running Out of Time : If time is running short, present your answer in point form. This approach allows you to cover more points quickly, ensuring you don’t leave any questions unanswered.
• Write as Legibly as Possible : Your writing should be clear and easy to read. Illegible handwriting could lead to misunderstandings and may negatively impact your grades.
• Number Your Answers : Ensure your answers are correctly numbered. This helps in aligning your responses with the respective questions, making it easier for the examiner to assess your work, and reducing chances of confusion or error
• Time Yourself on Each Question : Time management is crucial in an essay test. Allocate a specific amount of time to each question, taking into account the marks they carry. Ensure you leave ample time for revising and editing your responses. Practising this strategy can prevent last-minute rushes and result in a more polished essay.

About the Author Oğulcan Tezcan is a writer, translator, editor, and an accomplished engineer. Oğulcan is also a keen researcher and digital market analyst, with a particular interest in self-development, productivity, and human behaviour.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Essay Tests

How do you answer an essay question, when taking an essay test what is the first step, what type of test is an essay test, what is the first sentence in an essay, what are the six elements of an essay.

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17.6: What are the benefits of essay tests?

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• Jennfer Kidd, Jamie Kaufman, Peter Baker, Patrick O'Shea, Dwight Allen, & Old Dominion U students
• Old Dominion University

Learning Objectives

• Understand the benefits of essay questions for both Students and Teachers
• Identify when essays are useful

Introduction

Essays, along with multiple choice, are a very common method of assessment. Essays offer a means completely different than that of multiple choice. When thinking of a means of assessment, the essay along with multiple choice are the two that most come to mind (Schouller).The essay lends itself to specific subjects; for example, a math test would not have an essay question. The essay is more common in the arts, humanities and the social sciences(Scouller). On occasion an essay can be used used in both physical and natural sciences as well(Scouller). As a future history teacher, I will find that essays will be an essential part of my teaching structure.

The Benefits for Students

By utilizing essays as a mean of assessments, teachers are able to better survey what the student has learned. Multiple choice questions, by their very design, can be worked around. The student can guess, and has decent chance of getting the question right, even if they did not know the answer. This blind guessing does not benefit the student at all. In addition, some multiple choices can deceive the student(Moore). Short answers, and their big brother the essay, work in an entirely different way. Essays remove this factor. in a addition, rather than simply recognize the subject matter, the student must recall the material covered. This challenges the student more, and by forcing the student to remember the information needed, causes the student to retain it better. This in turn reinforces understanding(Moore). Scouller adds to this observation, determining that essay assessment "encourages students' development of higher order intellectual skills and the employment of deeper learning approaches; and secondly, allows students to demonstrate their development."

"Essay questions provide more opportunity to communicate ideas. Whereas multiple choice limits the options, an essay allows the student express ideas that would otherwise not be communicated." (Moore)

The Benefits for Teachers

The matter of preparation must also be considered when comparing multiple choice and essays. For multiple choice questions, the instructor must choose several questions that cover the material covered. After doing so, then the teacher has to come up with multiple possible answers. This is much more difficult than one might assume. With the essay question, the teacher will still need to be creative. However, the teacher only has to come up with a topic, and what the student is expected to cover. This saves the teacher time. When grading, the teacher knows what he or she is looking for in the paper, so the time spent reading is not necessarily more. The teacher also benefits from a better understanding of what they are teaching. The process of selecting a good essay question requires some critical thought of its own, which reflects onto the teacher(Moore).

Multiple Choice. True or False. Short Answer. Essay. All are forms of assessment. All have their pros and cons. For some, they are better suited for particular subjects. Others, not so much. Some students may even find essays to be easier. It is vital to understand when it is best to utilize the essay. Obviously for teachers of younger students, essays are not as useful. However, as the age of the student increase, the importance of the essay follows suit. That essays are utilized in essential exams such as the SAT, SOLs and in our case the PRAXIS demonstrates how important essays are. However, what it ultimately comes down to is what the teacher feels what will best assess what has been covered.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

1)What Subject would most benefit from essays?

B: Mathematics for the Liberal Arts

C: Survey of American Literature

2)What is an advantage of essay assessment for the student?

A) They allow for better expression

B) There is little probability for randomness

C) The time taken is less overall

D) A & B

3)What is NOT a benefit of essay assessment for the teacher

A)They help the instructor better understand the subject

B)They remove some the work required for multiple choice

C)The time spent on preparation is less

D) There is no noticeable benefit.

4)Issac is a teacher making up a test. The test will have multiple sections: Short answer, multiple choice, and an essay. What subject does Issac MOST LIKELY teach?

References Cited

1)Moore, S.(2008) Interview with Scott Moore, Professor at Old Dominion University

2)Scouller, K. (1998). The influence of assessment method on students' learning approaches: multiple Choice question examination versus assignment essay. Higher Education 35(4), pp. 453–472

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Types of Exams

Anita Frederiks; Kate Derrington; and Cristy Bartlett

Introduction

There are many different types of exams and exam questions that you may need to prepare for at university.  Each type of exam has different considerations and preparation, in addition to knowing the course material.  This chapter extends the discussion from the previous chapter and examines different types of exams, including multiple choice, essay, and maths exams, and some strategies specific for those exam types.  The aim of this chapter is to provide you with an overview of the different types of exams and the specific strategies for preparing and undertaking them.

The COVID19 pandemic has led to a number of activities previously undertaken on campus becoming online activities.  This includes exams, so we have provided advice for both on campus (or in person) exams as well as alternative and online exams. We recommend that you read the chapter Preparing for Exams before reading this chapter about the specific types of exams that you will be undertaking.

Types of exams

During your university studies you may have exams that require you to attend in person, either on campus or at a study centre, or you may have online exams. Regardless of whether you take the exam in person or online, your exams may have different requirements and it is important that you know what those requirements are. We have provided an overview of closed, restricted, and open exams below, but always check the specific requirements for your exams.

Closed exams

These exams allow you to bring only your writing and drawing instruments. Formula sheets (in the case of maths and statistics exams) may or may not be provided.

Restricted exams

These exams allow you to bring in only specific things such as a single page of notes, or in the case of maths exams, a calculator or a formula sheet. You may be required to hand in your notes or formula sheet with your exam paper.

Open book exams

These exams allow you to have access to any printed or written material and a calculator (if required) during the exam. If you are completing your exam online, you may also be able to access online resources. The emphasis in open book exams is on conceptual understanding and application of knowledge rather than just the ability to recall facts.

Myth: You may think open book exams will be easier than closed exams because you can have all your study materials with you.

Reality: Open book exams require preparation, a good understanding of your content and an effective system of organising your notes so you can find the relevant information quickly during your exam. Open book exams generally require more detailed responses. You are required to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of a subject as well as your ability to find and apply information applicable to the topic.  Questions in open book exams often require complex answers and you are expected to use reason and evidence to support your responses. The more organised you are, the more time you have to focus on answering your questions and less time on searching for information in your notes and books. Consider these tips in the table below when preparing for an open book exam.

Tips for preparing your materials for open or unrestricted exams

• Organise your notes logically with headings and page numbers
• Use different colours to highlight and separate different topics
• Be familiar with the layout of any books you will be using during the exam. Use sticky notes to mark important information for quick reference during the exam.
• Use your learning objectives from each week or for each new module of content, to help determine what is important (and likely to be on the exam).
• Create an alphabetical index for all the important topics likely to be on the exam. Include the page numbers, in your notes or textbooks, of where to find the relevant information on these topics.
• If you have a large quantity of other documents, for example if you are a law student, consider binding legislation and cases or place them in a folder. Use sticky notes to indicate the most relevant sections.
• Write a summary page which includes, where relevant, important definitions, formulas, rules, graphs and diagrams with examples if required.
• Know how to use your calculator efficiently and effectively (if required).

Take home exams

These are a special type of open book exam where you are provided with the exam paper and are able to complete it away from an exam centre over a set period of time.  You are able to use whatever books, journals, websites you have available and as a result, take-home exams usually require more exploration and in-depth responses than other types of exams.

It is just as important to be organised with take home exams. Although there is usually a longer period available for completing these types of exams, the risk is that you can spend too long researching and not enough time planning and writing your exam. It is also important to allow enough time for submitting your completed exam.

  Tips for completing take home exams

• Arrange for a quiet and organised space to do the exam
• Tell your family or house mates that you will be doing a take-home exam and that you would appreciate their cooperation
• Make sure you know the correct date of submission for the exam paper
• Know the exam format, question types and content that will be covered
• As with open book exams, read your textbook and work through any chapter questions
• Do preliminary research and bookmark useful websites or download relevant journal articles
• Take notes and/or mark sections of your textbook with sticky notes
• Organise and classify your notes in a logical order so once you know the exam topic you will be able to find what you need to answer it easily

When answering open book and take-home exams remember these three steps below.

Multiple choice

Multiple choice questions are often used in online assignments, quizzes, and exams. It is tempting to think that these types of questions are easier than short answer or essay questions because the answer is right in front of you. However, like other types of assessment, multiple choice questions require you to understand and apply the content from your study materials or lectures. This requires preparation and thorough content knowledge to be able to retrieve the correct answer quickly. The following sections discuss strategies on effectively preparing for, and answering, multiple choice questions, the typical format of multiple choice questions, and some common myths about these types of questions.

Preparing for multiple choice questions

•  Prepare as you do for other types of exams (see the Preparing for Exams chapter for study strategies).
• Find past or practice exam papers (where available), and practise doing multiple choice questions.
• Create your own multiple choice questions to assess the content, this prompts you to think about the material more deeply and is a good way to practise answering multiple choice questions.
• If there are quizzes in your course, complete these (you may be able to have multiple attempts to help build your skills).
• Calculate the time allowed for answering the multiple-choice section of the exam. Ideally do this before you get to the exam if you know the details.

Strategies for use during the exam

• Consider the time allocated per question to guide how you use your time in the exam.  Don’t spend all of your time on one question, leaving the rest unanswered.  Figure 23.3 provides some strategies for managing questions during the exam.
• Carefully mark your response to the questions and ensure that your answer matches the question number on the answer sheet.
• Review your answers if you have time once you have answered all questions on the exam.

Format of multiple choice questions

The most frequently used format of a multiple choice question has two components, the question (may include additional detail or statement) and possible answers.

Table 23.1 Multiple choice questions

The example below is of a simple form of multiple choice question.

Multiple choice myths

These are some of the common myths about multiple choice questions that are NOT accurate:

• You don’t need to study for multiple choice tests
• Multiple choice questions are easy to get right
• Getting these questions correct is just good luck
• Multiple choice questions take very little time to read and answer
• Multiple choice questions cannot cover complex concepts or ideas
• C is most likely correct
• Answers will always follow a pattern, e.g., badcbadcbadc
• You get more questions correct if you alternate your answers

None of the answers above are correct! Multiple choice questions may appear short with the answer provided, but this does not mean that you will be able to complete them quickly.  Some questions require thought and further calculations before you can determine the answer.

Short answer exams

Short answer, or extended response exams focus on knowledge and understanding of terms and concepts along with the relationships between them. Depending on your study area, short answer responses could require you to write a sentence or a short paragraph or to solve a mathematical problem. Check the expectations with your lecturer or tutor prior to your exam. Try the preparation strategies suggested in the section below.

Preparation strategies for short answer responses

• Concentrate on key terms and concepts
• It is not advised to prepare and learn specific answers as you may not get that exact question on exam day; instead know how to apply your content.
• Learn similarities and differences between similar terms and concepts, e.g. stalagmite and stalactite.
• Learn some relevant examples or supporting evidence you can apply to demonstrate your application and understanding.

There are also some common mistakes to avoid when completing your short answer exam as seen below.

Common mistakes in short answer responses

• Misinterpreting the question
• Not answering the question sufficiently
• Not providing an example
• Response not structured or focused
• Wasting time on questions worth fewer marks
• Leaving questions unanswered
• Not showing working (if calculations were required)

Use these three tips in Figure 23.6 when completing your short answer responses.

Essay exams

As with other types of exams, you should adjust your preparation to suit the style of questions you will be asked. Essay exam questions require a response with multiple paragraphs and should be logical and well-structured.

It is preferable not to prepare and learn an essay in anticipation of the question you may get on the exam. Instead, it is better to learn the information that you would need to include in an essay and be able to apply this to the specific question on exam day. Although you may have an idea of the content that will be examined, usually you will not know the exact question. If your exam is handwritten, ensure that your writing is legible. You won’t get any marks if your writing cannot be read by your marker. You may wish to practise your handwriting, so you are less fatigued in the exam.

Follow these three tips in Figure 23.7 below for completing an essay exam.

Case study exams

Case study questions in exams are often quite complex and include multiple details. This is deliberate to allow you to demonstrate your problem solving and critical thinking abilities. Case study exams require you to apply your knowledge to a real-life situation. The exam question may include information in various formats including a scenario, client brief, case history, patient information, a graph, or table. You may be required to answer a series of questions or interpret or conduct an analysis. Follow the tips below in Figure 23.8 for completing a case study response.

Maths exams

This section covers strategies for preparing and completing, maths-based exams. When preparing for a maths exam, an important consideration is the type of exam you will be sitting and what you can, and cannot, bring in with you (for in person exams). Maths exams may be open, restricted or closed. More information about each of these is included in Table 23.2 below.  The information about the type of exam for your course can be found in the examination information provided by your university.

Table 23.2 Types of maths exams

Once you have considered the type of exam you will be taking and know what materials you will be able to use, you need to focus on preparing for the exam. Preparation for your maths exams should be happening throughout the semester.

Maths exam preparation tips

• Review the information about spaced practice in the previous chapter Preparing for Exams to maximise your exam preparation
• It is best NOT to start studying the night before the exam. Cramming doesn’t work as well as spending regular time studying throughout the course. See additional information on cramming in the previous chapter Preparing for Exams ).
• Review your notes and make a concise list of important concepts and formulae
• Make sure you know these formulae and more importantly, how to use them
• Work through your tutorial problems again (without looking at the solutions). Do not just read over them. Working through problems will help you to remember how to do them.
• Work through any practice or past exams which have been provided to you. You can also make your own practice exam by finding problems from your course materials. See the Practice Testing section in the previous Preparing for Exams chapter for more information.
• When working through practice exams, give yourself a time limit. Don’t use your notes or books, treat it like the real exam.
• Finally, it is essential to get a good night’s sleep before the exam so you are well rested and can concentrate when you take the exam.

Multiple choice questions in maths exams

Multiple choice questions in maths exams normally test your knowledge of concepts and may require you to complete calculations. For more information about answering multiple choice questions, please see the multiple choice exam section in this chapter.

Short answer questions in maths exams

These type of questions in a maths exam require you to write a short answer response to the question and provide any mathematical working.  Things to remember for these question types include:

• what the question is asking you to do?
• what information are you given?
• is there anything else you need to do (multi-step questions) to get the answer?
• Highlight/underline the key words. If possible, draw a picture—this helps to visualise the problem (and there may be marks associated with diagrams).
• Show all working! Markers cannot give you makes if they cannot follow your working.
• Check your work.
• Ensure that your work is clear and able to be read.

Exam day tips

Before you start your maths exam, you should take some time to peruse (read through) the exam.  Regardless of whether your exam has a dedicated perusal time, we recommend that you spend time at the beginning of the exam to read through the whole exam. Below are some strategies for perusing and completing maths based exams.

When you commence your exam:

• Read the exam instructions carefully, if you have any queries, clarify with your exam supervisor
• During the perusal time, write down anything you are worried about forgetting during the exam
• Read each question carefully, look for key words, make notes and write formulae
• Prioritise questions. Do the questions you are most comfortable with first and spend more time on the questions worth more marks. This will help you to maximise your marks.

Once you have read through your options and made a plan on how to best approach your exam, it is time to focus on completing your maths exam. During your exam:

• Label each question clearly—this will allow the marker to find each question (and part), as normally you can answer questions in any order you want! (If you are required to answer the questions in a particular order it will be included as part of your exam instructions.)
• If you get stuck, write down anything you know about that type of question – it could earn you marks
• The process is important—show that you understand the process by writing your working or the process, even if the numbers don’t work out
• If you get really stuck on a question, don’t spend too long on it.  Complete the other questions, something might come to you when you are working on a different question.
• Where possible, draw pictures even if you can’t find the words to explain
• Avoid using whiteout to correct mistakes, use a single line to cross out incorrect working
• Don’t forget to use the correct units of measurement
• If time permits, check your working and review your work once you have answered all the questions

This chapter provided an overview of different types of exams and some specific preparation strategies.  Practising for the specific type of exam you will be completing has a number of benefits, including helping you to become comfortable (or at least familiar) with the type of exam and allowing you to focus on answering the questions themselves.  It also allows you to adapt your exam preparation to best prepare you for the exam.

• Know your exam type and practise answering those types of questions.
• Ensure you know the requirements for your specific type of exam (e.g., closed, restricted, open book) and what materials you can use in the exam.
• Multiple choice exams – read the response options carefully.
• Short answer exams– double check that you have answered all parts of the question.
• Essay exams – practise writing essay responses under timed exam conditions.
• Case study exams – ensure that you refer to the case in your response.
• Maths exams – include your working for maths and statistics exams
• For handwritten exams write legibly, so your maker can read your work.

Academic Success Copyright © 2021 by Anita Frederiks; Kate Derrington; and Cristy Bartlett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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What is an Essay?

10 May, 2020

11 minutes read

Author:  Tomas White

Well, beyond a jumble of words usually around 2,000 words or so - what is an essay, exactly? Whether you’re taking English, sociology, history, biology, art, or a speech class, it’s likely you’ll have to write an essay or two. So how is an essay different than a research paper or a review? Let’s find out!

Defining the Term – What is an Essay?

The essay is a written piece that is designed to present an idea, propose an argument, express the emotion or initiate debate. It is a tool that is used to present writer’s ideas in a non-fictional way. Multiple applications of this type of writing go way beyond, providing political manifestos and art criticism as well as personal observations and reflections of the author.

An essay can be as short as 500 words, it can also be 5000 words or more.  However, most essays fall somewhere around 1000 to 3000 words ; this word range provides the writer enough space to thoroughly develop an argument and work to convince the reader of the author’s perspective regarding a particular issue.  The topics of essays are boundless: they can range from the best form of government to the benefits of eating peppermint leaves daily. As a professional provider of custom writing, our service has helped thousands of customers to turn in essays in various forms and disciplines.

Origins of the Essay

Over the course of more than six centuries essays were used to question assumptions, argue trivial opinions and to initiate global discussions. Let’s have a closer look into historical progress and various applications of this literary phenomenon to find out exactly what it is.

Today’s modern word “essay” can trace its roots back to the French “essayer” which translates closely to mean “to attempt” .  This is an apt name for this writing form because the essay’s ultimate purpose is to attempt to convince the audience of something.  An essay’s topic can range broadly and include everything from the best of Shakespeare’s plays to the joys of April.

The essay comes in many shapes and sizes; it can focus on a personal experience or a purely academic exploration of a topic.  Essays are classified as a subjective writing form because while they include expository elements, they can rely on personal narratives to support the writer’s viewpoint.  The essay genre includes a diverse array of academic writings ranging from literary criticism to meditations on the natural world.  Most typically, the essay exists as a shorter writing form; essays are rarely the length of a novel.  However, several historic examples, such as John Locke’s seminal work “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” just shows that a well-organized essay can be as long as a novel.

The Essay in Literature

The essay enjoys a long and renowned history in literature.  They first began gaining in popularity in the early 16 th century, and their popularity has continued today both with original writers and ghost writers.  Many readers prefer this short form in which the writer seems to speak directly to the reader, presenting a particular claim and working to defend it through a variety of means.  Not sure if you’ve ever read a great essay? You wouldn’t believe how many pieces of literature are actually nothing less than essays, or evolved into more complex structures from the essay. Check out this list of literary favorites:

• The Book of My Lives by Aleksandar Hemon
• Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
• Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag
• High-Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now and Never by Barbara Kingsolver
• Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion
• Naked by David Sedaris
• Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau

Pretty much as long as writers have had something to say, they’ve created essays to communicate their viewpoint on pretty much any topic you can think of!

The Essay in Academics

Not only are students required to read a variety of essays during their academic education, but they will likely be required to write several different kinds of essays throughout their scholastic career.  Don’t love to write?  Then consider working with a ghost essay writer !  While all essays require an introduction, body paragraphs in support of the argumentative thesis statement, and a conclusion, academic essays can take several different formats in the way they approach a topic.  Common essays required in high school, college, and post-graduate classes include:

Five paragraph essay

This is the most common type of a formal essay. The type of paper that students are usually exposed to when they first hear about the concept of the essay itself. It follows easy outline structure – an opening introduction paragraph; three body paragraphs to expand the thesis; and conclusion to sum it up.

Argumentative essay

These essays are commonly assigned to explore a controversial issue.  The goal is to identify the major positions on either side and work to support the side the writer agrees with while refuting the opposing side’s potential arguments.

Compare and Contrast essay

This essay compares two items, such as two poems, and works to identify similarities and differences, discussing the strength and weaknesses of each.  This essay can focus on more than just two items, however.  The point of this essay is to reveal new connections the reader may not have considered previously.

Definition essay

This essay has a sole purpose – defining a term or a concept in as much detail as possible. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, not quite. The most important part of the process is picking up the word. Before zooming it up under the microscope, make sure to choose something roomy so you can define it under multiple angles. The definition essay outline will reflect those angles and scopes.

Descriptive essay

Perhaps the most fun to write, this essay focuses on describing its subject using all five of the senses.  The writer aims to fully describe the topic; for example, a descriptive essay could aim to describe the ocean to someone who’s never seen it or the job of a teacher.  Descriptive essays rely heavily on detail and the paragraphs can be organized by sense.

Illustration essay

The purpose of this essay is to describe an idea, occasion or a concept with the help of clear and vocal examples. “Illustration” itself is handled in the body paragraphs section. Each of the statements, presented in the essay needs to be supported with several examples. Illustration essay helps the author to connect with his audience by breaking the barriers with real-life examples – clear and indisputable.

Informative Essay

Being one the basic essay types, the informative essay is as easy as it sounds from a technical standpoint. High school is where students usually encounter with informative essay first time. The purpose of this paper is to describe an idea, concept or any other abstract subject with the help of proper research and a generous amount of storytelling.

Narrative essay

This type of essay focuses on describing a certain event or experience, most often chronologically.  It could be a historic event or an ordinary day or month in a regular person’s life. Narrative essay proclaims a free approach to writing it, therefore it does not always require conventional attributes, like the outline. The narrative itself typically unfolds through a personal lens, and is thus considered to be a subjective form of writing.

Persuasive essay

The purpose of the persuasive essay is to provide the audience with a 360-view on the concept idea or certain topic – to persuade the reader to adopt a certain viewpoint. The viewpoints can range widely from why visiting the dentist is important to why dogs make the best pets to why blue is the best color.  Strong, persuasive language is a defining characteristic of this essay type.

The Essay in Art

Several other artistic mediums have adopted the essay as a means of communicating with their audience.  In the visual arts, such as painting or sculpting, the rough sketches of the final product are sometimes deemed essays.  Likewise, directors may opt to create a film essay which is similar to a documentary in that it offers a personal reflection on a relevant issue.  Finally, photographers often create photographic essays in which they use a series of photographs to tell a story, similar to a narrative or a descriptive essay.

Drawing the line – question answered

“What is an Essay?” is quite a polarizing question. On one hand, it can easily be answered in a couple of words. On the other, it is surely the most profound and self-established type of content there ever was. Going back through the history of the last five-six centuries helps us understand where did it come from and how it is being applied ever since.

If you must write an essay, follow these five important steps to works towards earning the “A” you want:

• Understand and review the kind of essay you must write
• Brainstorm your argument
• Find research from reliable sources to support your perspective
• Cite all sources parenthetically within the paper and on the Works Cited page
• Follow all grammatical rules

Generally speaking, when you must write any type of essay, start sooner rather than later!  Don’t procrastinate – give yourself time to develop your perspective and work on crafting a unique and original approach to the topic.  Remember: it’s always a good idea to have another set of eyes (or three) look over your essay before handing in the final draft to your teacher or professor.  Don’t trust your fellow classmates?  Consider hiring an editor or a ghostwriter to help out!

If you are still unsure on whether you can cope with your task – you are in the right place to get help. HandMadeWriting is the perfect answer to the question “Who can write my essay?”

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Students obtaining degrees in fine art and art & design programs most commonly need to write a paper on art topics. However, this subject is becoming more popular in educational institutions for expanding students’ horizons. Thus, both groups of receivers of education: those who are into arts and those who only get acquainted with art […]

Essay on Importance of Examination

Students are often asked to write an essay on Importance of Examination in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Importance of Examination

Introduction.

Examinations play a crucial role in a student’s life. They are not just about grades but a way to test knowledge.

Knowledge Evaluation

Examinations help in evaluating what students have learned. They measure the understanding and ability to recall information.

Time Management Skills

Exams teach time management. Students learn to prioritize tasks, which is a valuable skill for the future.

Preparation for Future

Examinations prepare students for future challenges. They instill discipline and the ability to perform under pressure.

In conclusion, exams are essential in shaping a student’s knowledge, skills, and future.

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250 Words Essay on Importance of Examination

Examinations, often viewed with dread, are an integral part of our educational system, serving as a yardstick to measure a student’s comprehension of subjects. They are more than just a series of tests; they are pivotal in shaping the knowledge, skills, and personality of students.

The Role of Examinations

Examinations are designed to assess the understanding, analytical abilities, and problem-solving skills of students in various subjects. They foster a sense of discipline, punctuality, and consistency in studying. Moreover, they prepare students to face challenges and perform under pressure, thereby developing resilience and perseverance.

Examinations and Future Prospects

Examinations also play a significant role in shaping one’s career. The grades and scores obtained in these tests often determine the opportunities for higher studies and job prospects. They serve as a gateway to prestigious institutions and competitive professional fields.

Examinations as a Learning Tool

Examinations encourage students to delve deeper into their course material, promoting intensive and extensive learning. They also act as a feedback mechanism, helping students identify their strengths and areas of improvement, thus guiding them in their learning process.

While examinations have their drawbacks, such as inducing stress and promoting rote learning, their importance in the educational system cannot be undermined. They are essential in assessing a student’s understanding, shaping their learning, and preparing them for the future. Therefore, examinations should be viewed not as a cause of fear, but as an opportunity for self-improvement and growth.

500 Words Essay on Importance of Examination

Examinations are a crucial component of any educational system, acting as a yardstick to evaluate a student’s understanding of the subjects. They are more than just a series of tests; they are a means of establishing an individual’s knowledge and skills, thus playing a vital role in shaping a person’s career.

Examinations serve multiple purposes. They are a way to assess students’ comprehension of the material, their ability to apply what they’ve learned, and their capacity to think critically about the subject matter. Examinations also motivate students to study, instilling a sense of discipline and responsibility. They encourage students to review and revise the course content, thereby reinforcing their learning.

Examinations and Skill Development

Examinations are not just about rote memorization; they also promote various skills. They encourage time management, problem-solving, and analytical abilities. The pressure to perform well in an examination pushes students to strategize their study methods, prioritize their tasks, and manage their time effectively. Moreover, exams foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills as students need to understand, analyze, and solve complex problems.

Examinations as a Benchmark

Examinations provide a benchmark for identifying a student’s strengths and weaknesses. They help educators understand where a student stands acadically. This feedback can be used to guide future teaching strategies and learning interventions. Examinations also offer a comparative platform where students can be evaluated against a standard set of criteria, ensuring fairness and uniformity.

Examinations and Career Opportunities

Examinations open up a world of opportunities. Many professional fields and higher education institutions rely on examination scores to select candidates. A good performance in these exams often translates to better opportunities, be it in terms of college admissions, scholarships, or job placements.

Examinations and Lifelong Learning

Examinations instill a lifelong learning attitude in students. The skills developed during examination preparation, such as self-discipline, time management, and critical thinking, are not just academic skills; they are life skills that remain beneficial long after the exams are over.

Despite the stress and anxiety often associated with examinations, their importance cannot be undermined. They are a critical part of the educational system, serving as a measure of a student’s understanding, skills, and potential. Examinations drive learning, foster skill development, provide benchmarks, and open up opportunities. They are a stepping stone towards building a successful career and instilling a lifelong learning attitude.

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The Hidden-Pregnancy Experiment

By Jia Tolentino

Shortly after I became pregnant with my second child, in the fall of 2022, I decided to try a modest experiment. I wanted to see whether I could hide my pregnancy from my phone. After spending my twenties eagerly surveilling and sharing the details of my life online, I had already begun trying to erect some walls of technological privacy: I’d deleted most apps on my phone and turned off camera, location, and microphone access for nearly all of the ones that I did have; I had disabled Siri—I just found it annoying—and I didn’t have any smart devices. For the experiment, I would abide by some additional restrictions. I wouldn’t Google anything about pregnancy nor shop for baby stuff either online or using a credit card, and neither would my husband, because our I.P. addresses—and thus the vast, matrixed fatbergs of personal data assembled by unseen corporations to pinpoint our consumer and political identities—were linked. I wouldn’t look at pregnancy accounts on Instagram or pregnancy forums on Reddit. I wouldn’t update my period tracker or use a pregnancy app.

Nearly every time we load new content on an app or a Web site, ad-exchange companies—Google being the largest among them—broadcast data about our interests, finances, and vulnerabilities to determine exactly what we’ll see; more than a billion of these transactions take place in the U.S. every hour. Each of us, the data-privacy expert Wolfie Christl told me, has “dozens or even hundreds” of digital identifiers attached to our person; there’s an estimated eighteen-billion-dollar industry for location data alone. In August, 2022, Mozilla reviewed twenty pregnancy and period-tracking apps and found that fifteen of them made a “buffet” of personal data available to third parties, including addresses, I.P. numbers, sexual histories, and medical details. In most cases, the apps used vague language about when and how this data could be shared with law enforcement. (A 2020 FOIA lawsuit filed by the A.C.L.U. revealed that the Department of Homeland Security had purchased access to location data for millions of people in order to track them without a warrant. ICE and C.B.P. subsequently said they would stop using such data.) The scholar Shoshana Zuboff has called this surveillance capitalism , “a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales.” Through our phones, we are under perpetual surveillance by companies that buy and sell data about what kind of person we are, whom we might vote for, what we might purchase, and what we might be nudged into doing.

A decade ago, the sociology professor Janet Vertesi conducted a more rigorous form of the hidden-pregnancy experiment. Using an elaborate system of code words and the anonymous browser Tor, she managed to digitally hide her pregnancy all the way up to the birth of her child. In an article about the experience, for Time , she pointed to a Financial Times report, which found that identifying a single pregnant woman is as valuable to data brokers as knowing the age, gender, and location of more than two hundred nonpregnant people, because of how much stuff new parents tend to buy. She also noted that simply attempting to evade market detection—by, for example, purchasing stacks of gift cards in order to buy a stroller—made her and her husband look as though they were trying to commit fraud.

I wasn’t going to do anything so strict or elaborate. I’d allow myself to text and send e-mails about my pregnancy, and to talk about it with my phone nearby. I assumed that, eventually, it would notice; I’d just wait and see when a diaper ad popped up on Instagram. I liked the idea of establishing a buffer zone between my psyche and the object that most closely monitors it. I found it almost shocking to remember that this was possible.

Pregnancy tends to erode both your freedom and your privacy. Past a certain point in your second trimester, strangers will begin reaching toward your stomach and telling you about the real difference between boys and girls. But I had eluded this during my first pregnancy, because COVID hit before I started showing. In the months that followed, I began to feel the difference between witnessing something and surveilling it, and to recognize that the most pleasurable moments in my life had occurred out of the reach of any oversight. I had felt then an almost psychedelic sense of autonomy; time was dilating, and the slow bloom inside me was beyond anyone’s reach. I wanted to see if I could feel anything like that again.

During pregnancy, and in the early days of parenthood, one is both the object and the conductor of intense surveillance. Last year, the artist and filmmaker Sophie Hamacher co-edited an anthology of writing on the subject, called “ Supervision ,” which was published by M.I.T. Press. “As I became absorbed with tracking and monitoring my child,” Hamacher writes in the preface, “I was increasingly aware that I was a subject of tracking and monitoring by others: advertisers, medical professionals, government entities, people on the street. I began to wonder about the relationship between the way I watched her and the ways we were being watched.” Surveillance encompasses both policing and caretaking, Hamacher notes. In practice, its polarized qualities—“beneficial and harmful, intimate and distanced”—intertwine. Baby monitors use technology developed for the military. Many contemporary models run on CCTV.

Most American households with young children use baby monitors or trackers; two recent surveys put market penetration at seventy-five and eighty-three per cent, respectively. (Both surveys were conducted by companies that make these devices.) And there are now countless other ways that technology will help you to observe and scrutinize your child: nanny-cam Teddy bears, G.P.S. stroller accessories, scales that track your baby’s weight over time, disks that can be affixed to diapers and which will notify you if your baby rolls onto his stomach while he’s asleep. Increasingly, such products use A.I. to detect signs of distress. “The need to know whether a child is safe and well is perfectly natural, which makes the nature of such surveillance appear innocent,” the writer and scholar Hannah Zeavin notes in “Family Scanning,” one of the essays in “Supervision.” But, she adds, “these technologies conceal the possibility of false positives, disrupted emergency services, and of collaboration with state forces—wittingly or unwittingly—all in the name of keeping children safe.” As a general rule, these devices don’t lead to better outcomes for the babies they monitor. More often—like social media, which promises connection as a salve for the loneliness created by social media—parenting tech exacerbates, even calls into existence, the parental anxieties that it pledges to soothe.

This has become a common pattern in contemporary life. Nearly a fifth of U.S. households are estimated to use doorbell cameras, many of them from Ring, the Amazon-owned company that has expanded its reach through police partnerships and a dedicated app that encourages users to post footage of strangers. Ring cameras haven’t made neighborhoods measurably safer, but they have made users measurably more paranoid, and placed more people, sometimes with grave outcomes, in contact with the police. Until recently, police could readily access surveillance footage from the Ring network without a warrant by posting requests on the app. It also gave its own employees and third-party contractors “ ‘ free range ’ access” to view and download videos from users’ homes.

In 2015, the company Owlet started selling a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar Smart Sock, which monitored babies’ heart rates and oxygen levels, and alerted parents if these figures were abnormal. Although the company insists that it has made clear that the product is not intended to “treat or diagnose” sudden infant death syndrome—and there is no evidence that it reduces the risk of SIDS occurring—such devices are sometimes referred to as “ SIDS monitors.” But, in 2017, an opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association cautioned physicians against recommending the product. “There are no medical indications for monitoring healthy infants at home,” the authors wrote. The device, they noted, could “stimulate unnecessary fear, uncertainty, and self-doubt in parents about their abilities to keep their infants safe.” The following year, a study in the same journal found “concerning” inaccuracies in oxygen readings. When Owlet went public, in February, 2021, the company had a valuation of more than a billion dollars; later that year, the F.D.A. issued a warning letter that the Smart Sock wasn’t an authorized medical device, and the company pulled it off the market. A million units had already been sold. The following year, Owlet launched a new version, called the Dream Sock, which would receive F.D.A. approval. Most of the reviews for the Dream Sock exude profound gratitude. Parents write about the peace of mind that comes from knowing the baby is being constantly monitored, about not knowing what they would do if the device didn’t exist.

Surveillance capitalism, Zuboff writes, “aims to impose a new collective order based on total certainty.” But little is certain when it comes to babies. The control that we feel when we’re engaged in surveillance almost always proves illusory, though the control, or at least the influence, that others exert on us through surveillance is real.

It is not a coincidence that Roe v. Wade, a ruling grounded in the right to privacy, was overturned at a time when privacy in the U.S was on its conceptual deathbed. There are other legal principles that might have served as a stronger foundation for abortion rights: the right to equal protection, or the right to bodily integrity. As Christyne Neff wrote, in 1991, the physical effects of an ordinary pregnancy and delivery resemble those of a severe beating—flesh lacerated, organs rearranged, half a quart of blood lost. Can the state, she asked, rightfully compel a person to undergo this?

Since Roe fell, two years ago, fourteen states have claimed that power in absolute terms, banning abortion almost completely. Two states have successfully passed abortion-vigilante laws, which confer the power of carceral supervision on the public. Indiana’s attorney general has argued that abortion records should be publicly available, like death records; Kansas recently passed a law that would require abortion providers to collect details about the personal lives of their patients and make that information available to the government. Birth control and sex itself may be up next for criminal surveillance: the Heritage Foundation , last year, insisted, on Twitter, that “conservatives have to lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose, & ending recreational sex & senseless use of birth control pills.”

For many women in America, pregnancy was a conduit to state surveillance long before the end of Roe. Poor women, especially poor nonwhite women, are often drug-tested during pregnancy, and sometimes during labor and delivery, without their informed consent. Women who take drugs during pregnancy have been charged with child abuse or neglect, including in cases in which the drugs were legal; women who have miscarried after taking drugs have been charged with manslaughter, even homicide, even when no causal link was proved. Sometimes this happens because the woman in question had responded to billboards and service announcements promising to help pregnant people who are struggling with substance use. In multiple states, women have been taken into custody when the safety of the fetus was called into question. “To be pregnant and poor in the United States is to play a game of roulette with one’s privacy, presumed confidential relationship with medical providers, and basic constitutional and medical rights,” the law professor Michele Goodwin writes in “ Policing the Womb ,” from 2020.

Goodwin describes the case of a woman in Iowa named Christine Taylor, who, in 2010, as a twenty-two-year-old mother of two, was accused of attempted feticide after she fell down the stairs while pregnant. Part of the evidence cited by the police was that she reportedly told a nurse that she hadn’t wanted the baby. (Ultimately, prosecutors decided not to press charges.) The carceral surveillance of pregnancy entails the criminalization of ambivalence, the inspection of these innermost desires. But the deepest truths about motherhood seem to me to be rooted in conflicting, coexisting emotions: nightmare and rapture in the same moment during labor, the love and despair that box each other at night in the weeks that follow, the joy of cuddling my nine-month-old undergirded by the horror of knowing that other babies are starving and dying in rubble. Before I had my first child, I had badly wanted to get pregnant. I had planned for it, prepared for it, hoped for it. Still, when I saw the positive test result, I cried.

My modest experiment went surprisingly smoothly. Because I’d had my first child not long before, this time I didn’t need to buy anything, and I didn’t want to learn anything. I smooth-brained my way to three months, four months, five; no diaper ads. I called up a lawyer and data-privacy specialist named Dominique Shelton Leipzig to get her perspective. Globally, she told me, we generate 2.5 quintillion bytes—that’s eighteen zeroes—of data per day. “The short answer is, you probably haven’t hidden what you think you have,” she said. I told her about the rules I’d set for myself, that I didn’t have many apps and had bought nothing but prenatal vitamins, and that Instagram did not appear to have identified me as pregnant. She paused. “I’m amazed,” she told me. “If you didn’t see any ads, I think you might have succeeded.” I congratulated myself by instantly dropping the experiment and buying maternity pants; ads for baby carriers popped up on my Instagram within minutes.

I had felt little satisfaction hiding from the ad trackers—if anything, I’d only become more conscious of how much surveillance I was engaged in, as both subject and object, and how much more insidious the problem was becoming. We rarely have a clear understanding of what we’re doing when we engage in surveillance of ourselves or others. Life360, an app that’s used by more than sixty million people and is marketed as an easy way to track your child’s location via their smartphone, was found in 2021 to be selling raw location information to data brokers. (The company said it now sells only aggregate data.) In a Pew survey from 2023, seventy-seven per cent of Americans said they had very little to no trust in how social-media executives handle user data, and seventy-one per cent were concerned about how the government uses it. In another survey, ninety-three per cent of Americans said they wouldn’t buy a doorbell camera if it sold data about their family. People just want to be safer. I had wanted security, too, and affirmation—and I had wanted to be a writer. I had disclosed so much of my life to people I’ll never know.

My husband and I had not bought a baby monitor for our first child, a choice that satisfied his desire to not buy things and my desire to insist that certain aspects of experience are fundamentally ungovernable. But shortly after the second child was born she developed eczema, and started scratching her sweet, enormous cheeks in her sleep. One morning, my husband went to her and found that she’d clawed her face open, leaving blood smudged all over her sleep sack and smeared all over her face. “We need a video monitor!” I wailed, already Googling options. “We need to buy a video monitor today.”

We didn’t buy one, but for weeks I regretted it and second-guessed myself. And I surveilled the baby with technology in other ways all the time. In the early weeks, I relied on an app to tell me how much milk she’d drunk and how many soiled diapers she’d had that day—activities that I myself had witnessed just hours before. I felt like a Biblical angel with a thousand eyes, somehow unable to see anything. I took pictures because I knew I would have no memory of the precise contours of this exact baby in a month. When she didn’t seem hungry enough, I panicked, obsessing over every feed.

“What’s the line between pathological self-surveillance and care for a newborn? Is there one?” Sarah Blackwood, an English professor at Pace University, asks, in “Supervision.” Blackwood contrasts the “fantasy of efficiency and sterility” built into parenting tech with the “psychic state of watchfulness so many mothers find themselves in”—a state that is “metastatic, fecund, beyond.” One afternoon, my husband took the baby from me: she was sobbing, and I was incoherently frantic, trying to get her to eat. She was O.K., he told me; she’d eat when she needed to. But I know what’s good for her, and it’s my job to make her do it, I thought, furious. Around the fringes of my consciousness, I felt a flicker of understanding about how this idea that everything was controllable had become so ubiquitous, how we had confused coercion with care. ♦

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Rick Scott's one-man rally for Trump exposes GOP abandonment

There has been remarkably little public support for donald trump during his first criminal trial, by heather digby parton.

There have been a lot of raised eyebrows over the fact that with the exception of one appearance by his son Eric, Donald Trump's family is not present to support him at his criminal trial in Manhattan. Normally you would see the wife and the adult kids lined up behind the defendant to show a united front, even if the subject at hand was uncomfortable.  There really isn't such a thing as a pleasant criminal trial but it's something that is commonly done and I would certainly have thought that it would be wise in this case, since he's running for president and all. It would have been especially useful to at least see Melania and Ivanka playing the trad-wife and loyal daughter, suggesting by their presence that their man can do no wrong in their eyes. They're supposed to be Republicans, after all. 

Why MAGA hasn't turned up to support him in his moment of need when there always seems to be a few thousand who like to go to his rallies is a mystery but it clearly has Trump feeling down in the dumps.

But how could they? Everyone knows that his cultivated image of a wealthy playboy who wined and dined beautiful women like he was some kind of matinee idol is another one of his lies. This man had a casting couch routine more in the mold of a creepy Harvey Weinstein than a glamorous Tony Stark and they know it. 

Trump is intensely frustrated over the fact that because of the judge's gag order, he is no longer allowed to verbally assault and threaten the witnesses or the jury. But since the judge told him this week that he will have no choice but to jail him for contempt if he violates it one more time, he's managed to keep it together and confine his insults and threats to the judge, the prosecutors and Joe Biden. But you can feel the tension in Trump when he makes his frequent forays into the strange echo chamber hallway where he rants about the proceedings and reads clippings from Fox News personalities saying the trial is a travesty. 

One can imagine how the thought of going to jail petrifies him. This is a man who has been pampered his entire life. His elaborate morning ablutions with the hair and the make-up routine alone make any kind of imprisonment unthinkable. But he really, really wants to go after Stormy Daniels, so much so that he had his lawyers ask the judge to lift the gag order for her specifically since she is now finished testifying. (The judge said no, that he was preserving the integrity of the court.) 

For Trump this goes against every fiber of his being, as was not so coincidentally conveyed to the jury yesterday afternoon when one of his book publishers testified and was asked to read aloud some passages from his books, including this charming commentary:

"For many years I've said that if someone screws you, screw them back. If somebody hurts you you just go after them as viciously and as violently as you can. Like it says in the Bible, an eye for an eye." 

Trump will just have to let his allies in the right-wing media do that for him for the moment — and they are more than eager to comply. 

It's doubtful that Trump wanted his family to be there to hear all these sordid details in person anyway. But he reportedly was quite upset that his political allies weren't in attendance during the first two weeks of the trial.  According to NBC News , he whined "no one is defending me" and pouted over the fact that there  wasn't a big crowd of protesters outside . He lied about that, of course, and said on camera that there were hundreds of people blocked from protesting.

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He actually  called  for his followers to come to the trial on his Truth Social platform — “GO OUT AND PEACEFULLY PROTEST. RALLY BEHIND MAGA. SAVE OUR COUNTRY!” — but other than a dozen or so kooks, they haven't shown up. From the very beginning of his legal travails he's issued threats that his people "won't stand for it" saying  as far back as 2022,  “If these radical, vicious racist prosecutors do anything wrong, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had … in Washington, D.C, in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt." 

Why MAGA hasn't turned up to support him in his moment of need when there always seems to be a few thousand who like to go to his rallies is a mystery but it clearly has him feeling down in the dumps. So now he's got some of his employees, political cronies and right-wing media personalities attending the trial to give him a little boost. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who Politico r eports  hangs around Trump as much as possible, was among the first to heed the call. Also showing up despite having much more important things to do were campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita along with advisor Boris Epshteyn and Natalie Harp, who t he New York Times describes this way:

Called “the human printer” by colleagues, Ms. Harp often carries a portable device so she can quickly provide Mr. Trump with hard copies of mood-boosting news articles and social media posts by people praising him.

That's just pathetic. 

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter , Crash Course.

The lawyer who has lost several cases for Trump but who defends him vociferously on TV, Alina Habba, has appeared in the courtroom. And on Thursday former judge and current Fox News member of "The Five," Jeanine Pirro was in attendance. The big name of the day, however, was Florida Senator Rick Scott who went the extra mile and held a press conference where he compared Trump to himself:

Scott's company paid $1.7 billion in fines to settle charges of rampant Medicare fraud, at the time the largest ever imposed, and Scott has previously  said , “I take responsibility for what happened on my watch as CEO.” Today he says he's a victim of the deep state. 

The ambitious senator is said to be angling for the VP slot or Senate majority leader and he knows that whining like a five-year-old about being victimized is the quickest way to Donald Trump's heart. Scott's the first contender to be there in his time of need and I'm sure Trump noticed. If the rest of them haven't figured out by now that job one is defending Dear Leader and singing his praises then they'd better just take their names off the list right now. Look for the whole crew to traipse up there over the next few weeks. Donald Trump needs cheering up and nothing makes him happier than lackeys begging for his favor. 

about this topic

• "He was bigger and blocking the way": Stormy Daniels takes the stand and reminds people who Trump is
• Trump's trial paints him as a clown — but MAGA sees a boss
• "Oh my god": Stormy Daniels lawyer texted "what have we done?" after seeing Trump win election

Heather Digby Parton, also known as " Digby ," is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

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NEET UG 2024 paper leaked? NTA denies allegations

Neet ug 2024: 'as per the rules students are only allowed to exit the hall with the question paper after the exam, but some students walked out forcefully,' a senior nta official said..

NEET UG 2024: The National testing Agency (NTA) today conducted the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET UG) 2024 exam in 557 cities across the country and 14 cities abroad in multiple exam centres. However, several social media posts are claiming that the question paper is leaked.

Also, at one centre in Rajasthan — Girls Higher Secondary Adarsh Vidya Mandir, Mantown, Sawai Madhopur — Hindi medium students claim that they were handed English medium question papers. While NTA has agreed to the error of the wrong question paper, the Agency has refuted the reports of the paper leak.

“Where the instances of ‘paper leak’ being claimed are completely false and it is being done just to sensationalise the news. In an isolated incident at Girls Higher Secondary Adarsh Vidya Mandir, Mantown, Sawai Madhopur, Hindi-medium students were given English medium question paper by mistake and by the time the invigilator was correcting the mistake, students forcefully walked out of the exam hall with the question paper.

As per the rules students are only allowed to exit the hall with the question paper after the exam, but some students walked out forcefully. Due to this, the question paper was circulated on the internet around 4 pm, but by that time the exam had already started at all other centres across the country. So, there has not been any ‘leak’ of the NEET UG question paper,” a senior NTA official told indianexpress.com .

NEET UG 2024 was conducted on May 5, from 2 pm till 5:20 pm. The medical entrance exam was held in 557 cities across the country and 14 cities abroad in multiple exam centres.

This year, a record 23 lakh candidates registered for NEET UG , of which over 10 lakh were male students, over 13 lakh were girls and 24 students registered under the ‘third gender’ category. Region-wise, Uttar Pradesh had registered the highest number of candidates with 3,39,125 registrations, followed by Maharashtra with 279904. Rajasthan at 1,96,139. Southern states Tamil Nadu registered 155216 applicants while Karnataka registered 154210.

In 2023, a total of 20,87,449 candidates registered for NEET UG 2023 and the exam was held on May 7, out of which NTA recorded 97.7 per cent attendance and the re-exam was conducted for nearly 8,700 candidates.

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Deeksha Teri covers education and has worked with the The Hindu (print division), WION and Stonebow Media. She is an alumnus of The University of Lincoln and The University of Delhi. ... Read More

• NEET UG 2024

The SSLC Kerala Result 2024 will be announced by the Kerala Pareeksha Bhavan. Students can access their results on the official websites by logging in. In 2023, 419,362 regular and 192 private students took the exam, with a pass percentage of 99.70%. The revaluation process and SAY exam took place after the results were released. 68,604 students achieved top scores.

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