After Your Exam:  Reviewing What Happened

Often, students get exams back, look at their grades, file the exam or throw it away, and give little thought to its useful purpose after the fact. Reviewing what went well and what didn’t can help you do better on future exams, boost your confidence, and demonstrate the use of exams as learning tools in addition to evaluation instruments.

There are two types of exam review. One involves reviewing each individual exam and the second involves pooling information you get from all your examinations. Try to do both and when you do, consider the following questions.

HOW DID YOU STUDY?

• Did you study actively by asking yourself questions and then answering them?
• Were you actually studying before the test, or were you still learning new material?
• Did you space your studying out or cram it in at the last minute?
• Did your notes make it easier for you to study, or was it difficult to figure out what you meant when you wrote them?
• Did you study the right things? If not, what prevented you from pinpointing the important areas?

HOW DID YOU MANAGE YOUR TIME?

• Did you have enough time to answer all the questions?
• Did you have enough to review your answers at the end?
• Did you spend the most time on questions that you counted the most and the least amount of time on the questions that counted the least?
• Did you work steadily and not speed up at the end?

WHAT KIND OF MISTAKES DID YOU MAKE?

• Did you understand the overall concept or topic and make silly mathematical or factual errors?
• Did you miss whole topics when you did your reviewing?
• Did you have a general idea of what was going on and miss the specific points?
• Did you make lots of different kinds of mistakes?
• Did you make mistakes from misunderstanding facts

WERE CERTAIN TYPES OF QUESTIONS HARDER FOR YOU THAN OTHERS?

• Did you do okay on subjective questions and worse on objective ones?
• Did you do okay on objective and worse on subjective ones?

HOW ANXIOUS WERE YOU?

• How much nervousness, or lack of it, contributed to your performance?
• How much sleep you get before the exam?
• Did you eat well before the exam?
• How confident did you feel going into the exam and how did your level of confidence compare to the outcome of the test?