Tips for Taking 24/48 Hour STEM (and all general) Exams

Hi everyone,

Over the next few days, I have two exams. One spans 48 hours and the other spans 24 hours. Both of them require a pretty high time efficiency ratio (time to finish/time allotted). Standardized Tests require a similar efficiency ratio but are not as long as these time spans. Having some experience with these hardcore exams, I thought I would throw-out some tips to all of you for taking these:

• If you get stuck on a problem, it is best to move on and try again later. Why you may ask? If you have to work diligently on a long exam and you end up spending too much time on one problem with little progress, you are going to be a little more worn out when you get to the problems that come after it. It's best to solve the ones you know and build confidence for the next series of problems.
• Plan to work on these exams for no more than 90% the max allotted time. Chances are, these exams will not take up 100% of your time but rather somewhere closer to 75-80%. Professors might give you a challenging exam expecting you to not get everything and they also are aware that you are a human being and that there is a human limit to workload (don't be that person that says they can spend 24 hours in a row working on something).
• Try to sleep for a short amount of time somewhere in the middle of the exam. This will give you some energy/relaxation to clear your mind and allow you to rebound for the second half of an already rigorous exam. If you opt to sleep towards the last 1/3 of this exam time, submit a copy of your current completed work just in case!
• DO NOT CHEAT. This should be obvious but these exams are meant to be an individual hardcore assessment of your skills, not a half-hearted assessment. The odds of outright failing one of these exams is slim (you really had to not be studying at all for it or not paying attention to lectures/reading the book). Note: The definition of fail I am using means you did significantly worse than the median/mean of your class, not that you got a grade below a certain threshold.
• If things look good, don't get cocky. Make sure you actually solved the problems being asked rather than finding a quick shortcut that could be too simple for that problem. If things look bad, try to show as much logical work as you can demonstrating your conclusions on each problem.
• If you make mistakes in one part of one problem, that does not mean that working on later parts of that same problem will automatically award you 0 points. It's best to actually try to do the later parts in hopes of obtaining some partial credit.
• In studying for these exams, give yourself at least a week (if not more). Try problems from your homework or past exams that reinforce the theory on these upcoming exams. Note what key techniques are used for these problems rather than the exact solution.
• If you know the point distributions by problem beforehand, try to attempt the ones with the highest weight that you find easiest to solve. In the event that all problems are weighted the same, finish the easiest problems as soon as you can.

Good luck!