Maximising your mark 1

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The VCE Economics exam is, by Economics education standards, odd. There are several problems and I can’t deal with them all in detail now. However in summary:

The mark schemes are not published making it difficult to identify where marks are allocated.

The written response questions are actually quite easy making it difficult to distinguish between candidates.

The multiple choice section has a disproportionate impact on the exam score.

Using the time properly to make a difference

People often use the reading time to work through the MC section, some marking the paper with fingernails so they complete it quickly when the exam time starts. I think this is a major mistake.

The marks earned in the written section tend to ‘bunch’ because the questions are both quite predictable and short. It is relatively easy to score most of the marks here. This means there are not big differences between good and average candidates in this section.

This makes the differences on the MC section much more significant – the MC sections contribution to variance is around DOUBLE its share of total marks.

Therefore the correct tactics for the exam should not be to complete the MC as quickly as possible. Rather candidates need to try to score the maximum on the MC section – a quite rare achievement - and look for the additional difficult marks in the written section.

I will look at specific tactics in the next two posts for the different sections, but my advice is.

1. Use the reading time for the written section, concentrating on the longer questions, which require more planning. Everyone rushes while they are writing and often skip the really important thinking stage of an answer, especially towards the end.

Think about the likely structure of the longer answers and the possible content.

2. Make sure you understand the likely mark structure of the exam questions so that you can provide the correct structure to an answer. There is no point writing more than is necessary to gain a mark.

3. Spend enough time to answer the MC questions correctly. Don’t rush through them, as there are frequently elephant traps in the questions. The wrong answers are actually called ‘distracters’ for a reason.

I will run through some MC questions in my next post.