Index

Exam preparations

  • The ratio Work Load / ECTS is about 30 h / 1 ECTS, i.e. for a 5 ECTS course you will spend about 42h in lectures, so it is expected that you spend about 100h revisiting lectures and preparing for the exam – start early and take it seriously!
  • Do not only study based on handouts or information available on the internet – books provide structured information and knowledge.
  • Understanding is crucial. You will not succeed by simply “parroting” terms and definitions.
  • Ask higher semester students regarding exam experience and typical questions.
  • Prepare oral exams by staging mock exams – it is not only important what you know but also that you are able to present your knowledge.
  • In written exams:
    • Read the questions carefully – do not answer the question you would like to answer but rather the question that was written down on the exam paper!
    • Balance your answers appropriately – The marks you can achieve with every question will be indicated. Use this as a guide, since often times, each aspect or keypoint you answer with will achieve 0.5 to 1 marks. Therefore, there is no need to write an excessively long answer for a question with a maximum of 2 points, in order to not run out of time!
    • Be clear in your answers – Try to clearly and concisely express your answers. Keep your answers short and to the point, instead of writing down everything you know which might be somehow related to the question. “Writing around” the topic without adding much clear content will not help you achieve a better grade. Instead, the grader will have a hard time establishing whether you actually understand the topic. Additionally, please do not try to write too complex sentence structures in the pressure of an exam, to avoid making the sentence unintelligible by making grammatical mistakes. Either use short bullet points or as a continuous text with short, concise, grammatically correct sentences.
    • Write down all steps in a calculation.
    • Never use any form of shorthands, other than latin abbreviations such as “e.g.”, “i.e.”, “etc” in your answers – examiners have often noticed students using abbreviations like “txtspk” in exam answers in previous years and find it incredibly sloppy and undecipherable for anyone who does not use abbreviations for text messages.
    • Define the terms in the expression if you write algebraic expressions – with an exception of perhaps the most common terms, such as Boltzmann constant k, temperature T.
    • Always correctly label your axes and define all symbols and labels, especially if it is a not well known one.
  • Prepare oral exams by staging mock exams – it is not only important what you know but also that you are able to present your knowledge.
  • Be aware of the differences between oral and written exams: in an oral exam 2.3 is generally considered much less satisfactory than in a written exam.
  • Use the opportunity to learn from your mistakes and check your reached points during the official post‐exam reviews.
  • Video in German language on getting well through your exam phase offered by FAU, English subtitles can be set.