Three weeks from now I’ll be taking the first part of my comprehensive exams, which will end the phase of my PhD in which I take courses, and will (hopefully) usher in the part of my PhD in which I actually do my own research. I have been studying for these exams (which consist of two written parts and, provided you pass those, an oral exam) pretty exclusively for months, so I am quite psyched that they are coming up finally.
At any rate, in both written exams (the one three weeks from now and the other one, two weeks later) I answer four questions over the course of four hours. These answers are expected to be quite extensive, so you basically end up writing four 1000-1500 word essays in four hours.
I have not really taken exams like this in years - or any exams at all, really: I have mostly passed courses by writing papers, so prepping for this I started wondering: what is the best way to take an exam like this, what kind of food and drinks should I be bringing (or avoiding) to ensure mental acuity throughout the exam, what kind of exercises should I do when I take a short break. I’ve heard, for instance, that caffeine may increase awakeness but reduces concentration. Any truth to that? So in a sense what I am asking is: how does the mental chemisty of concentration work and mostly: what can I do to optimize it.
[note to mods: I debated putting it in IMHO since I think this might call for opinions and the sharing of experiences, etc., but I am looking for factual answers to this question so I ended up putting it in GQ after all. Feel free to move should you feel differently
In my experience, as long as you’re well-prepared and get a good night’s sleep beforehand, and a good breakfast the day of, it doesn’t matter.
Cramming is your enemy. Stressing out on the day is your enemy. And it seems like you know that and, not that I have any experience in the matter, but I doubt cramming would be a useful strategy for a PhD program exam, anyway.
Can you ask your advisor for previous exam questions? Try timing yourself to see how long it takes you to write answers for them. That will give you a good guideline for pacing yourself when the real exam comes, even if the questions are completely different.
If you’ve made it this far, you probably know the stuff better than you think you do, anyway.
In recent years, I’ve used keyboards/typing almost exclusively. It was a big wake up call to have long written tests. I found the process of composing on paper much different as well as the simple physical fact that my hand wasn’t used to writing so long – very painful/difficult to write for hours if you aren’t used to it.
If you haven’t taken exams in a long while, your sense of timing may need to be calibrated–it’s easy to lose yourself in the answer to question one and find you’ve taken two hours to answer it and have to rush through the remaining questions. friedo has an excellent idea in asking for previous exams, and I would suggest blocking out a four hour period and take and write an exam as though it were the real thing. Then critique your timing: were you rushing at the end? Finished too early? Wrote too short or long an essay on one or another question? And how was your concentration? Did short breaks help? That kind of thing.
Another thing a practice exercise is good for is deciding which questions to answer in which order. Most people like to start on the question they know most about, then go on to other questions. On my qualifying exams, way back when, I would work on two or three questions at once, working through one until I got to a tricky part, then starting on another one, then going back to the first. Breaking away for a little bit, even to work on another question, helped change my perspective when returning to the problem and prevented me from wasting time spinning my wheels. You may or may not work better that way (but this does address your main question about concentration).
You haven’t even told us your field. How do you expect to get any meaningful answers without even that basic information? Anyway, my recommendation is to ask the faculty and senior students in your department. There’s no way that anyone here can match the quality of those answers.
What to eat and drink beforehand really depends on you. If you’re the sort that has to pee with every drink, don’t drink. If being moderately dehydrated is very distracting for you, then drink. Or try to strike a happy medium. The same logic applies to what to eat, if caffeine is a good choice, etc. If you’ve only written papers for a while, you may gain advantage from dry-runs: force yourself to sit for hours, reading and writing by hand. You may then understand what you can eat or drink.
According to something I read, the military did a study on caffeine and found that best dosage for improved alertness without negative side effects was just 10 mg. You can get this much from many sources, including decaf tea or coffee.
I don’t think the food matters much as long as you’re not eating junk food. Many people have recommended something with protein. I avoid things that are likely to make me need the bathroom and I eat only about half of what I would normally. (one egg and a piece of toast is a perfect pre-test meal for me). I’d rather be on the hungry side when I finish.
Work to maintain focus on small elements at a time. A 1,000 question test is no more difficult than a 1 question test. You just have to do it 1,000 times. If you’re going to assess how you’re doing on time, don’t try to do that while answering questions. Finish an answer (or a section, given your long essay answers), then assess progress, then move on to the next one. Some people highlight or underline parts of a question to help focus on the answer. Some come up with outlines for their answers before they write. Whatever will let you stay focused on a single thing at a time.
I’ll second the “no cramming” advice, although I find that a casual overview of the material before the test can help, especially if you know of an area you’re weak on.
Make sure you get a good night’s sleep.
I make sure I’m awake at least three hours before the test. I cannot jump out of bed and function at peak capacity immediately. (However, I understand that some people feel differently about this).
I think those are about all the things I can think of. They got me through the CPA exams, which consist of 14 hours of exam time split into 4 parts.
I second the handwriting part. If you are not used to a lot of handwriting and you have to write for hours and hours like that, things can go bad.
I would beef up my writing arm if I were you.
The best piece of test-taking advice I got was from a teacher just this past year. I’m 36 years old, have basically never *not *been in school, and it was the first time I’ve ever heard it.
It was f-ing brilliant. And a survey of students who followed that advice revealed that 90% of them actually *did *get a good night’s sleep the night before the exam, because they weren’t pressuring themselves to do so!
Thanks people. I’ll say a little more about the test and what I’ve been doing to prepare to see what tips you have.
I’m in political science. The test deals with my two subfields, comparative politics and political theory. There are reading lists for both. There’s a big whopper for comparative that contains 270 books and articles that purportedly are the cannon in empirical political science (they are not, but that’s besides the point). Then there’s a shorter list with 24 authors ranging from Plato to Rawls, the cannon (again: purportedly) in political theory. Currently I’ve read a good 95 per cent of that latter list and something like two thirds of the former list, which should be sufficient, and I’m the process of reducing my notes (a good 75K words on the comparative list and I don’t even know how much on the theory list) to cue cards. This is going swimmingly and I’m actually relatively confident that I at least have sufficient knowledge to answer all the questions, I’m more concerned with answering the question specifically without overlooking important objections to arguments I might be making. Apparently the main reason that people have failed in the past is for not exactly answering the question that is being asked. Thankfully I’m quite aware of the format of the exam and previous questions, and I’ve answered many questions like it in a timed setting so I know how much I can write. About the writing: I’ll get to type, so handwriting for 4 hours is not an issue thankfully.
So I’m most interested not so much in how to get 2500 years of knowledge in my head - I’ve been doing that for some time know and I think that whatever is going to happen in the next weeks is not really going to affect the level of knowledge I’ll have. This, of course, will not stop me from studying my ass of in the mean time - but the basis is there, is what I’m trying to say. I’m most interested in hearing how you would handle physically the process of sitting for four hours, trying to concentrate. Does sugar help, or caffeine (I guess not) - that kind of question.
Advice is always tricky for these sorts of things, because different things work for different people. I, for example, do find that caffeine kills my attention span (and makes me pee), so I certainly wouldn’t drink anything caffeinated, but for some folks, caffeine actually helps them focus. Another thing I find helps is to set aside the last day before the big test entirely for low-brain-intensity leisure: Play mindless video games, watch an eye-candy action movie, etc. I figure, it’s too late for last-minute studying to do any good, but the stress relief will still help.
And for studying, probably the best thing you can do is to get ahold of previous years’ exams and take them, under conditions as close to the actual test as you can manage. Often, other grad students in the program will also be interested in doing this, and you can organize joint practice sessions (if someone else isn’t organizing them already).
