Written By Anthony Tsai
Hi everyone, I’m currently a third year in the Chemical and Biochemical Engineering PhD program. I’ve finished taking most of the required courses for my program and I would like to share a few tips with you to hopefully make the exam preparation a little bit easier. I will try to keep this general, but this guide will be most relevant to STEM classes.
Know the Game before you Play the Game
UCI is using the quarter system, which means that there’s not really a whole lot of time from when the quarter starts until the time of the final exam. You should ask yourself a few questions as soon as possible:
- How many classes am I taking?
- How many of them have a final exam?
- How proficient am I in the specific subject area?
- What is the format of the exam?
- How long and when do I study for them?
- How exactly do I study for the exams?
These are questions that will help you get a better understanding of how much time you need to allocate for preparing for the exam. Since there is no dead week after the last week of instruction, it is important to understand when you can start preparing for finals and what must be left until the last week. This way, the week before finals can be a little less hectic.
Figure out the Format of the Exam and Prepare for It
Here, I will go into detail about each type of exams that I had in the past and the kind of preparations I recommend for each of them.
A. Research Proposal
Research proposal is a take-home assignment where you will write an original research proposal based on the topics covered in the class that also relates to your research interest.
Throughout the quarter, you should always pay attention to potential pitfalls, and room for improvement on the topics covered in class. Those unexplored areas will be a good candidate for your final research proposal. Of course, not all of them will be interesting to you, but write them down somewhere just in case you need it.
Within a few weeks before due date, you should start looking for additional research articles and papers to back up your proposed topic. Don’t worry if the topic that you are the most interested has the least amount of resources, you can always change to another one that you have noted down earlier. Remember, your life does NOT depend on which topic you choose. This is just an assignment for you to demonstrate that you know the process. You should also schedule an appointment with the writing consultant at the GRC early if you plan on meeting with them.
A week before the final exam, you should have a rough draft, or at least a good outline of the proposal so that you just need to write it and revise it. It is always a good idea to team up with other students who are also enrolled in that class to get feedback. You can also use the GRC writing consultant, but remember they are not enrolled in the same class and do not know the specific technical details and requirements set forth by the instructor.
B. Final Presentation / Journal Club
A final presentation is usually an individual oral presentation using PowerPoint slides to cover a research paper in detail. The format of this exam is like the preliminary exam in most engineering programs.
I recommend having a draft of the PowerPoint ready at least two weeks before the final presentation. And spend at least a week for the presentation alone. Here’s a few tips to prepare for the presentation.
- Do not spend an excessive amount of time trying to make the slides perfect because PowerPoint slides is only supplemental to your presentation.
- Spend at least the same, if not more time to work on the oral presentation than the slides.
- Only include phrases and key information in your slides. If your audience can understand everything by reading the slides alone, there’s probably too much information in the slides.
- Feel free to take out information that are in the original paper that does not follow the flow. (keep it at the end as backup). Similarly, you can also include stuff from other paper if it will help get the point across.
C. Written Exam (Information)
Informational written exam is standard exam format that could be either multiple choice or short answer that requires memorization of materials and concepts to answer them. I find that using the PowerPoint slides of the lecture works best for me when preparing for the finals. I would go through all the slides and try to recall details about each topic while using my notes as reference.
D. Written Exam (Mathematics)
This is also the same as the previous, but it deserves its own category because I recommend different types of studying strategies for this type of exams. The best way to review for this type of exam is to redo the homework. Most of the graduate level mathematical problems are already very complicated and not many changes can be made to them before they become unsolvable. In other words, the problems that show up during the final exam will probably very similar to the homework problems.
It is also important to check these few points and change your plan accordingly:
- If the exam is open book, the problem will probably require you to get information from the textbook. You should index the book (I like colored post-its) so you can find the info faster.
- If you can use a note sheet during the final exam, you should use the note sheet as the only reference material when you redo the homework. This will ensure that all needed formula and constants are included in the note sheet.
Lastly, be confident during the exam regardless if you are doing an oral presentation or writing an in-class final exam. It is the time to show what you know and learn where you need to improve. Good luck.