It is the aim of every student to pass his exam with the highest marks. Every student strives a lot to achieve this aim. However, some students end up getting less marks or even fail in an exam despite working hard. Such students may think they do not receive the reward for their efforts like other successful students. If you are one among them, you are right place. First thing is that ups and downs are parts of life. Second thing is that failure should never scare you. They are meant to polish you and make you strong. Falling is not losing until you try to get up and start again. You lose only when you stop trying to get up again. Therefore, you should not lose the courage to get up and start again. If you are at this page, it means you really want to make it.

If a student scores less in an exam despite working hard, this means they are ignoring some important factors of doing productive study and preparation for the exam. There are several factors of a student’s success in the exam. Every student should be aware of these factors in order to become a successful student. Some of these factors are 1) the art of productive study, 2) style of preparation for an exam, 3) making useful study notes, 4) importance of concentration on the study, 5) time management, 6) style of attempting an exam and 7) importance of attending class lectures. Considering these factors, the most common causes of students’ less marks or failure in exams are as follows:

Some students do not know the art of doing a productive study. They take study merely as reading the words of the books. Study means to learn and understand something in its entirety. Every line of (topic or lesson within) the book has important information to be grasped by the student which cannot be done simply by cursory reading. It means that students should study their topics with their full concentration. In other words, a student should be mentally involved while doing the study. They should not be distracted by any other thing or idea which may interrupt the process of their learning. For instance, mobile phones should be switched off at the time of the study. If anything or idea is diverting your mind from the study, it is better to go and do that thing first and come back to study with a free mind. Take a highlighter and highlight each important piece of information within your book while you study it. Take a pen and also note down important information in a notebook. This will increase your concentration towards your study. The aim of study is to understand your study topic with conceptual clarity. The aim is not to just read the text of the book or to memorize its topic like a story simply to be able to rewrite it in your exam. The real purpose of the study to gain the in-depth learning which enables your mind to generate creative questions regarding the studied topic and to learn it in its entirety. Take your study seriously.

Some students do not know the appropriate style of preparation for an exam and their preparatory efforts are not in the right direction. Despite making preparation day and night, they end up getting less marks. On the other hand, students who know the correct style of preparation for the exam may get high marks, even with comparatively less work. Preparation for an exam starts right from the first day of your academic program. Whatever you learn throughout the academic program contribute to your performance in your final exam. However, the last month before the exam and the exam period itself count a lot. Preparation during this period is the real game-changer. Some students may take this period lightly. They may have utilized the time during their academic program properly for their study but when the real time (exam days) for preparation comes (that count the most), they become lazy.  

Even if you have studied well during your academic term, you should utilize this period of preparation maximumly. It is natural that when you learn something, with the passage of time this learning slowly fades in the mind. Therefore, if you study a book (in your exam days) and appear in its exam after a day or two, you have all the learning in your mind and you are able to write it in your papers.

Moreover, some students do not consider the format of the exam while making preparation for the exam. There are various formats of exams which have different types of questions such as short questions, long questions and multiple-choice questions MCQs. Each type of question requires preparation in different lines. For instance, making preparation for MCQs involves reading the books in a way to identify important pieces of information which can be asked as MCQs in exam. Simply studying books without considering the nature of MCQs questions would be a blind style of preparation when it comes to MCQs part of the exam. Similarly, for long explanatory questions, the student should think if such a question is asked about a topic which aspects will need to be explained, and which headings (sub-sections) may be given and that if any conclusion part would be needed. Likewise, student’s focus for preparing for short questions should be on areas like definitions and short formulas.    

Making good study notes is vital for scoring well in an exam. This helps in easy revision of your topic, particularly when it comes to preparation for an exam. Some students may not make study notes because they are unaware of its importance. Others may attempt to make study notes for themselves but the way they make it usually do not help them much. Study notes can be made from all sources of learning such as your books, class lectures and online study resources. Making useful note basically involves most important points from what you learn so that when you read these points, they refresh your learning.     

Some students are unaware of exam-taking strategies. These are the techniques which help a student while attempting an exam. They play a good role in scoring well in an exam. These techniques are for MCQs as well as for long questions. For instance, while attempting the MCQs exam, the student should first attempt all the easy questions leaving the difficult questions un-attempted and to come back to them in the end. If a student sticks to one difficult question and waste all the time on it, he will lose time for other question which he could have easily attempted. Similarly, if you do not know the correct option for an MCQ, it is better to first think which options are surely not the answer. Then, chose one among the remaining options, it increases your chance of answering correctly.

For long questions, the student should know how to present ideas in an appealing and impressive way. This depends on the real content of your answer as well as the way you present your answer such as giving different headings and using different colors to highlight important lines within your answer. The other important exam-taking strategy is to manage your time well to complete your exam in time. For instance, you should divide the total time on the number of questions which gives you an idea of how much time should be given to each question.

Some students may face issues of time management for their studies. They either waste a lot of their time on activities other than studies or they are unable to allocate time properly to different subjects. Every student has certain activities such as playing games, watching movies, listening to music and hanging out with friends. However, successful students know how to maintain balance in all the activities. They never give more time to just one activity while ignoring all other important activities. The study is the most important activity for a student which should be given the most time. It means to reduce time for other activities to have more time for study. Similarly, your time for study should be distributed among your subjects properly so that the time-demanding subjects may be given more time. Successful students always go by a plan. Since the study is the primary activity of students, they should properly and seriously plan about it.

Some students may experience concentration issues such as they are not able to focus on what they study, or they have too short attention-span to be able to study properly. Concentration issues are nowadays common, but you should think about it whether you can do something about it. This is because the factors leading to concentration issues may easily be resolved. For instance, a healthy lifestyle such as having full sleep every night does enhance your concentration power. Similarly, going for walk on daily basis have a good impact on your concentration power. Eating healthy is also important for good brain function. One important step relating to study style for good concentration is that a student should not study for hours in one go. It is better to take short breaks during your study. This helps sustain concentration power throughout the day.