During your time at university, it’s likely you’ll encounter at least one multiple choice test. Whether this is a formative quiz during the semester or a 100% exam at the end of the year, multiple choice tests have their own benefits and challenges. For the most part, the same revision techniques will work for both multiple choice exams and essay exams, but in this post we’ll explore a few techniques that will be particularly helpful for MCQs.
Top Tips
- Focus on understanding, not memorisation. This holds true for any kind of exam, but it’s important to state here because we often assume that multiple choice exams are more focussed on memorisation. If we just store a few key terms in our minds, surely we’ll recognise them on the exam, right? The difficulty is that the exam might use different vocabulary to what we expect, or it might ask us to apply our knowledge. In this case, it’s better to understand the concept, rather than just know a few key terms.
- Use question banks, but not exclusively. If your course provides question banks or past papers, use those to get a sense of the types of questions that will be asked. You can also use them to test your knowledge, but make sure you supplement this with other methods. Otherwise, you’ll know the material from the questions, but you’ll have significant gaps elsewhere.
- Create your own questions. This method can be time-consuming, but it works well for focussed study on particularly challenging areas. Spend some time coming up with your own questions and writing answers– including wrong ones! Creating answers that are wrong but plausible will deepen your understanding of the subject.
Single Best Answer
In certain disciplines, such as medicine and dentistry, you’ll come across a particular type of MCQ called “Single Best Answer.” This kind of question is particularly challenging because all the answers are potentially correct, and you need to choose the one that’s best. Here are a few revision techniques that are especially helpful for these questions (though they’ll be valuable for any MCQ exam).
- Study the wrong answers in question banks. It can be tempting to just answer a question, get it right, and move on. To get the best use out of your question bank, however, you should also explore the “wrong” answers. Since all the answers in a SBA question are technically correct, you can learn a lot by working through each one and asking yourself, “why isn’t this one best?”
- Focus your revision on recall, not recognition. Recognition is where you recognise something when you see it written down, while recall is where you can pull information out of your head. Recall is essential in SBA questions because every answer will have key words we recognise. We need to be able to pull the correct information from our brains, rather than just choosing the answer that seems familiar. In your revision, then, you should focus on actively testing yourself, rather than just reading or re-writing notes.
- Explore connections between topics. Particularly in upper years, SBA questions will often ask you to pull together information from various parts of your course. In your revision, then, it’s helpful to create diagrams or mindmaps that show how different topics link together (bonus points if you make this activity recall-focussed by creating the mindmap from memory, then using your notes to fill in the gaps).
Conclusion
This blog post has covered some revision techniques that will be particularly effective for MCQ exams. If you’d like to learn more, you can check out our ASC Guide to Multiple Choice Tests.
