C. Multiple choice examinations – Level 1, 2 & Optom

Multiple choice examinations

All units in the First Year Examinations and a few in Second Year Examinations will be examined wholly or partly by Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs).  You are advised:

• that you must take your Student Card to all examinations and write your Registration ID number and name on the answer sheet.
• to follow carefully all written instructions for filling out the answer sheet.
• to make yourself familiar with the various rubrics that we use by looking at past examination papers.
• to read the rubric to questions carefully.  For example, one rubric may ask you to choose the one MOST SUITABLE option and another may ask you to identify the one INCORRECT option.
• to read the questions carefully.  A good MCQ is intended to make you think.
• that answers must be indicated legibly on the answer sheet provided.  If an answer is illegible, you will be given a score of zero for that question – the examiner will not try to decipher hieroglyphs!  If you decide to change an answer, you must erase the original answer completely and write your new answer in its place.  A pencil, preferably B or softer, should be used – make sure you take an eraser and pencil sharpener to the examination.
• that all MCQs in the School, unless otherwise stated, are marked by a technique that includes a negative correction for wrong answers.  The correction that is subtracted for each wrong answer is 1/(n-1), where n is the number of options.  This is intended to ensure that you will gain no benefit from guessing at random.  Questions that are not answered will score zero. Despite this negative marking, unless the number of options is few (three or fewer), it is to your advantage to make informed guesses, i.e. if you know some of the options can be excluded, you should make a guess at the other options.  On average you will gain more marks when you get these informed guesses right than you will lose when you get them wrong.

Short answer questions and essay-type questions are NOT negatively marked.  You will not lose marks for incorrect material (but will not gain any either) so it is worth writing something, even if you are not sure it is correct.