How to use the online timer
Sixty minutes is a common exam duration for a single paper or module, and time management within that hour often decides the final result as much as knowledge of the material does — even well-prepared students lose marks by running out of time on later questions after spending too long on earlier ones. Reading through the whole paper first and roughly allocating time per question, before writing a single answer, is a habit worth building well before exam day itself.
Questions worth more marks generally deserve proportionally more time, which sounds obvious but is easy to lose track of under pressure — spending twenty minutes perfecting a five-mark answer while a twenty-mark question goes untouched is one of the more common and avoidable ways marks get lost in a timed exam.
Leaving the last few minutes of the hour to check answers, rather than writing right up until the time's called, catches careless errors that are easy to miss while working under pressure. If a particular question isn't coming together, moving on and returning to it later, rather than getting stuck, tends to protect the overall score more reliably than persistence on one difficult question.
Common questions
How should I split my time across a sixty-minute exam?
Roughly in proportion to the marks available for each question, decided after a quick read-through of the whole paper rather than working through it question by question blind.
Should I keep working right until time is called?
It's usually better to leave the last few minutes to check your answers for careless errors, rather than writing until the very last second.
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