OCS November exam experience survey, what we learnt...

As always, the OCS exam experience survey produced some interesting results. Thinking of taking the February case study? Or interested to know how the OCS November students got on? Well, here are 7 bullet points that we learnt from our survey. 

Our students put the effort in!

• Just under 50% revised for more than 5 weeks in the run-up to the exam.
• Nearly 80% revised 4 weeks or over.
• 10% did less than 3 weeks revision.
• 42% of our students dedicated 10 hours or more a week to revision.
• Nearly 75% did more than 5 hours a weeks.

We usually recommend 6-8 weeks revision before the case study exam, averaging around 10 hours a week. Good to hear many of our students are taking our advice!

Knowing what to prioritise and how to structure your revision is tricky yet vital, we asked our students how they could have better planned their schedules...

• Over 50% said they wished they had spent more time on time management and revising theory.
• More than 40% of respondents said they wish they had practised mock exams, and a third saying they wished they did more answer planning before the exam.
• A tenth of students said they wish they spent more time analysing the pre-seen, good to hear they got this organised early!

Overall, most of our students said the exam was as difficult as they had expected, but a mix of students said they either though it was harder/much harder or easier. As a result, we got some interesting advice for future students. 

Here are some examples:

• Do as much mock question practice as possible.
• Practice under timed conditions.
• know the pre-seen and try to apply theory to the question. Imagine you are an employee there.

The results found showed how much work needs to into preparing for the OCS exam, definitely not to be underestimated! If you would like to see more responses they can be found here.