First exam at NTU

Yesterday, I wrote my first major exam at NTU and it was a new experience all together. I have to say that the way the exam was conducted was not much different from what it was in India. There was the same final minute preparations from the students outside the exam hall, the same sound of frantic flipping through pages, which makes you more nervous than the person flipping the pages actually is, and the similarities dont end there. I feel that these similarities actually exist because, these are some things which are universal. Where ever you are in the world, students are nervous about exams, some are confident and make the people who are nervous even more nervous, students have a feeling they have forgotten what they have studied over the course of the semester and hence try to recollect everything by browsing through the complete notes within 20-30 minutes, etc, etc.

Having said that, there were some marked differences between exams in India and exams in Singapore. First difference is that in India, we used to write the exams in the same classrooms where we attended lectures over the semester. But here, there are dedicated exam halls which have an 'aura of an examination' emanating from them. These exam halls are not just a room with desks and chairs, they are multi-leveled halls. There are toilets WITHIN the exam hall. The ground floor is where the students sit and write the exams and the first floor houses the toilets. This saves considerable time for students who want to use the toilets during the exam (not that I used it).

Secondly, here, you are allowed to take you cell phones inside the hall, but in switched-off mode. I know that the result is the same, but it was worth mentioning to highlight the fact that the were no restrictions on what the students carried inside the exam hall as long as they didnt use them in illegal ways. You cannot imagine the invigilator allowing you to carry a cell phone inside an exam hall in India.

Thirdly, in Singapore, the halls get freezing cold as time progresses. Not that it is unique to an exam hall as every room here is air-conditioned, I felt cold for the first time in Singapore inside an air-conditioned room. For the next exam I will be carrying my jacket with me, just in case...

Finally, one of the most important differences lie in the fact that, the questions in an exam in Singapore are more application oriented, i.e. they consist of problems which require some amount of thinking to solve. In India, 70% of the paper used to be filled with theoretical questions. So, most of the people used to answer them correctly and hence if you were not able to answer all the questions, it would be sign of bad omen. But here, you can always be sure that not everyone will be able to solve all the problems as they 1)require time to think, which is a resource that you cant enjoy, and 2)There are bound to be some really tough problems which test your ability. So, you can still come out of an exam having a good feeling about yourself even though you were not able to answer all the questions. But, me being a perfectionist, find it hard to accept that not being able to solve a problem should not be much of a concern.

So, to sum up, there are some notable differences between how the exams are conducted in Singapore, but in the end, one thing remains the same whether it is in India or Singapore. Students are stressed about exams and the pressure to do well will always be there!