After the Exam: Read Your Results

When an exam comes back, most students look at the number, feel something about it, and move on. The students who improve the fastest do one more thing: they study the exam itself. This chapter shows you how to read your results, sort your mistakes, and turn them into a short, specific plan for the next exam, including what to do when the number is low.

The score is information, not a verdict

Let's be honest about the first hour. If the score is good, you feel relief. If it is lower than you hoped, it can sting, and you might feel embarrassed, angry, or worried about your plans for nursing or another health program. Those feelings are normal. Give yourself a little time with them. Go for a walk, talk to someone you trust, and get some sleep.

Then, within a few days, come back to the exam with a different question. Not "Am I good at this?" but "What does this tell me?" An exam score is information about how a particular set of study methods worked on a particular set of questions. It is not a measure of how smart you are or whether you belong in science. Chapter 1 talked about how common it is for capable students to struggle at first in A&P. The students who end up doing well are often the ones who use that first struggle as data.

Researchers who study self-regulated learning, such as Barry Zimmerman (2002), describe strong learners as working in a cycle. They plan how to study, they do the studying while watching how it is going, and then they reflect on the results and adjust. Most students do the first two parts and skip the third. Figure 10.1 shows the cycle as it looks in BIO 243, and where this book covers each part.

This chapter lines up with week 6, just after Exam 1 usually comes back, and week 9, just after Exam 2. Both are perfect moments to close the loop. Week 9 also tends to fall close to the point in the term when some students start weighing bigger decisions, which the last part of this chapter covers.

The exam wrapper

An exam wrapper is a short reflection sheet you fill out after an exam is returned. The idea comes from Marsha Lovett (2013), who studies learning at Carnegie Mellon University. Instead of just looking at the score, the wrapper asks you three kinds of questions: how you prepared, what kinds of mistakes you made, and what you will do differently next time. The name comes from the way it "wraps" around the exam. Lovett's point is that the exam already holds a lot of information about your learning, and the wrapper helps you actually use it. The book How Learning Works (Ambrose and colleagues, 2010), which Lovett co-wrote, describes this kind of reflection as a core part of becoming a self-directed learner.

First, find out how you can review the exam

Instructors handle exam review in different ways. Some let you see your answers in Blackboard. Some go over common mistakes in class. Some ask you to review the exam during student hours. Check your syllabus or ask your instructor how review works in your section. Whatever the method, keep it honest: do not copy, photograph or share exam questions unless your instructor has said that is allowed. The goal is to understand your mistakes, not to collect the questions.

Your exam wrapper questions

Answer these in writing, in a notebook or a note on your phone. It takes about fifteen minutes.

1. How did I prepare? Roughly how many hours, over how many days? What did I actually do: reread, highlight, flashcards, blank diagrams, practice questions, a practice test?
2. What did I expect my score to be, and how close was I? A big gap between what you expected and what you got is useful information on its own. It often means your study methods made you feel ready without testing whether you were.
3. Where did I lose points? List each miss by topic, then sort it into one of the four bins in the next section.
4. Which bin had the most misses? That is your biggest lever.
5. What two or three specific things will I change for the next exam?
6. Who will I ask for help, and when?

Sorting your misses

Not all wrong answers are the same kind of wrong. A question you missed because you had never really learned the topic needs a very different fix from a question you missed because you skipped over the word NOT. Sorting your misses into bins shows you which fix you need most. Figure 10.2 shows four common bins.

Bin 1: Did not know it

You had not learned this material, or you had learned it too weakly to recall. Maybe you never got to that section, or you read it once and moved on. For example, if you missed a question about the tissue that lines the urinary bladder and had no idea it was transitional epithelium, which can stretch as the bladder fills, that is a Bin 1 miss. The fix is more and better study of that content: the strategies in Chapters 6 and 7, and, if a lot of misses land here, more total study time, starting earlier, as Chapter 8 describes.

Bin 2: Knew it, but misread or slipped

You knew the content, but you misread the stem, missed a flip word, mixed up two similar terms in the moment, or clicked the wrong choice. These hurt the most, because the knowledge was there. The fix is the exam-day routine from Chapter 9: read the whole stem, spot the key words, predict before you look, and treat each choice as true or false on NOT and EXCEPT questions.

Bin 3: Ran out of time

You rushed, guessed, or left questions at the end because time ran short. The fix is pacing: set checkpoints at the start, use the two-pass approach, and practice under timed conditions so the real clock feels familiar.

Bin 4: Studied the wrong thing, or the wrong way

This bin is sneaky, and it is often the biggest one on the first A&P exam. You studied, and you even recognized the terms on the exam, but you could not use them. Maybe you memorized the names of the organelles but could not say which one would be most active in a cell that makes lots of protein for export (rough endoplasmic reticulum, along with the Golgi apparatus). Maybe you made flashcards of terms but the exam asked about processes. This usually means your studying was built on recognition, like rereading and looking at cards, rather than recall and application. The fix is to study in the form the exam uses: practice questions, "what if" questions, and explaining processes out loud from memory. The review by John Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) is a good reminder of why: rereading and highlighting were rated as low-utility techniques, and practice testing as high.

Make a change plan

The most common post-exam plan is "study harder." It almost never works, because it does not say what to do differently. A good change plan has two or three specific changes, each one tied to a bin, and each one written so you could check whether you did it.

A helpful way to write each change is as an if-then plan, which psychologists call an implementation intention. Instead of a goal like "do more practice questions," you write the situation and the action: "If it is Tuesday or Thursday after my shift, then I do 15 practice questions before I open the textbook." Peter Gollwitzer (1999) reviewed research showing that if-then plans like this make people more likely to follow through on goals than simply setting the goal. They work because the situation becomes a cue that triggers the action, so you do not have to decide again each time.

Some examples of vague plans turned into specific ones:

• Vague: "Study more." Specific: "Start exam prep ten days out, and use the Exam Planner tool on the first day."
• Vague: "Be more careful." Specific: "On every exam question, I predict the answer before looking at the choices, and I say the flip word in my head."
• Vague: "Understand the material better." Specific: "If I finish reading a section, then I close the book and do a two-minute blank-page recall before moving on."
• Vague: "Get help." Specific: "This Wednesday I go to the SI session, and this week I go to student hours with my two toughest questions written down."

Bring your results to student hours

Student hours, also called office hours, are time your instructor sets aside to help students. Many students avoid them, especially after a low score, because they feel embarrassed. But instructors generally want to see students after a hard exam. It shows you are taking the course seriously, and it gives them a chance to help before the gap gets bigger.

The key is to bring a specific question. "I don't get it" is hard to answer in ten minutes. "Can you help me see the difference between facilitated diffusion and active transport? I keep mixing them up on questions about which one uses ATP" is easy to answer, and you will leave with something useful. Bring your exam wrapper. It shows exactly what you need.

Good questions to bring after an exam:

• "Most of my misses were application questions. Could you show me how you would think through one like that?"
• "I studied about six hours using flashcards and rereading. Based on my results, what would you change?"
• "Is there a topic from this unit that the next unit builds on, so I should fix it first?"

Your instructor is not the only help. Supplemental Instruction (SI) sessions, led by students who did well in the course, run weekly on the hardest content. Peer Tutoring through QuadC and the Student Success Center are there too. If you receive a Starfish message from your instructor or advisor after an exam, read it as an invitation, not a punishment. It means someone noticed and wants to help. Chapter 13, Help Is a Strategy, has email scripts and more on each of these.

Recovering from a low grade

The BIO 243 syllabus is honest: it is very hard to recover from a low test grade. That is true, and it is why this book pushes you to start strong. But "very hard" does not mean "impossible," and it helps to look at the actual math instead of guessing.

Every course weights its grades differently, so check your syllabus for the real numbers in your section. The made-up example in Figure 10.3 shows the general idea. Imagine a course where four exams count equally toward an exam average. A student scores 55 on Exam 1. If nothing changes and the next scores stay near 60, the exam average ends up around 58. If the student makes real changes and scores in the high 70s and low 80s on the rest, the average climbs to about 75.

Two lessons come from this kind of math. First, a low first score really does cost you. In the example, even with strong later exams, the average is lower than it would have been with a strong start. That is the honest part. Second, the choice you make after the low score matters more than the score itself. The gap between the two paths in Figure 10.3 is huge.

Points outside the exams

Exams are not your only points. Quizzes, Guided Practice, CircleIn, lab and the Reading Guide all count in their own ways, so check your syllabus for each one's weight. These are the points most within your control. Quizzes are open for a while before they are due and cannot be made up after the due date, though a few of the lowest quiz scores are dropped. Turning every one of them in, on time, is one of the most reliable ways to protect your grade. Completing the Reading Guide before each exam can earn extra credit, and it doubles as study for the exam.

The honest withdrawal conversation

Sometimes the math, or life, points toward a harder question: should I withdraw from the course? Each term has a last day to withdraw with a W, which usually falls after midterm. You will find it on the USC Upstate academic calendar. Some students are carrying a load that is simply too heavy that term: a family crisis, a health problem, a job that changed its hours, or a semester that started so far behind that catching up is not realistic.

Withdrawing is a decision, not a failure. Taking BIO 243 again in a semester when you can give it your full attention can be a smart, strategic move. But it has real consequences, and they are different for every student. A W can affect your financial aid, scholarships, full-time status, progress toward your program, and in some cases your plans for applying to nursing or other health programs. That is why you should never withdraw in a rush, alone, or based on a guess.

Talk to three people first

1. Your instructor. Ask where you honestly stand and what is still possible with the work remaining. Your instructor can see things you cannot, like how much of the grade is still to come.
2. Your academic advisor. Ask how a W would affect your program plan, your prerequisites, and when you could retake the course.
3. Financial Aid. Ask how withdrawing would affect your aid this term and in future terms. This is the conversation students most often skip, and it can matter the most.

If a serious life event is behind your struggle, such as an illness, a death in the family, or an emergency, the Dean of Students Office can help with documentation for absences and point you to other options. If the stress itself feels like too much, Counseling Services (864.503.5195) is there for you, and you can call or text 988 at any hour if you are in crisis.

Whatever you decide, decide it with full information. Some students talk it through and realize they can still pass with a clear plan. Others decide a W is the right choice for now and come back stronger. Both are good decisions when they are made with care.