How to Easily Gain 50 Marks in a Professional Exam: 7 Technique Tips Most Students Miss
Fifty is the pass mark on most professional papers, and a surprising share of those marks have nothing to do with how much you know. They are won and lost on technique: answering the right question, spending your time well, showing workings, writing about the scenario. Here are seven ways to claim marks you may be leaving behind.
Written by Michael Siaw Larbi
Every exam season I meet people who knew the material and still failed, and people who knew less and passed comfortably. The difference is almost never knowledge. It's technique, the marks sitting in plain sight on every paper that most candidates walk straight past. Get these seven right and you're claiming marks before you've revised a single extra topic.
The number that matters
Fifty per cent is the pass mark on every ICAG, CITG and ACCA paper, and on most other professional exams. These are the marks that get you across it.
Answer the Question That's Actually on the Page
The most expensive mistake in any professional exam is answering the question you wish you'd been asked. You spot a familiar topic, your hand starts moving, and you write everything you know about it, while the requirement that was actually set goes quietly unanswered.
Read the requirement twice before you write a word. If it says evaluate, it isn't asking for a description. If it says advise the directors, it wants a recommendation they could act on, not a textbook essay. The verb is an instruction. Underline it, and answer that, and only that. Every mark on the scheme is attached to the requirement, not to the topic it came from.
Spend Your Time in Proportion to the Marks
Marks aren't spread evenly across the clock unless you make them be. Work out your minutes per mark before the exam starts, then hold the line. Here's the brutal truth of exam timing: the last few marks on any question are the slowest and hardest to earn, while the first few marks on the next one are the cheapest. Running over on one answer to chase a mark or two costs you the easy opening marks of the question you then have no time for.
Work it out
Your time budget for the exam
Enter your paper's total marks and length. This is the budget you defend in the hall.
So a 20-mark question deserves about 36 minutes, and no more.
Five questions of equal marks: about 36 minutes each.
When a question's time is up, move on, even mid-sentence. You can come back at the end if there's room. You can't get back the question you never started.
Start Every Question, and Never Leave a Blank
Following straight on from that: attempt everything. Every question, every part. A blank space scores exactly zero, no exceptions and no sympathy. An attempt, however rough, can pick up the definition, the setup, the obvious first point, the format marks.
This bites hardest on the parts you find difficult. Students skip a tricky part of a question meaning to come back, run out of time, and hand in a blank that was worth easy marks at the front even if the back end was hard. Write something for every requirement on the paper. The marks for simply starting are the cheapest in the building.
Show Your Workings, Always
In any calculation, your workings are worth marks in their own right. This is the method mark, and it's one of the kindest features of professional marking. Get the final figure wrong but show clear, logical workings and you still pick up most of what's available. Write a bare number, get it wrong, and you score nothing at all.
There's a second gift hidden in here, the own-figure rule. Carry a wrong figure forward correctly into the next step and you're usually not punished twice for the same slip. So lay out every working clearly, label it, and reference it from your answer. Make it impossible for a marker to miss the marks you've already earned.
Method marks
A wrong answer with clear workings scores. A right answer with none can still lose marks. Always show, label and reference your workings.
Talk About the Scenario, Not the Textbook
The discursive marks live in application, not recitation. Picture two candidates writing about the same standard, or the same risk. One reproduces the textbook definition word for word. The other points to the actual numbers, names and circumstances in the scenario in front of them and says what they mean here. The second one scores. The first mostly doesn't.
Whenever you make a point, anchor it to the case: this company, these figures, this situation. Generic theory shows you read the book. Applied theory shows you could do the job, and that's what the marks are actually for.
Make It Easy to Mark
A marker has a tall pile of scripts and a scheme to follow. Make their job effortless and you'll stop losing marks to plain confusion. Use headings and sub-headings. If the requirement asks for a report, a memo or a letter, give it that format, because there are often marks for doing exactly that. Leave white space. Number your answers to match the requirements.
A clean, well laid out script doesn't just feel more professional. On many papers it earns presentation marks outright, and it stops a tired marker from missing a good point buried in a wall of text. Neatness here isn't vanity. It's marks.
Take the Easy Marks First
Within every question, some marks are cheap and some are expensive, and they all pay the same. The opening parts, the definitions, the straightforward calculations, those are the soft marks. Bank them before you go anywhere near the hard ones.
Too many candidates open a question at its hardest part, stall, and burn time and confidence before they ever reach marks they could have taken in their sleep. Scan the whole question first, start where you're strongest, secure the easy marks, then spend what's left wrestling the difficult bits. A pass is built out of easy marks claimed, not hard marks heroically chased.
A pass is built out of easy marks claimed, not hard marks heroically chased.
Quick self-audit
How many of the seven do you already do?
Tap each one you do, honestly, every time you sit a paper.
- I answer the exact requirement and its verb
- I budget my time by the marks and hold to it
- I attempt every question and every part
- I show and label my workings every time
- I apply my points to the scenario, not just theory
- I use clear format, headings and the document asked for
- I take the easy marks before the hard ones
What I Tell My Students
I've watched strong students fail papers they understood, and average students pass papers they barely revised, and almost every time the gap was technique, not knowledge. The marks in this guide are the ones nobody writes on a syllabus. Drill them until they're automatic, and you walk into the hall with a head start most of the room has never even thought about.
Michael Siaw Larbi
Do This Today
Pull out your last mock or a past question and mark it again, but only against these seven. Count the marks you left behind on technique alone, before knowledge even came into it. That number is the easiest improvement you'll ever make.
Questions Students Ask
Can exam technique really be worth that many marks?
Yes. Examiner reports for professional exams repeatedly point to marks lost through not answering the requirement, poor time management, missing workings and weak application, none of which are about knowledge. Technique routinely accounts for the gap between a near miss and a clear pass.
What is the pass mark for ICAG and most professional exams?
Fifty per cent. Most papers are marked out of 100, so you need 50 marks to pass. The techniques in this guide are aimed squarely at the marks that get you there.
What is the single most important exam technique?
Answering the exact requirement that was set, not the topic you revised. Marks are attached to the requirement and its verb, so if it says evaluate or advise, a description will not score, however well written it is.
Do I really get marks for workings even when the answer is wrong?
Usually, yes. Professional marking awards method marks for correct, clearly shown workings, and the own-figure rule means a wrong figure carried forward correctly is generally not penalised a second time. Always show and label your workings.
This is the first guide in the Excellence Blueprint, MSL Business School's study and exam technique series. A new guide publishes every week, written by Michael Siaw Larbi.
