From 45 to 55: Where the Last Ten Marks Come From
You know the exact moment. The results are out, you open yours, and there it is: 45. Or 47. Or 49. Close enough that everyone tells you that you nearly made it. Far enough that you sit the whole paper again. And everyone offers the same comfort: so close, just push a little harder. That advice is usually wrong, and following it is why the same students score 45, then 46, then 44, sitting after sitting.
Written by Michael Siaw Larbi
This guide is for the student who keeps landing just under the line, and it rests on one claim that changes what you do next: a 45 is rarely five marks short of knowledge. It is usually a passing paper with leaks. The marks did not fail to arrive because you did not know enough. They arrived, and then they drained away, through a question you never attempted, an answer you never finished, a working the marker could not follow, a conclusion you never wrote. Which means the ten marks this guide is named for, the ones between your 45 and a 55, are not where you have been looking for them. You have been looking up, at the syllabus. They are below you, on the floor of your own paper, and they are the cheapest marks you will ever collect.
Before you start
This guide talks in the language of a paper marked out of 100 with the pass mark at 50, the world of ICAG, CITG and ACCA written papers. Some exams score differently, as CIMA case studies do. If yours does, the principle carries over unchanged: the marks nearest the line are the cheapest marks on the paper.
What a 45 Actually Is
First, the part nobody writes about. A near miss does something to you that a clear fail does not. You replay one question for weeks. You run the arithmetic of if only: if only that last part, if only ten more minutes, if only the requirement I misread. You pay a resit fee for a paper you can mostly do. You find a short sentence for the people who ask, and you practise saying it lightly. And somewhere in there the worst thought of all arrives quietly: maybe this is just my level. Do not believe that thought yet. Read what follows first, because the number on your slip has been telling you something completely different from what you heard.
Start with the mistake almost everyone makes about that number. Students read a mark the way they read a thermometer, as a pure measurement of how much they knew. So a 45 means I knew about 45 percent of it, and the fix writes itself: know more. Back to the syllabus, more hours, more notes.
But an exam mark has never measured what you know. It measures what survived onto the page, in the time given, in a form the marker could reward. Knowledge is only the start of that journey. Between what you knew and what got marked sits everything this series exists for: whether you attempted every question, finished every answer, answered the requirement that was actually asked, showed workings a marker could follow, and picked up the marks that were lying in plain sight.
Every one of those is a hole, and marks drain through all of them. Which is why a 45 is so often a student who carried 55 or 60 marks of knowledge into the hall and leaked ten of them before the paper was collected. The knowledge was there. The paper never saw it.
A 45 is rarely a knowledge score. It is usually a passing paper with a leak.
Now watch what the wrong diagnosis does, because this is the trap that holds people at the line for years. The student concludes they nearly knew enough, so they go back and study the syllabus again. They return to the next sitting genuinely knowing more, and they leak exactly as before, because nothing about the leaks was ever touched. The new knowledge drains through the old holes. Result: 46. Same room, same fee, heavier notes, one mark of progress. The conclusion feels confirmed, they must still not know enough, and the loop runs again. Studying harder is the correct fix for the wrong problem. The marks were not lost at the desk. They were lost in the hall, and the hall is where they have to be recovered.
Not All Marks Cost the Same
Here is the piece of economics that decides where your ten marks should come from. Inside any question, marks are not priced evenly. Marking schemes are built in layers: the early marks in any part pay for the basics, the attempt itself, the correct format, the definition, the obvious first points, the conclusion. The final marks in a part are reserved for what only the strongest answers contain, the fine judgement, the polish, the point almost nobody sees.
That means the first marks of any question are the cheapest marks in the exam, and the last marks of any question are the most expensive. Moving an answer from 2 to 8 asks you for a clean attempt and the obvious points. Moving an answer from 14 to 18 asks you for brilliance under pressure. Same four marks on the scoreboard. Wildly different price.
Now look at what the marginal student instinctively does. They protect and polish their favourite questions, the ones they feel safe inside, and they abandon the ones they feel weak on. In other words, they queue at the most expensive stall in the market and walk straight past the cheap one. The strategy that actually moves 45 to 55 is the reverse, and it feels wrong the whole time you are doing it: be adequate everywhere before you are excellent anywhere. Collect the cheap opening marks of every single question, including the ones you fear, and only then spend time pushing your favourites higher.
What I Tell My Students
When a student comes to me with a 45, they want to talk about how they felt, and what they should study next. I ask to talk about the paper instead. Was every question attempted? Was every answer finished? Did every requirement get answered as asked? Nearly every time, the ten missing marks are sitting right there in the answers, visible, and none of them needed another week of study. The student did not need to become better. They needed to stop paying for the same marks twice.
Michael Siaw Larbi
Rescue the Ten
Time to make it concrete. Below is the marked scorecard of a near miss, a typical shape for a 45, shown as a worked example. Five questions, twenty marks each. One strong answer, two middling ones, one that ran out of time, and one that was barely touched. Under it is a menu of ways to recover marks, each priced honestly. Tap the ones you would use, build your ten, and watch what your route costs.
The rescue
Take this paper from 45 to 55
The near miss, as marked
The scorecard is a worked example, but the shape is the point, and so is what you just felt while choosing. The four technique options together pay 14 marks and cost minutes inside the exam itself. The two knowledge options pay 6 and cost weeks. The ten marks were sitting at the bottom of the paper the whole time, in the questions the student feared and the finishes they skipped, not at the top, in the answer they already loved.
Two Marks a Question
If ten marks still sounds like a mountain, do the division. On a five question paper, ten marks is two marks a question. Say it that way and the mountain disappears, because you know exactly what two marks looks like. It is one more valid point. It is the conclusion you did not write. It is a labelled working. It is attempting the part you left blank. Nobody needs to become a different student to find two marks in a question. They need to stop leaving.
So the move from 45 to 55 is not one heroic leap. It is the same small, boring recovery, repeated five times. And because the recoveries are technique, not knowledge, they are available on demand, in the hall, at the moment of writing, which is precisely where your marks have been dying. So here they are as rules, each with its trigger and its exact action, so that on the day there is nothing left to decide.
In the hall
The Five Rules of the Next Sitting
- The first pass rule. The moment writing time starts, put the opening marks of every chosen question on paper before you deepen any of them: the format, the setup, the obvious points. Be adequate everywhere first. Depth comes on the second pass.
- The blank part rule. If fifteen minutes remain and any requirement is still untouched, stop where you are, even mid-sentence, and go give the blank one its opening marks. An unfinished sentence costs you nothing. An unopened requirement costs you its cheapest marks.
- The conclusion rule. If the requirement says advise, recommend, evaluate or conclude, your answer ends with one sentence that actually does it, written even when you are unsure. The scheme holds a mark for that sentence and cannot pay it to a page that never concludes.
- The visible method rule. Every figure that was not given gets a working, every working gets a label, and every label gets referenced into the answer. You are not writing for yourself. You are laying a trail a marker can pay.
- The two mark rule. Before you leave any question, ask one question in your head: where are two more marks here? A missed sub-requirement, one more valid point, a heading, the conclusion. Find them or confirm they are gone, and only then move.
The method
The Leak Audit
- Get your last marked paper or mock in front of you. Not your feelings about it. The actual paper, question by question.
- For every mark you did not get, name its death. There are only five: never attempted, never finished, answered the wrong requirement, method the marker could not follow, or an easy mark skipped past.
- Count the leak marks against the knowledge marks. A leak mark died from one of the five. A knowledge mark died because you genuinely did not know. Two honest columns.
- Fix the leaks first. They cost minutes of habit, not months of study, and every one of them pays again at the next sitting.
- Only then study, and aim it. Whatever sits in the knowledge column is your actual study list, and it is nearly always shorter than the syllabus you were about to reread.
The five deaths
Where did your marks die last time?
Think of your last paper or mock, and tap every one that took marks from you.
Where This Leaves You
If you have been living at 45, understand what that number has been trying to tell you. It was never saying you are not good enough. It was saying your paper leaks, and leaks are the most fixable problem in this entire game. The student at 45 is nearly always closer to 55 than they believe, and closer than another season of rereading the syllabus will ever take them.
And if you have missed this close more than once, hear this part properly, because it is written for you. Repeating a near miss is not evidence that you cannot pass. It is evidence that something specific keeps happening, and specific things can be found and stopped. Nobody leaks marks by ability. They leak by habit, and a habit that has a name and a trigger is a habit you can end at the very next sitting. That is what the audit and the five rules are for.
And there is one more thing worth saying plainly. The habits that carry you from 45 to 55 are the same habits that carry others from 55 to 65. Attempting everything, finishing everything, answering what was asked, showing method, taking the cheap marks first. These are not remedial skills. They are the skills, full stop. The prizewinners simply do them on purpose.
Do This Today
Today: run the Leak Audit on your last marked paper or mock, mark by mark, and count the two columns. This week: sit one full past paper under exam conditions, using the five rules, then audit it the same way. Every week until the sitting: one more full paper, one more audit, and watch the leak column shrink, because that column, not the syllabus, is what has been failing you. If your audit finds ten or more marks in the leak column, and most near miss papers do, then you now know something worth more than a month of study: you already carry a passing paper. Your next sitting is not about learning it. It is about landing it.
This guide closes a loop the series opened. The guide on finding 50 marks you are already missing shows the leaks across a whole paper, the one on reading exam questions stops the wrong requirement leak, and the one on writing answers a marker can follow stops the invisible method leak. If you are at the line, those are your ten marks, already written up and waiting.
Questions Students Ask
What does scoring 45 in a professional exam actually mean?
Less than most students assume. An exam mark does not measure what you know, it measures what survived onto the page in the time given, in a form the marker could reward. A 45 is very often a student who carried passing knowledge into the hall and lost ten or more marks to leaks: an unattempted question, an unfinished answer, a requirement answered differently from what was asked, method the marker could not follow, or easy marks skipped past.
I scored 45. Should I just study harder for the resit?
Not first. If the missing marks died from leaks rather than from missing knowledge, more study fixes the wrong problem: you return knowing more and leak exactly as before, which is how students score 45, then 46, sitting after sitting. Audit the lost marks first, name how each one died, fix the leaks, and then aim your study at whatever genuinely fell in the knowledge column. That list is nearly always shorter than the syllabus.
Where do the ten marks between 45 and 55 come from?
Mostly from the bottom of the paper, not the top. The biggest recoveries are attempting the question you feared, finishing the answer you abandoned, writing the conclusions that were asked for, and labelling workings so the marker can award your method. On a five question paper, ten marks is two marks a question, and two marks is one more valid point, a conclusion, a labelled working, or an attempted part.
What are the cheapest marks in an exam paper?
The first marks of any question or part. Marking schemes are built in layers: early marks pay for the attempt, the correct format, definitions, obvious points and conclusions, while the final marks of a part are reserved for what only the strongest answers contain. That is why moving an answer from 2 to 8 is far easier than moving one from 14 to 18, even though both are worth the same on the scoreboard.
Should I perfect my strongest questions or attempt everything?
At the margin, attempt everything first. Polishing a strong answer buys the most expensive marks on the paper, while a clean attempt at a weak question buys the cheapest. The strategy that moves a near miss to a pass is to be adequate everywhere before being excellent anywhere: collect the opening marks of every question, including the ones you fear, and only then spend remaining time pushing your favourites higher.
Why do I keep scoring in the forties every sitting?
Usually because the diagnosis has been wrong, so the fix has been wrong. Reading a 45 as almost enough knowledge sends you back to the syllabus, and the new knowledge then drains through the same untouched leaks: unattempted questions, unfinished answers, invisible method. The score barely moves, which feels like confirmation that you still do not know enough, and the loop repeats. Breaking it starts with auditing where the marks actually died.
What should I do if part of the paper is still blank near the end?
Stop where you are, even mid-sentence, and go open the blank requirement. The first marks of an untouched part are the cheapest on the paper: the format, the setup, the obvious opening points. The final marks of the answer you are polishing are the most expensive. Trading an unfinished sentence for an opened requirement is nearly always a profitable trade, which is why the rule is worth deciding before the exam rather than during it.
What is the Leak Audit?
A five step review you run on your last marked paper or mock. For every mark you did not get, you name its death as one of five: never attempted, never finished, wrong requirement answered, method the marker could not follow, or an easy mark skipped. You then count leak marks against genuine knowledge gaps, fix the leaks first because they cost minutes rather than months, and aim any study at the knowledge column alone.
Does this apply to ICAG, CITG, ACCA and CIMA?
The principle applies across all of them. The guide speaks in the language of papers marked out of 100 with a pass mark of 50, which is the world of ICAG, CITG and ACCA written papers. Some exams score differently, as CIMA case studies do, but the underlying economics is identical everywhere: marks nearest the line are the cheapest available, and recovering leaked marks is faster than acquiring new knowledge.
This is the seventh 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.
