Top 10 Common Mistakes Students Make During University Entrance Exams

This is one of the most common mistakes students make. No exam question will ask you to directly state the problem you need to solve. Questions are designed to take you on a journey, pushing you to analyze and evaluate, which requires critical thinking rather than simply memorizing patterns as before. Ensure you understand and address what the question asks. Don't confuse explaining with proving or defining with reasoning. Aim to be accurate, concise, and complete for the best results.

In exams, making a few mistakes is inevitable, and the most common solution is to erase and write over it. While you may understand what you've written, do you think that the examiners, grading thousands of papers, won't miss anything? Instead, use a ruler to draw a single diagonal line through the mistake and rewrite it either beside or below the error. Avoid writing directly over the mistake, and don't leave too much blank space, so the examiner knows you're continuing below.

Currently, the use of abbreviations and symbols is becoming increasingly common. The Vietnamese dictionary doesn't have an entry for 'vk' meaning wife or 'ck' meaning husband. You can't write 'Vợ chồng A Phủ' as 'vk ck A Phủ'. Apart from using abbreviations that aren't officially recognized, some exams also feature local dialects, incorrect capitalization, or improper line breaks. It will be frustrating for the examiner to squint and translate each sentence to understand what you're saying, which means you'll already lose some points.

Before the exam day, make sure to double-check all your materials and documents to avoid any missing items. Remember to use only one type of ink throughout the exam. Don't use red for main points and blue for others. Never use correction fluid or any special symbols in your paper. Don’t let these distractions affect your mindset or waste your time on such issues during the exam.

Not writing your name or leaving out important information can cause unnecessary difficulties for the examiner. Many students, when moving to the next page, rush into answering to avoid losing their train of thought and often forget to add their details. So, always ensure you don't overlook any part of the exam instructions when filling out your paper.

You may typically answer the easier questions first and then skip the harder ones, planning to come back to them later. This is a common approach we've all used. However, the problem arises when you get too caught up in the other questions and forget the ones you skipped. Spending too much time on the questions you know may cause you to run out of time or forget to return to the skipped ones. Skipping a question is equivalent to getting it wrong.

At some point, we've all questioned our scores. If you're lucky, your score might be higher than expected, but in most cases, it's lower than what you anticipated. Why? Simply because you were too careless when transferring your answers from the scratch paper to the exam sheet. Even a tiny mistake can lead to regret after all your preparation. In multiple-choice exams, mistakes like shading the wrong answer, filling in the wrong bubble, or marking two answers are common errors. To ensure the best result, be meticulous in every step of the exam process. Never underestimate any calculation, no matter how simple it seems.

Learn to allocate your time wisely according to the point value of each question. For every question, divide your time further for each section. Don’t focus solely on the questions you're most confident about, as that could cause you to miss opportunities for higher-scoring questions. To manage your time efficiently, it’s helpful to wear a watch. Don’t get too fixated on one question, and give your best effort, even in the final minutes. Try to avoid submitting your exam before the supervisor asks you to do so.