1. Don't panic when you encounter something unfamiliar! Seriously...take a deep breath (or whatever behavioral trick works for you) and ask yourself:
- What's the question asking?
- What's the question not asking?
- If you're unsure, ask the instructor for clarification.
- What information provided is important for answering the question?
- What information is irrelevant?
So...following these suggestions...
2. What's a hypothesis and what's a mechanism? (Major
themes of BI250!)
3. How can you test a hypothesis or determine a mechanism? (Other major
themes!)
4. What's relevant information? Read the 1st paragraph carefully,
especially the nouns! Begin the answers with what you know; build from
a foundation of knowledge.
5. What's irrelevant information? The entire 2nd paragraph! Anything
else?
6. Hey, what's irrelevant information doing in a problem or on an exam
question? Get real! Most of the problems cell biologists or anyone
else encounter contains extraneous information. Being educated means being
able to store and sort information, to construct the most likely answers
and to test the accuracy of those answers. In short, being able to think...and
you need information to think concretely, to think well.
7. BI250 exam questions will test what you should have memorized.
Some BI250 exam questions, like this one, will also test how
well you can apply what you've learned: how well you can synthesize
information, how well you can analyze data, and how well you
use what you know to solve unfamiliar problems.
8. The structure of the exam also provides useful information! To some extent, the amount of space provided for the answer and the point value indicate how important a question is. Generally speaking, an answer should not exceed the space provided and you should allow yourself about 1 minute per point to answer BI250 questions: thus, 10 min for a 10 pt. question, etc.