How To Never Fail An Exam: The Circle Effect

Welcome back to a new entry for this guide on how to never fail an exam. Today’s post might in fact be one of my favorite topics to assess in general, and it’s none other than the “circle effect” (I’ve personally given it the name, not sure if scientifically it’s referred to in the same way).

So, what is the circle effect exactly? It’s essentially a phenomenon that shows how our perception of something affects our mood, and therefore our actions. More specifically, it refers to a state of reassurance and calmness that comes from something that starts and ends in the same or similar fashion. One of the epistemological premises that act as a base for this comes from the Gestalt theory of perception, one of its laws to be exact. Stated as the following, we tend to almost always complete figures that are incomplete using our previous knowledge on the subject. This law is utilized to explain our perception of 2D figures, but can be further worked upon to comply to more complex entities, such as emotions (what we’re appealing to in this post).

Let me clarify what we’re after just in case you haven’t been able to grasp the whole idea yet. Essentially, we want our exam to mimic a circle. If we start great, we must end it in the same fashion. Now, this will be applied in two manners: first as a whole (referring to our exam), and second, it must be applied to each question on its own. The question we must make clear now is how.

The best way I can think of explaining this is with a practical example. Let’s say we are presented with an exam that contains 5 questions. Now, the first step would be to read through all the questions and see which ones would be easiest to answer taking into regard our knowledge and how we would express it. Next, we should order said answers in a way that the first and last ones are our strongest points, and the weakest one should be placed in the middle. With this, we’ll start off strong, and end off strong as well.

Now, for each specific question we must order the way we answer. It’s very important to be precise with how we display our knowledge since normally this is also evaluated during an exam. Same as before, we start with our most prominent point, and end the same. With this, we have completed the circle effect for both the exam as a whole and for each individual question.

How does this affect your result though? Well, that’s the easiest part. We’re betting on many things. First, it’s quite common for most evaluators to not go through the whole exam if the sheer number of applicants is overwhelming. This works in our favor, because in this case they’ll tend to stick with the beginning and ending of a piece of work. We’ve got that covered. Second, if they do read the whole thing, they’ll most likely be surprised (in a good way) when they start. Then a bit underwhelmed when they get towards the middle, but the ending will be the cherry on top, because they’ll regain the same high expectations that the beginning of your exam projected. 

Of course everything here is much easier said than done, and there are specific circumstances where it just won’t be a viable possibility. But more often than not, it’ll definitely improve your chances of succeeding.