Exam Season at PolyU, Hong Kong

Exam season is always a stressful time, especially if it’s in a different country with different teaching styles and grading systems. Whilst the majority of other exchange students only faced a pass or fail outcome, my results contributed 20% to my degree and were to be later translated to the UK grading system equivalent. This only added more stress to the ambiguity of a different country’s exam style.

But, like many of the host universities, PolyU was supportive and attentive to my worries.

Workload

Throughout the term time, lectures covered the content that will eventually be tested in the exams and tutorials/free time was spent on group projects. Although I found these to sometimes be challenging as you have to coordinate a large group of people you have never met, it did take the pressure off the exams as most equated to 50% of your final grade for the module.

However, completing these projects in good time determined how much time you had to go over the content for the exam. For some of my modules, I had limited time to study for the exam due to these issues.

Most of the exams covered 12 weeks of lecture content which was sometimes overwhelming but once my notes were organised and concise, it was actually very manageable.

Exam Structure

This varies but most of mine were a mixture of multiple choice questions, scenario essays and shorter questions on definitions and basic concepts.

Teachers were very transparent on the exam structure, telling you how many long/short answer questions there will be and sometimes what topics exactly they will cover.

Exam duration was between 2-3.5 hours.

Grading

Overall I did not find the grading to be harsh, you did not need to study more than you would normally to reach the same grade boundaries.