Context: I'm currently in the middle of two hellish weeks of exams, and I've been performing pretty abysmally. (It's been a difficult year, but this thread isn't about that.) (Also, my low performance in these exams isn't the end of the world. It'll cause some problems if I fail the year, but not insurmountable ones.) In my degree I'm required to take eight modules in first year. I need to pass (40%) at least six of these, and get no lower than 33% on the remaining two to progress into the next year. If I don't achieve those grades I'm required to resit the exams in August. The resit exam marks are capped at 40%. Between panicking over Green's Theorem and Hypergeometric distributions, I've been thinking about my academic history. It's occurred to me that I have a real history of doing badly (...or not doing as well as I would like and expect) in exams the first time round, and doing well, or very well, the second time and after some time has passed. In an ideal world I could call this evidence of a learning pattern and carry on my merry way, but the resit mark cap makes that impossible. Additionally, the high tuition & living loan means that each year of uni is a one-time-only, high stakes undertaking. (The repayment system in the UK is significantly more forgiving than in the US, but that doesn't change the fact that if I were to drop out now I would have £18k of debt and nothing to show for it.) So I have a couple of questions. 1) Is there evidence that achieving something the first time implies greater proficiency? (I know what I think the answer to this will be, but I'm curious to know if there are actual studies investigating it.) 2) Is this something you've experienced? Do you have any tips or advice on hitting the target the first time? And 3) which is not really a question, but more of an invitation to start a conversation about stakes in education, individual learning, financial barriers, and anything else.
I would assume yes. In school I remember taking a test that would tell me what subjects are my strengths and weaknesses are. There was a significant difference between my strongest and weakest subject, with the subjects I consider myself "average" in fell somewhere in between, but closer to my highest marks then my lowest. That being said I don't think it means anything really significant. My weakest subject is math, but I can still learn it. It just takes longer and is more difficult for me to understand.
Re: high stakes exams and crashing and burning... I failed my PhD candidacy exam the first time I took it. Like, dramatically. It was an oral exam and my brain just locked up. I don't think I correctly answered a single question. If you're consistently doing well on the exams the second time you take them, I would hazard a guess that the problem is less with your understanding or the exams themselves and more with the circumstances surrounding the exams? I don't necessarily have any advice or research here, I just wanted to give you a solidarity fistbump and wish you good luck.
So my knowledge is limited here because I don't know the UK's higher ed system like I do the US's, but have you been tested for any learning, reading, or anxiety issues before? My dad only has a high school degree because of an undiagnosed reading issue and he basically followed the same pattern you described. He'd fail every test or quiz but ace the exam because the second iteration allowed him to memorize the answers that he didn't understand from reading the work. If you have a similar issue or a severe testing anxiety there are usually assistance measures you can seek out from the university to help compensate. If you are interested in the topic generally you may find this article interesting (I don't have access to the pdf sadly), "The Relation Between Assessment Practices and Outcomes of Studies: The Case of Research on Prior Knowledge" http://rer.sagepub.com/content/69/2/145.short Its a lit review article and so covers a whole lot of research. There are also articles that cite this paper that may be helpful.
(*stage whisper* Ty all for responses! It's stuff to think about and I will think about it as soon as I have the brain space.)
To answer 1 specifically: no. Doing good from the start just means there were less obstacles to overcome compared to people who did just as good a little later. Obstacles in this case can be anxiety, personal issues, previous knowledge, familiarity with the concepts and with the trains of thought required by the field of study... lots of things which can make performing easier for some people and harder for others. In fact, people who have a harder path to doing well often retain the info better! Because you learn mainly by correcting mistakes ad misconceptions (some scholars say that's technically the ONLY way we learn, in fact, and it makes sense). The institution's interest in punishing students who resit the exams comes from other reasons. Such as preventing wangst from people going "I had to study hard ALL YEAR ROUND to get a nice grade and this other person only had to study for ONE TEST and they got the same grade as me!!!1" and discouraging people from simply not doing anything all semester and just resit their exams (at least in my uni, some people do that if given the chance!)
As someone from the UK, if you get tested for any issues, Disability Services is probably going to be your friend much more than individual lecturers (that's the case at my uni, at least). They may even be able to point you to places to get tested if you go to them to say 'hi, I have this issue, it might be brains-related, can you help?' - obviously the more that you can find out to ask them, the better, but my experiences have been that they tend to be friendly and try to help rather than trying to turn you away or dismiss issues as laziness. Hm - this may be something you've already thought of, but can you get hold of past papers for your exams and perform mock exams on yourself? Maybe those would help fulfil the purpose that's currently fulfilled by your first exam? That's how I got through a lot of my exams (admittedly pre-uni) - revising in general wasn't helpful, but finding all the past papers I could and working through them was.
