The Minutes Before the Last Ten Marks
Mock results for a 100-mark paper of 180 minutes, with 15 minutes of reading time, leaving 165 minutes of writing. Section A has 20 one-mark questions with no choice. Section B has 10 three-mark questions, all compulsory. Section C offers seven 10-mark questions of which five must be attempted. Rohit's mock: Section A took 32 minutes and yielded 17 out of 20. Section B took 58 minutes, with 6 answers complete and 4 half-done, yielding 24 out of 30. Section C took the remaining 75 minutes; he attempted four of the five required questions and scored 6, 5, 4 and 3, never opening the fifth. His total was 59 out of 100. Afterwards he said: I will drop Section A next time and put those 32 minutes into the long answers.
1. Calculate where Rohit is losing marks fastest, per mark and per minute, and identify the single highest-yield change. Show the arithmetic.
Read the worked answer
Section A: 32 minutes for 20 marks, so 1.6 minutes per mark; 17 marks earned, so 17 divided by 32 equals 0.53 marks per minute. Section B: 58 minutes for 30 marks, so 1.93 minutes per mark; 24 marks earned, so 24 divided by 58 equals 0.41 marks per minute. Section C: 75 minutes for the 40 marks he attempted, so 1.875 minutes per mark attempted; 18 marks earned, so 18 divided by 75 equals 0.24 marks per minute.
Per minute he is doing worst in Section C, but the per-minute figure understates the problem because Section C is where the choice sits. He left 10 available marks untouched, and of the 40 he attempted he lost 22. That is 32 marks lost in a section where he had already been given the questions he liked best.
Highest-yield change: finishing Section C answers rather than starting them. His pattern of 6, 5, 4, 3 rising to falling is the signature of answers running out of time mid-way, not of gaps in knowledge. Converting three half-answers into complete ones is worth more than any gain available in Section A, where he is already at 85 per cent.
2. Build a 165-minute budget that would let Rohit attempt all five Section C questions, and justify each allocation against his mock data.
Read the worked answer
Section A: 25 minutes, 1.25 minutes per question. He currently spends 1.6. The last questions in a no-choice objective section are cheap to get right and expensive in time; capping the section is a decision taken in advance, not a judgement made under pressure.
Section B: 50 minutes, about 5 minutes per 3-mark question, against his 5.8. At 4 complete answers in 58 minutes he is writing roughly 14 minutes per completed answer, which suggests he is over-writing. Three marks needs three sentences.
Section C: 85 minutes, 17 minutes per 10-mark question, all five attempted. He currently spends about 18.75 minutes per answer, so the pace is already achievable - the failure was attempting only four and losing the fifth entirely.
That totals 160 minutes, leaving a 5-minute reserve for the rereading of Section A and the checking of arithmetic. The reserve is the part candidates cut first and need most; it is what converts the 17 out of 20 into 19 out of 20 without new knowledge.
3. Evaluate Rohit's proposal to drop Section A and put those 32 minutes into Section C. Use marginal reasoning rather than a general preference for attempting everything.
Read the worked answer
Dropping Section A forfeits the marks he is most certain of. He currently converts 20 marks into 17 at a rate of 0.53 marks per minute, the highest rate in the paper. Twenty marks are simply gone, and the cost of that sacrifice is not 3 or 4 marks but about 17.
On the other side, 32 extra minutes spread across Section C buys at most two additional questions, worth a ceiling of 20 marks, and his Section C answers currently average 4.5 out of 10. Even a generous estimate of what 32 focused minutes recovers is 8 to 10 marks. The trade is roughly 17 lost against 10 gained.
The marginal argument also fails on the nature of the sections. Section A has no choice, so its marks do not depend on which questions appear. Section C has a choice, so its marks depend on question selection, and his problem there is finishing what he chooses rather than having time to choose more. The correct action is to cap Section A at 25 minutes, not to abandon it.