How Long to Spend on Each Exam Question

Dividing by the number of questions ignores the marks

The usual approach: two hours, six questions, twenty minutes each.

That gives a 4-mark question the same twenty minutes as a 25-mark one. Since marks are what you're actually collecting, the time should follow the marks — not the question count.

On a paper with uneven questions the two approaches disagree badly:

Question	Marks	By question count	By marks
Q1	5	16.7 min	5.0 min
Q2	25	16.7 min	25.0 min

Same paper, same clock. One approach spends three times too long on Q1 and finishes Q2 in two thirds of the time it needed.

Reserve reading and checking before anything else

Both are the first things sacrificed under pressure, and both are worth more than the minutes they cost.

Reading is what stops you answering the question you expected instead of the one asked — an expensive mistake, and one you make faster when you're rushing.

Checking catches arithmetic slips, but its real value is catching whole parts you never attempted. A part (b) on the back of a page is completely invisible from inside the question and completely obvious on a second pass.

Reserving them first means the budget you carry into the paper is a real one rather than an optimistic one you'll quietly overspend.

Carry one number, not a table

Minutes per mark. That's it.

A two-hour paper worth 100 marks, with 20 minutes reserved, gives 100 minutes of working time — 1.00 minute per mark. A 12-mark question is 12 minutes. A 25-mark question is 25.

One figure converts to any question instantly, and it's far easier to hold under pressure than a list of per-question timings you have to remember which is which. Write it at the top of your booklet during reading time.

The skill is abandoning a question on time

This is what the budget is actually for.

Marks within a question aren't evenly distributed. The first half almost always comes faster than the second — the opening parts are the definitions, the setup, the straightforward application. The last few marks are where you're stuck.

So the four extra minutes you spend finishing a question you're nearly done with come directly out of the opening four minutes of a question you haven't started. Those opening marks are the cheapest on the entire paper.

Moving on at the budget and returning later beats finishing in order almost every time. It feels wrong, which is exactly why it needs to be a rule decided in advance rather than a judgement made while you're stuck.

Write a clock time, not a duration

Small thing, disproportionate effect.

"Twenty-two minutes for Q3" requires you to remember when Q3 started and do arithmetic under pressure. "Start Q4 by 10:47" requires you to look at the clock.

Put a start by time next to each question during reading time. It turns time management into a glance rather than a calculation, and it removes the failure mode where you look up an hour in with no idea how long you've been on the current question.

Where the budget doesn't hold

It assumes every mark costs the same effort, and that isn't true.

Essay marks generally take longer than short-answer marks. Anything with a diagram, a derivation or a long calculation can run well over its share. A question in an area you know cold will finish under budget and hand time back.

So treat the allocation as a starting point to adjust from. If past papers tell you one section always runs long, take its extra minutes from a section you know runs short — deliberately, before the exam, rather than discovering it at minute ninety.

And if the paper offers a choice, budget only the questions you'll actually answer. Time spent on a question you then abandon for a different one is the most expensive time on the paper.