Strategic Management exam

By 4 o’clock this afternoon it was all over, and not before time. I’d expected that it was going to be hard work, but then I’d also figured that I’d done a bundle of work in the last few weeks and was pretty much up to speed on the core topics, with a reasonable coverage of the rest. So although I didn’t feel like it was going to be a walk in the park, I didn’t expect to crawl out of the exam room a gibbering wreck.

Boy, was I wrong.

Actually, to be fair to examiner and examinee, the two-from-six essay section could have been a lot worse. In an ideal world the questions would have been exactly what I was looking for, but in the circumstances they weren’t too far off. So because I did one of the essay question first and then got to the multichoice, I thought that I was going OK - at least at first.

Multi-guess would have been nearer the mark. The sample paper - and the online version from the Hill and Jones website - were way off the mark in terms of the standard of questions. I reckon that I guessed - as in didn’t have a bloody clue - on about 25%. Another 25% I was down to a choice of two or three options, another quarter I’m reasonably sure that the answer was the right one, and the rest should be correct. But my brains were about leaking from my ears by the time the section was finished, and it didn’t leave me in a particularly good mood for completing the second and final essay. The detail in the questions was unbelievable - never mind read Hill and Jones, I think you would have needed to memorise the bloody thing in order to be in with a shout.

Which is all a bit of a pain, really. The exam is marked with each of the sections having equal weighting on the average - so if I’ve done as well as I figure on the written questions and screwed up the MCQ, that will drag the mark down substantially. This is one that I would really have liked to get a high mark on - not least because I’m one 70+ mark away from a distinction, but also just because of the sheer volume of work that I’ve out in over the last few weeks.

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