Advantages and Disadvantages of Exams | Examination Advantages and Disadvantages for Students

Advantages and Disadvantages of Exams: Examinations are tests that aim to determine the ability and strength of a student. Academically, an examination is an approved test of knowledge and intelligence. For evaluating an individual’s skills and intelligence, various types of examinations are conducted worldwide. Examinations or exams are ordinarily written tests, although some may be practical or have components of the practical, and vary greatly in content, difficulty and structure depending on the subject.

Life now has become so convoluted that examinations have evolved to play an important element in one’s educational career. The importance of examinations is so eminent that most students are nervous about them. The examinations are loved by many and also hated by many.

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What are Exams? Advantages and Disadvantages of Exams 2021

Exams are acknowledged as a source of assorting the capabilities of students. It is a conventional system to test knowledge and intelligence, which is being practised in nearly all schools. It is the concern of both brilliant and weak students. One may like it or not, but they have to take the exams every year because there is no other system being proposed by experts yet. Here are few reasons for and against Exams.

Let’s discuss some of them:

Here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages of exams:

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Advantages of Exams

  1. Students find themselves in a competitive environment: Quite like games, exams also generate competition among students. Exams are a push and pressure that every student necessitates in life. Every year millions of learners around the globe take exams, and most of them work hard and do struggle to accomplish good grades because they desire to prove they are the best. This competition encourages students to work harder and acts as a motivation for them. The most significant part is that students learn to manage competition which they are unquestionably going to face later in life.
  2. Increased knowledge: Exams examine not only a student but also improve their knowledge. Students require to learn everything and understand every concept so people can pass an exam. Sometimes people come across technical terms which are not embellished in the book. This indicates that people have to search online to obtain their answers, and through this process, the knowledge of the student for the subject increases. Without examination, students won’t study anything at home, and they would spend time playing games, which implies that these people are most likely to fail in practical life.
  3. Practical exams make a student confident: Practical exams strengthen confidence and dispense the real picture of the individual. Learning and reading technical lines from the book can make the individual think that they are equipped to face challenges in life but practising it in real life shows how much more they need to work. A science exam will help a person find solutions for problems that may lead the person to failure. For example, an English exam will teach a person how to speak, walk and talk in a gathering.
  4. Scholarships: Scoring well in exams delivers some real benefits. If a student’s aggregate score is more than 90%, then there’s a big chance that the individual will get a scholarship in any university the person wishes to apply to. Few international universities can be quite expensive, and not everyone can bear them. Receiving a scholarship implies that the person can get admission to the most prestigious universities around the world, and they may not have to pay at all!
  5. Benefits In Memory Improvement: Exams not only enhance knowledge they also improve memory. When scholars learn what they have read throughout the year, this presents the long-term memory more effectively. When at first a student will commence repeating a definition, it may take remarkable time before the person learns it, but by practising it again and again, students enhance their learning skills, and more knowledge could be stored in their brains in a short time.

Disadvantages of Exams

  1. Exams Bring Anxiety And Tension With Them: As soon as the season of the exam arrives, it brings stress and anxiety with it. The stress of scoring well in an exam and the anxiety of failing an exam can make life very challenging for students. Some stress can be necessary that motivates students to study, but extreme stress can lead to increased blood pressure and other serious health issues.
  2. Lessened Effectiveness: In order to score well, students usually focus more on rote rehearsal and ignore the concepts. They do receive good grades, but the price is the reduced knowledge because, after some days, most students forget what they learned, and the effort of school/colleges goes down the drain. This approach minimises the practical capabilities of students. The grades these students gain in exams wouldn’t guarantee success in practical life!
  3. Inequitable Judgment: An exam tests how the student has performed on a distinct day. It is not a genuine source of grading a student’s knowledge and intelligence. If a student scores well all year but disappoints to perform well on the day of the exam due to any reason, would that mean lack of performance of the student or lack of knowledge of the student that day? One should think of answering this themself and then comprehend how fairly students are assessed based on a piece of paper.
  4. Exams can generate Depression: Stress and anxiety are not the only difficulties caused by exams. During exams, the child may fear receiving bad grades, which destroy their happiness. A distressed child is more likely to get depressed, and this can confirm to be very harmful to their health. Depression originated by exams can have a very adverse impact on the child’s being!
  5. Comparison among students: A student who scores a D on their math exam is expected to be compared with those who score an A. The learning capacity is different for every child. A significant problem caused by examinations is the comparison that is created between children/students, ignoring the fact that all individuals are distinct from each other. Some students learn new concepts efficiently, while others are more skilled at sports.

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Comparison Table for Advantages and Disadvantages of Exams

Advantages of ExamsDisadvantages of Exams
Exams assist the individuals in broadening knowledgeAnxiety and stress
Create competitionNot the right way of testing the knowledge of someone
Scholarships and a bright futureComparison between students
Develops confidence and personalityCramming

Disadvantages of Exams

FAQ’s on Pros and Cons of Exams

Question 1.
Are exams beneficial for students?

Answer:
Exams can energise students, rendering them motivation to learn things they would otherwise continue putting off. Exams produce the incentive to make students look back over what they have already incorporated in order to verify that they really understand it. Exams encourage students to find methods of understanding and remembering information without having to study it up.

Question 2.
Who invented exams?

Answer:
To go by historical sources, then exams were originally invented by an American philanthropist and businessman known as Henry Fischel, somewhence in the late 19th century. However, few sources credit the invention of graded assessments to another gentleman by the same name: Henry Fischel.

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