Surviving a Viva – Some Tips & Tricks

Horror Story 1:  The nine-hour viva: the viva that dragged on and on

Horror Story 2:  The aggressive examiners who seemed to want to break the candidate, refusing to let him score any points in his answers. They countered, contradicted, rejected and undermined in all their responses to the student’s answers.

Horror Story 3:  Blank Mind Syndrome: The candidate forgot all he knew. He didn’t know where to start, got more and more confused and gave answers that were simply wrong.

Horror Story 4:  That’s not what I meant: The examiner gets the wrong end of the stick, misinterprets what you said and decides that you have made a serious error. Under pressure, you let this go, lacking the confidence to “correct” the examiner.

Viva exams can be interesting, amusing, out- rightly funny, ridiculous, frightening , horrible, terrible or digustlng , all depends on which side of the table you are on. If you happen to be on the ‘unprivileged’ wrong side of the table (read’ examinee’’), then you really need some special tricks up your sleeves to survive some of the more ominous examiners. Coming up are some golden tips to ace your viva exams. 

1. Prepare well: Viva is a different entity, unlike written exam. Be prepared for viva type questions rather than descriptive questions. Be well prepared on atleast 2 or more chapters because examiners are likely to offer you with an option about the topic to start viva from. So be prepared for such juicy moments and don’t let go in vain. Not knowing the basics can lead you to failure as they are the “must know areas”. Consult your seniors, find out what topics the examiners are fond of, which books to refer to and what are dos and don’ts for any examiner, because these things vary as per person.

2. Know about your practicals or projects: Your viva is likely to be started from the practicals that you performed or the project work that you completed. Get your books ready to know your practicals thoroughly as soon as you complete it.

3. Create a good impression: Appear neatly and decently dressed. Wish him with a confident smile and ask him if you can take the seat. Display respect and good attitude towards the examiner. Never give prepared speech as an answer to question; try to be short and to the point.

4. Be confident and fearless:  Make eye contact with the examiner, listen to the questions carefully and answer questions steadily and calmly without rushing. Tension during examination is natural but develop a positive attitude and avoid anxiety before and during examination regardless of your preparation. Fear and anxiety during examination won’t improve your knowledge but can turn you blank and speechless.

5. Be loud and bold: Often examiners are irritated with unclear, hard to hear pitch when you answer. They are lazy enough to say “ Pardon, I didn’t get you”. Be clear and loud.

6. Bluffing won’t help: Avoid bluffing because examiner is an expert in the field and you do not want to irritate him and send a wrong impression.

7. Never Argue with the examiner: rather be polite- for that while examiner is your god, be superstitious for a while. Don’t argue with him. You can instead quote your source or reference as a strong and indirect argument. As they say it  viva is a test of discipline.

8. Avoid Blunders: Blunders often lead to Failure. Example: you call clavicle as femur, shortsightedness as hypermetropia or volume of cube as V = a⁴. These all show your poor knowledge of basics and provide an examiner with an easiest way to grill you more.

9. Guide your examiner: The subsequent questions depend on your answer of previous question. Always show priority to the topics you know and speak them first instead of topics you know less and try to skip topics you don’t know as far as possible. Examiner is probably going to interrupt you in the middle of your answer and move to the next question which is likely to be about the answers you gave high priority.

It is rightly said that ‘assessment drives learning’. If the assessment process is not valid or reliable, the whole learning process also becomes undone. Even the toughest of the students have gone blank & messed up their exams. Viva exams brings pressure, that pressure affects our academic performance . If you consistently put in really good effort, you will definitely get good scores.

Liked what you read spare a moment to share your experiences and feedback with us in the comments below.

All the Best

Team Meritnation