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How to prepare for BINC (BioInformatics National Certification) exam? What are the expected questions?

These are just a scant few of the common questions asked by bioinformatics students as they ready themselves for the next exam sitting. If you read the entire Syllabus (and I know that everyone does), you will see a section devoted to study and exam techniques. The section discusses such broad concepts as motivation, scheduling, and retention. Upon reading this section, however, I find the "hints" to be too general. Much of the advice boils down to read, study, understand, and memorize the material. The techniques mentioned apply to everyone and thus the overall advice ends up as a broad overview of the learning process.

The idea behind this article is to give students ideas on different approaches and techniques in the preparation for exams. By providing various ways to prepare for the exam process, fascinated readers may gain some additional insight to help complement their studying methodology. There are, of course, many common themes expressed in this small empirical sample of students' study habits. The idea of note cards, memorization, and problem solving are frequently mentioned by all students. No matter what technique a candidate uses, it always takes a significant amount of time and personal resources to successfully complete the examination process.

1 Explain it in your own word

Your teacher or lecturer can explain something to you, you can learn it from a text book, your friends can study with you, even your own notes can explain it to you but all these explanations are of little use if, by the end, you can’t explain what you have learned to yourself. The BINC exam looking for ability to write and explain the concept in your own word. You, therefore, need to illustrate in an exam to get top exam results, then you won’t be happy with your end exam result. So don’t just memorise and tick off the list – make sure you understand your theory.

2 Be an examiner yourself

Of course, depending on what you’re studying, it may be quite difficult to get into a position to understand a concept, theory or other information you need to learn. Ask ‘stupid’ question to yourself and train yourself for the worst! Embrace your curiosity, for as William Arthur Ward said: “Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning.” Doing so will allow you to fill in the blanks and better prepare you for exams.

3 Quiz yourself

Once you feel you understand topic, it is important to test yourself regularly. Try yourself to replicate exam conditions as much as possible: turn your phone off, don’t talk, time yourself etc. You can set yourself a study quiz or practice exam questions and, so long as you approach it with the right mindset, you can get a very good idea of how much you know. You gain a greater insight into where you stand in relation to what you’ve studied so far.

4 Online study

Keeping the fact that, bioinformatics is ever changing subject, you might need to update yourself on timely basis. Don’t feel obliged to just sit in front of a book with a highlighter; there are many different ways to improve your bioinformatics knowledge. Login and check almost all web servers and keep yourself updated, like how many genomes sequenced, sizes, techniques used, software names etc.

5 Study plan

In order to achieve exam success, you need to know what you want to achieve and focus on. That’s why it is extremely important to set your Study Goals now and outline to yourself what you need to do. With your study goals in mind, you properly need to attention all subjects. It should be broad enough to allow you to add and change aspects but concise enough so you know you’re covering each subject/topic as best you can at this point.