'Hell' of exams for 150,000

Raluca Cozariuc will tackle an NCEA media studies exam at Selwyn College today, her 19th birthday. Picture / Brett Phibbs

Three exams in three days! Raluca Cozariuc felt a huge weight fall on her the minute she saw her Year 13 timetable.

She is one of 150,000 students sitting end-of-year exams. At 2pm today, her 19th birthday, she will sit her National Certificate of Educational Achievement media studies test at Selwyn College in Auckland.

Tomorrow afternoon she will sit NCEA art history. And then on Thursday it's Scholarship English.

The pressure made Raluca "freak out" a bit over the weekend. She has been on study leave only since last Wednesday and felt she had too little time to revise everything.

She got back on track after her mother, Sanda, reminded her that the energy expended on fretting could be better used and that she should break things down into more manageable chunks.

It was good advice, says Raluca, an only child who migrated with her parents from Romania two years ago, but has been speaking English for 10 years. "When you think about three exams in three days you tend to freak out, but then you break it down and organise what you're going to do. It takes the pressure off."

In all, Raluca is sitting Scholarship in art history and English, as well as those subjects at NCEA level 3. Then she's got NCEA media studies and drama. Her photography course is internally assessed.

It has been a full year: in the first semester she did a literature paper at the University of Auckland, finishing with a respectable B minus.

Raluca has been doing "full days" of study, re-reading her notes and practising essay-writing under time pressure. She finds rote-learning dates and names a bit of a chore, but takes breaks to eat and to exercise every couple of hours.

She has a scholarship to pursue communication studies at the Auckland University of Technology, but she needs good marks to confirm it.

Yesterday she went to see her media studies teacher, Milton Henry, so he could check she was heading in the right direction.

Mr Henry says the best advice he can give students is to be clear about the exam criteria - what the examiner wants to see. And he advises staying until the end of the exam, in case late inspiration strikes and earns precious extra points.

The exam season

* 150,000 students will sit NCEA and Scholarship exams, watched by 5000 supervisors.

* Nearly 50,000 will sit the NCEA English level-one exam - more than any other paper.

* The smallest number, 26, will sit Scholarship Latin.

* Exams run until December 10.

* Results for NCEA levels one, two and three will be in the post between January 26 and 28.

* Scholarship students will get their marks by the end of February.