How to Mark Your Own Exam Answers Like an Examiner

Doing past papers is good. Marking them properly is where you actually get better. Most students do the paper, glance at the answers, think 'yeah, close enough', and learn nothing. Here's how to mark like an examiner instead.

Get the real mark scheme — and read it like a checklist Every exam board publishes mark schemes for its past papers. They're not vague; they list the specific points that earn each mark. Open the mark scheme next to your answer and treat it as a checklist: did you make this point? This one? Each tick is a mark.

Mark in a different colour, point by point Use a pen that isn't the one you wrote with. Award marks exactly where the scheme says — not where you feel you 'sort of' said it. A mark is earned by making the point clearly, not by meaning it in your head. This honesty is the whole game.

Watch the command word 'Describe', 'explain', 'evaluate' and 'compare' are not the same task, and the mark scheme rewards them differently. An 'explain' answer needs a 'because' — a reason or mechanism. If you only described, you won't get the explain marks, even if everything you wrote is true. (We've got a whole post on command words — worth a read.)

Points-based vs levels-based Short science and maths answers are usually points-based: one mark per correct point, easy to tick. Longer essay answers — English, history, the 6+ mark questions — are levels-based: the examiner places your whole answer in a band based on quality. For those, read the level descriptors and ask honestly which band yours sits in, and what the band above is doing that yours isn't.

Be harsh, then learn the gap The temptation is to mark yourself up because it feels good. Resist it. An inflated score that says you're ready when you're not is worse than useless. The point of self-marking isn't the number — it's the list of marks you missed and why. That list is your next revision session.

The honest problem with marking yourself Even when you try to be fair, you know what you meant to write — so you give yourself the benefit of the doubt an examiner never would. That's exactly why we built Mark My Work: snap a photo of your handwritten answer and it marks against the real mark scheme, shows the exact points you hit and missed, and gives a predicted grade — with none of the 'well, I basically said that' bias. Use it to sanity-check your own marking, or to mark the papers you can't face marking by hand.