Exam Marketing?!

[Disclaimer :: This article is not targeted at any particular faculty and is only a general thought. Please do not take it in any other sense.]

Well, Ankush Sir had asked us to use the blog as a medium through which we expressed our own thought process, straight from the mind and heart. I am attempting to do something on those lines. Please do comment and share your views on the topic.

This is exam time and all of us are busy "Hoping for the best but preparing for the worst", as the saying goes. During my interactions with fellow students over the years, throughout my academic career, one thought has been coming up repetitively -- We prepare for the subject and for the person who will correct the paper as well. If a particular faculty has been teaching a section in the previous term, we tend to ask students from that section, "What does the teacher expect? Does he/she expect us to write a lot of theory and explain in details or does he/she expect bullet points, crisp and precisely to the point?" We also hear questions like "Does presentation carry extra brownie points?"

Going by all of this, one thought strikes me. Is this not a lot like marketing a product? To draw an analogy, we can equate the following :-

Product -- The answers that you write i.e. your answer sheet;
Price -- The marks that you receive;
Place and Promotion -- How you present the answers, whether you include diagrams and illustrations, have a neat handwriting, underline the important points, use different colors for highlighting, etc.;

The Seller -- Students;
The Customer -- The Teacher/Faculty/Paper-checker;

Is it as simple as displaying your subject knowledge or is it a deeper, psychological battle in which students engage, vying to edge out competition and secure the highest marks?