HELP! I made a big mistake on my history exam!

[rogue kiwi]

Okay, I'm a little panicked right now. We took the history paper 2 exam today, and I forgot that we're only supposed to answer questions from the topics selected by our schools. So instead of answering a question from topic 3, as I was supposed to, I answered one from topic 2. Does IB have enough of a sense of humor that it will give me partial credit even though I answered for the wrong topic? Or am I basically screwed now?

Moderator Notice: DO NOT discuss the contents of this exam until 18:00 GMT on 15/5/2014 (Thursday), general comments relating to the technical exam error only please.

[TykeDragon]

Note: I have only approved this topic as it has no explicit reference to the content of the exam - remember that this must be kept this way until the 24 hour rule is up.

In response to your question, you should be fine. The IB has no idea which topics you have studied and even if it somehow pieced it together by the fact that everyone else in your year used the same two topics, it won't care - it will just mark the answer you gave. There would only have been a problem if you had answered two within the same topic.

That said, the general presumption is that you don't know enough about a topic you didn't study to be able to adequately discuss and answer the question. So unless you're sure it was a topic you knew plenty of relevant information about, and you are sure you answered it well, the only risk to you is that you won't score as highly because your essay was flawed!

[David14]

For math, my answers were extended to below the 'scanned box'. Essentially, for a few questions, my answers were below the box.

What are the implications?

[David14]

For math, my answers were extended to below the 'scanned box'. Essentially, for a few questions, my answers were below the box.

What are the implications?

[sanadiwan2006]

I have students in my class doing different options.

For Physics, I chose to do a different option from the rest of my class on purpose because I felt I would score better.

The fact that you did another option, has NO implication on your marks.

ONLY how well you did in that option can bring your marks down

[I3lackAngel]

For math, my answers were extended to below the 'scanned box'. Essentially, for a few questions, my answers were below the box.

What are the implications?

I am not entirely sure, but I think that anything outside the boxes will not be marked. I am not sure how strict they are though. But usually you can use the space outside the boxes for planning your answers or anything else you don't want to be marked, since the exams will be scanned. In worst scenario you will not get the marks for the things you wrote below the box, but you will still get the marks for you working inside the box.

[flinquinnster]

For math, my answers were extended to below the 'scanned box'. Essentially, for a few questions, my answers were below the box.

What are the implications?

I don't think that's great as maths is marked online through scans - and only the areas in the box are scanned, though it may be possible some of the edges may be included. However, if you've continued it a long way beyond the scanned box it probably wouldn't be scanned. I think that if it were clear something had been cut out then it would be possible to retrieve the original paper to re-scan the answers. But often it would be easy to assume that steps had been left out/not finished rather than being cut out. So unfortunately it seems that they might not be able to mark your answers! I wouldn't stress too much about the questions, and hopefully not too much was cut out.