Describe a time in your life where you outperformed your exp

Describe a time in your life where you outperformed your expectations in a class or under-performed in relation to your expectations. What did you do that helped you succeed? What could you have done that would have made your performance better?

Solution

Such a situation occured during the Business Strategy final exam on my MBA course. After the exam, I found out that the same case study gets used each year for setting the question, so the case study is available at campus photocopy shop. Everyone purchased photocopy of the case study and prepared themselves for the exam. I was unaware of this, and read the case study for the first time in the exam hall only.

To my utter amazement, I got an A+ in the exam, and I was the only student securing this grade.

I believe that the original point of view that I presented in the exam made my answer stand out, because rest of the batch had studied the case in advance, discussed among themselves and were ready with standardized answers. But the case was absolutely new to me, so my approach was different and non-standard.

I don\'t think I could have done something more to perform better, since the key success factor was my fresh analysis that was totally different from rest of the batch. Pre-studying and preparing with the case from beforehand would have eliminated this advantage.