10 Silly Mistakes That Cost Commerce Students Marks in Board Exams

Most marks are lost not to hard questions but to careless habits — the kind an examiner spots in seconds. The good news: every one of these is fixable before your exam. Here are ten that commerce students repeat year after year.

In Accountancy

• •Skipping working notes. Examiners award marks for the working, not just the final figure. Show your interest, depreciation and adjustment calculations clearly. A wrong final answer with correct workings still earns part marks; a right answer with no workings can lose them.
• •Wrong or messy formats. Ledger, financial statements, cash flow and partnership accounts each have a fixed format. Get the headings, columns and order right — format itself carries marks.
• •Not labelling 'To' and 'By' / Dr and Cr. In accounts, presentation is the answer. Unlabelled entries look incomplete.
• •Ignoring adjustments given outside the trial balance. Outstanding expenses, prepaid items and closing stock appear in two places. Students routinely record them once.
• •Forgetting the date, narration or proper account names. Small omissions in journal entries add up across a paper.

In Business Studies and Economics

• •Missing the 'with reason' / 'with example' instruction. If the question asks you to explain with an example, the example is half the mark. Read the command word.
• •Writing paragraphs where points are expected. Theory answers should be in numbered or bulleted points with a brief explanation each. Examiners scan for distinct points.
• •Mismatching answer length to marks. A 3-mark question does not need a page; a 6-mark question needs more than two lines. Let the marks guide your effort and time.

Across every subject

• •Poor question-paper time management. Spending 25 minutes on a tough sum means rushing easy theory later. Move on and come back.
• •Not reading the whole question. "Any two", "in brief", "differentiate" — these words change the answer. Underline the instruction before you write.

The fix

None of this needs extra knowledge. Solve two or three full papers in exam conditions and tick off this list each time. Within a couple of attempts, these mistakes stop being automatic. The students who top boards are rarely the ones who know the most — they are the ones who lose the least.