Exam relief
I’m feeling good and relieved now. It’s over (till the winter). I took the CIM Marketing Planning exam today.
Over the past couple of months I’ve supposed to have been studying most evenings, but I just haven’t had the willpower or energy. I was signed up for three exams with the intention of choosing my best two to actually sit, but once again time ran away from me and I decided to concentrate on just studying for one.
So last week I frantically studied and desperately tried to remember everything about marketing planning. I was struggling with some of the concepts because the CIM recommended study text is so badly written, so I borrowed some text books from the library and used those. Much better, but it can be hard to know how much detail is enough. Anyway after cramming madly for a week and being an absolute cow to poor Mark who was on half-term break I found myself so worked up I was almost in tears all the time. I didn’t used to be like this - exams never used to stress me out. Then I went into rebellion mode and could barely even look at the books. I was paralysed - I couldn’t study but then I couldn’t do anything else either without feeling extremely guilty. At least I could sleep though.
Anyway, after a couple of days of standing back and hoping that my memory had absorbed enough I forced myself to go to the exam this morning (I was all for chickening out but that’s the coward’s way out). And, actually it wasn’t too bad. I can’t think what all the fuss was about. Ridiculous really, all that stress and for what - it was just an exam.
I messed up really badly on the timing of the questions and overran by half an hour on the first question, still took 45 mins for the second question which left me about 5 mins for the last question (automatically losing myself 25/100 marks) so the chances of me getting 50% overall are fairly remote. The answers I wrote were pretty good but certainly not exceptional. So I expect to be resitting the exam in December but I’m certainly not ashamed or embarrassed - I did my best, and that’s all I can ask of myself. And you never know the examiners might be feeling generous.
I’m just so glad to be free of it for a while. I can watch TV, do the washing up, go shopping, see a movie without feeling guilty. Ah freedom!!! Not being a student is so under-rated.
July 19th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Hi there,
I was looking at doing my CIM prof Diploma, and am worries about how to juggle it all with work, family etc.
What was it like?
Christine
July 20th, 2008 at 08:42 pm
Hi Christine
To be honest I haven’t finished it yet! I’ve attended all the lectures at Salford Uni, but I’ve only taken two of the four exams so far. They’re pretty flexible at Salford and are happy for you to study the Diploma over 2 years if that’s what you want. I might even go back and sit though the lectures for the modules I haven’t completed again this September (they don’t charge you twice which is very nice of them).
It’s not too bad, but it’s not huge fun either. You have to study 4 modules in total and Mike (our tutor) estimated the whole course was equivalent to about half of the final year of a BA (Hons) degree - so 15 credits for each module at Level HE6. I have to confess all I did each week was attend the lectures (4 hours on a Monday evening) and maybe read the corresponding chapters in the study workbook on a Saturday morning (1-2 hours) if I could be bothered. I didn’t do any of the optional homework. However, this meant I had to spend a whole week cramming 8 hours a day just to pass one exam. This was very unpleasant and I don’t recommend doing it this way. Besides I don’t think you really get the most out of the course just memorising as much as you can for the exam.
Nearly everyone I did the course with did two exams in December and two in June, but most of them said that they wished they’d done what I did - one exam each time. If you’re not in a hurry, and wherever you’re thinking of studying the course is OK with you taking two years, then I’d do the exams over two years. You can perhaps attend all the lectures in one year because all the modules are interlinked and feed into one another, and also because then you can pick which order to sit the exams in.
The exams are quite hard - the pass mark is 50% and lots of folk fail. However, the CIM is happy for you to resit any exam as many times as you like (at £55 a pop). I suspect I failed the exam I sat in June but if so, no worries, I can attempt it again in December. And it won’t take nearly as much revising this time!!
The people on my course who did best studied around 8-12 hours per week on the course (including the lectures). Obviously this would be 4-6 hours if you’re only doing one module at a time. Then you’d only need 4 days for revision and I reckon you’d do really well in the exam. I think that’s managable with a full-time job, mouths to feed and a house to run.
I think one of the mistakes I made was to try and do a whole chapter of the study book at a time which takes anywhere between 3 and 8 hours. Just doing a hour at a time and coming back to it later would have been much more manageable.
The trouble with the exams is you can’t question spot - you have to learn everything because the questions each have several parts drawn from all over the syllabus. You might know two parts of the question inside out and absolutely nothing about the third part making it hard to gain a pass mark. It does test your knowledge of marketing though.
If you’ve studied Business Studies or Marketing before then the course seems to be easier - you’ll already know a lot of the jargon. I found the first 8 weeks of the course really hard because I was a biologist by training and knew nothing of business studies speak. Mike the tutor drummed the basic ideas into us all each week though, going over and over concepts like SMART and Gantt Charts etc. I still found reading a core textbook from the Professional Certificate really useful though as it gave the background to the higher level study on this course in easy to understand language.
It’s fair to say that the CIM study books that accompany the course are dreadful - badly written and badly edited. However, 99% of what you need to know is in these books so they are indispensible and essential for passing the course. The lectures give you enough knowledge to understand what’s in the books, but don’t cover anywhere near everything you need to know. You’ve just got the learn the books from cover to cover and practice lots of exam questions. The books get sold out on Amazon in mid-September so order them early. The CIM always have them in stock but charge full price. The little spiral bound revision guides are really good though and well worth buying - they get down to the bones of what you need to know so you don’t get sidetracked and spend too much time learning peripheral stuff.
Rather than writing essays in the exam you usually write mock formal reports as though you’re writing a report for your boss or a brief to another company. It takes a while to get used to the style, but it makes them a bit more interesting. I rather liked that about the exams.
It is possible to do the course by coursework. I’m not sure which is best - I know people who say the coursework route is better because it’s less stressful, but other folk say it eats up even more of your time because the coursework has to be fabulous to gain a passing mark. I’m more of an exam girl myself but you may be the opposite.
Anyway I hope all this info is vaguely helpful to you. I do think having the qualification opens doors - certainly nearly all the marketing related jobs I’ve seen advertised specify the CIM Prof Dip or above. And the course is quite applied - you do learn how to do stuff like write a brief for an ad agency, how to project manage, and how to write a questionnaire. Bits of the course are actually really interesting. But then bits of it are impossibly dull. It all depends on how determined you are really.