50 replies to this topic

[xkarenx]

Don't feel bad I think I screwed up worse than anyone here with the computer paper lol. I'm praying we have at least 50% for a pass.. or perhaps 46% is all we need to pass like it was last year?

[Mikey_Pee]

You've got me worried now. There was a V Lookup? Where??? I don't remember even finding a point in the paper where I thought "Thats a V Lookup" or struggling to figure what it was.

I found the computing paper quite good actually, but (And not being cocky), I'm generally quite good at computers and have always found it generally easy.

I feel like a right muppet though, I saw the Memo thing and didn't put the Memo headings in. It just didn't occur to me to try it! I thought the final part of the paper was quite easy too.

The theory paper was decent enough. A couple of 6 mark questions I wasn't sure about, otherwise I should have done quite well there. I'm hopeful of an A, or at least a B.

[Joel]

You've got me worried now. There was a V Lookup? Where???

Question 2a.

[xkarenx]

What you mean you didn't put memo headings in?

[Joel]

What you mean you didn't put memo headings in?

TO

FROM

DATE

TIME

[Mikey_Pee]

Gotcha now. Damnit. I went and done the total sales in each hotel. Damnit!!!

[Dave]

isnt that what the question asked for each hotel

i assume you are talking about 1c

[Joel]

i assume you are talking about 1c

I think he meant 2a. What was question 1c relating to anyway? It seemed pretty vague...

[Dave]

1c i thought was to do with the database. you had to get the amount each customer paid and find the total taking in bookings from each hotel

[celticfcz]

yeah i did that for the hotel using a calculator.
I think i have lost another 10 marks for not reading carefully:

"All printouts must show the following job reference:

Cucasa/JV/240506"

Thats rubbish i totally missed that part and now would be lucky to get 10/60.

[Mikey_Pee]

Yep, I wasn't going to read it but then thought it might be important, so read it and thank God it was! A girl in my class didn't do it either, but I think it was well received by most of us.

I didn't do a V Lookup, I calculated the total sales for each hotel, not the total sales for each service in each hotel. I used the "Sum" and "Count" methods.

[supernova]

Ugh! I was so annoyed cos my mail merge didn't work, and I thought I was being a total twat, but apparently that happened to a lot of people in my class (not sure if it was the whole class though). I spent ages on it aswell, so had to rush the rest of the paper! It was strange cos it was all working fine, but when I went to merge the files, all the labels came up blank! So I just printed off the layout and the non-merged labels.

My V lookup wasn't working either!

Oh, and when I went to unhide columns, they'd DISAPPEARED! Cos I did a really strange thing with my formula, cos I didn't know how to do the huuuge ifstatement (don't tell me now, or i'll cry, cos i dont want to know how badly i've done! lol)! Well anyway, I wanted to prove how I got my formula, so the marker wasn't sitting there thinking, how the f*** did she manage that, so I went to print it out, and the printout was totally screwed! It printed out in halves, and not because my spreadsheet was cut off by being too long for the page! It was really strange. Anyway, the invigilator hadn't given me that printout yet, so i didnt have a clue aboutt the problem, so I hid those columns to print out what it had asked you. Then I got that other printout back, so was going to print it out again, went to unhide the columns, and they didn't come back!!

I should have known it wouldn't work out for me, cos the monitor on the pc i was allocated to wouldn't switch on!!!

/rant over!

Sorry if you don't understand what i'm going on about, it's very hard to explain over the internet, cos i can't show you examples!!!

[Joel]

I wanted to prove how I got my formula, so the marker wasn't sitting there thinking, how the f*** did she manage that, so I went to print it out, and the printout was totally screwed! It printed out in halves, and not because my spreadsheet was cut off by being too long for the page! It was really strange.

That's exactly what happened to me. When I selected the two columns to print, they came out on seperate sheets of paper. I've never printed by columns before in class, only by area.

[celticfcz]

my address labels worked out, something i was pleased about, i spent about 10 mins trying to get them in alphabetical order, ended up fiddling with my query and eventually it worked.

How many marks do you guys think i have lost for not putting what it asked on the bottom of the sheets? I dont think anyone in my class did it, my friend just phoned me up yesterday and told me, i was so annoyed!

[xXxHeatherxXx]

We did nested loops a couple of times in class.. but today mines was giving really odd answers. You know it was 5%, 10%, 15%.. well my 10% one was definitely not 10% of the price there I could clearly see that. I just left it anyway.

Mmm. Did you notice the unusual formatting in some of the files? In the excel file all of the text in a certain row and column turned blue for no apparant reason, and the letterhead stored in word refused to copy for me at first.

Joel, some words in my spreadsheet went blue too!!!!!

[Joel]

Joel, some words in my spreadsheet went blue too!!!!!

Yeah. There was really no reason for it. As I said in an earlier post, everything about that practical exam seemed to be written to deliberately try and trip candidates up.

• The job reference that had to be on all printouts. (easy to miss)
• The letterhead in word, it was difficult to copy as it couldn't be selected using the cursor.
• Question 1c, it was really vague.
• The excel spreadsheet, blue text in certain areas.
• The Sum Function that had to be used over different worksheets (if the calculation isn't put in brackets then the file tried to save itself rather than perform the sum).
• The spreadsheet printout of two columns that weren't adjacent (they printed on seperate sheets of paper).

I'm still annoyed with the SQA after that exam. They are supposed to test candidates at a moderate level in order to allow them to acheive the grade they deserve, that exam just tried to make candidates slip up and drop as many marks as possible. The SQA were made aware of the fact that classes all over the country were failing the IT prelim, but what did they do to address the problem? Nothing.

[xkarenx]

I just hope they see the large amount of errors we all made due to it and lower the pass mark.

[Dave]

i am not out to have a go at you joel but i have seen the paper and seen quite a few of them.

On question 1c i actually did that question for someone and i dont think it was vague(though the person did it totally wrong)

the sum function thing over worksheets i thought that was pretty standard and to print out 2 columns isnt it possible to hide the ones you dont need

[Joel]

...to print out 2 columns isnt it possible to hide the ones you dont need

Well, it was easily possible just to create a new table with only those two columns in it, but that wasn't really 'solving' the question.

i am not out to have a go at you joel but i have seen the paper and seen quite a few of them.

Fair enough. I'm probably being over critical about the exam just because it didn't go exactly to plan. I'm getting sick of the fact now that I always under perform in final exams. In the maths exam I could barely write because my hand was shaking too much, and I can't seem to get more than four hours sleep before any exam (this causes stupid errors that I wouldn't normally make in class). I really didn't want to have to go through the whole appeals process, but I may be left with no choice.

[xkarenx]

Yeah to be honest with you I think Admin should do like computing and just have coursework tasks for the computer really and then just the written exam on the day because things like what happened to me - unusual problems can ruin everything on the day and cause you to fail even though you could do great with the practical all through the year.