Exam day is not the time to decide to take the ordinary level paper - the mocks are a great way of preparing to learn from your mistakes and parents need to know how to help rather than hinder, writes Brian Mooney

The initial application date for registering your course choices for CAO college entry has passed, and you are now facing two weeks of mock exams. Alternatively, as a student taking the Junior Certificate, you are sitting the first set of exams you have ever taken over such a protracted period.

By the end of the mocks you will be exhausted and may feel you could have done so much better if only you had known what sitting so many two or three-hour papers, morning and afternoon, was really going to be like. This experience is ultimately the real benefit to you, from having taken the mocks.

Many county teams have roared through the football and hurling championship and stormed ahead in the first half of a final, only to choke in the last 15 minutes as the enormity of what they are about to achieve hits them. Commentators console them, saying now that they know what it takes to win they will be able to complete the task next time. The purpose of mock exams is to ensure that you experience what it is really like to sit exams, day after day for two weeks in June, without having to come back next year in order to succeed.

Sitting the Junior Cert and the Leaving Cert is like running a marathon. Preparation is everything, and success depends on the quality of your preparation. You should now have a weekly study plan, covering all your subjects, and you should start each day's study with specific questions to address in each subject studied.

All study should lead to concise revision material on each topic studied, which should be quickly read on a number of occasions between now and June.

Having done all that you will still find that the key to exam success is learning how to handle the stress that is part of taking exams. Taking any exam is deeply stressful, but it is a short-term experience that dissipates completely, in the months after the exam is taken.

Your parents will become at least as stressed as you, and will instruct or direct you to do what they think is in your best interest.

If they could step back from their deep concern, they would realise that they could help you most by supporting you, through the coming months, as the pressure of taking the real exam grows. They have seen the consequences through their lives of failure to prepare adequately for exams, and want only to protect you from that experience. Unfortunately, they cannot instil their wisdom in you. You will have to learn from your own mistakes, and that is what the mocks are there to allow you to do.

The results of the mocks are not an end in themselves. You can make 1,000 mistakes during the mocks, learn from the experience, and perform much better in the exams in June.

Your teacher is the real expert in interpreting the meaning of a mock result. If they advise you that your performance in the higher paper in the mocks showed you to be totally out of your depth, I would suggest you take that advice to heart and plan to take the ordinary level paper in June.

The temptation to start taking grinds in a subject to bring up your standard, should be balanced by the need to continue a comprehensive programme of study and preparation, across all the subjects you are about to take.

Your teacher may interpret the result to mean that you have the ability to take a higher-level paper in a particular subject, but made a number of strategic errors in the mocks that you can learn from and use to get a successful result in the real exam.

Therefore, if you are still unsure of what level to take in June, the best advice is, to discuss the matter with your teacher, after you get and interpret the result of the mock with your parents and your teacher.

If the reflection process on the results of the mocks leads to your taking a different level in June, it is very important that your school informs the State Examination Commission (SEC) in the case of the Junior Cert. This is because you will have already indicated which level paper you wish to receive, and in the case of the Junior Cert, other than in very rare circumstances, you must accept the level that is written in the invigilator's instructions.

If the school informs the SEC of a change at this stage, this can be made without any difficulty. In the case of the Leaving Cert, because of the level of maturity of the students, you will be given whichever level of the paper - higher, ordinary or, where it exists, foundation - that you request on the day.

However, with some subjects, when deciding the level you take you may need to bear in mind parts of the exam that you do prior to the written paper. In many subjects, the oral, practical, project or practical coursework component of the exam is common to all levels.

With the exception of Leaving Cert Foundation Level Irish, all the oral exams in the Leaving Cert language subjects (French, German, Spanish, Italian and Irish) are common to both higher and ordinary level. This is also true of the coursework component of Leaving Cert home economics, agricultural science and the projects in Leaving Cert construction studies and agricultural economics.

This means that having completed the oral, practical, project or coursework component, you can change level on the day of the written exam. Having said that, you are generally expected to take all parts of the exam at the same level. In particular, in the following subjects you have to decide which level you are taking according to the part of the exam you complete before doing the written part in June: in art and music it is the practical element while in engineering it is the project.

Finally, it is advisable never to change levels as a panic reaction at the last minute. If you do, you will spend the entire exam agonising over whether you should have stuck with the original plan. The result is likely to be a very poor performance. Following the analysis of the mocks you should, in consultation with your teacher and parents, decide on a plan of action over the coming months and stick with it, unless your teacher advises you otherwise.