You may sometimes be asked to do an essay exam at home. If so, make sure to clarify any guidelines about how much time you should spend working on the exam, how long your answer should be, and how you should submit the exam (for example, through email or to the instructor’s campus mailbox).

You probably won’t have as much time to write a take-home essay exam as you would a regular academic essay, so set a reasonable time line and stick to it. Be direct in your response, starting right in with your thesis, and use a straightforward beginning-middle-conclusion organizational sequence. Most important, as you plan for your take-home exam, bring in ways to show that you know the subject matter of the course and that you can provide concrete, detailed examples to support the main points you are making. As with any essay exam, look closely at the question itself and make sure that you are responding to the question in appropriate ways.