Using only the year part of a date for a WHERE condition

In the LINQ statement below, I want to select people with an exam date in 2010. The exam date is stored as a datetime as the actual date and time is used in other applications. What is the most elegant, easiest, best way to compare the exzam date to only '2010'. Or, should I just compare, using >=, the exam date to 1/1/2010?

var active = dc.People.Where(x => x.exam >= 2010)
        .Select(x => new {x.ContactID, x.FirstName, x.LastName})
                   );

x.MostRecent == DateTime.Parse("1/1/2010").Year

EDIT #1

I thought I should see a .Year on the exam date but I didn't. After seeing a couple of posts here I went back and found this works...

.Where(x => x.exam.Value.Year == 2010)

Why is .Value necessary to access .Year? Exam is a nullable datetime.