YOU’VE STUDIED FOR DAYS, weeks, maybe even months for this test, and now it’s finally here. You’ve been preparing using the smart study techniques described in the previous chapter, so you’re pretty confident about the material. But you’re not done yet—you need a strategy for the exam. To achieve your full test potential, you’ve got to keep track of your time, know what the questions are asking, and answer them in a way that will get you maximum points.
Knowing how to take a test is almost as important as studying the material. You wouldn’t expect a marathoner to run a race without pacing herself, or an army to go to war without a plan of attack, or a singer to give a performance without warming up his voice, would you? Well, this is your race, your battle, your time in the spotlight, so you’d better make every moment count.
A big part of your test performance depends on what you do the night before. Hopefully you’ve been spacing out your studying so you don’t have to cram. You should, however, read your review sheet to make things fresh in your mind. Next, get your test supplies ready so you don’t have to rush in the morning. Bring at least two pens (in case one runs out of ink), two pencils (in case one breaks), an eraser, a watch, your book(s) if it’s an open-book test, a calculator if needed, and a sweater if the room gets cold.
Once that’s done, take some time to relax and give your mind a rest. Chat with friends, watch some TV, play video games, or go for a walk. The most important thing you can do before the big day is go to bed early! Try to get at least seven or eight hours of sleep so your brain will be at its best.
Your alarm clock goes off at 10 a.m. Your test begins at 10:15. You jump out of bed, splash some water on your face, throw on some clothes, and are out the door in five minutes flat. In case you were wondering, this is exactly what not to do the day of a test. You should give yourself some time to wake up and eat a good breakfast—nothing too sugary or heavy. Have an egg or yogurt for long-lasting energy that’ll stay with you through the exam.
Go easy on the liquids, though, or you may find yourself studying the graffiti on the bathroom door instead of double-checking your answers later. Do some exercise, such as jogging or jumping jacks, to work off your nerves, but avoid strenuous activities that’ll tire you out. Before you head off to face the day, pack some snacks and drinks for the test, if they’re allowed.
You may have heard that last-minute studying is a big no-no, but that just isn’t true. Of course you shouldn’t cram or learn new material before an exam, but going over what you already know—such as your review sheet—is a great way to refresh your memory and get in the zone.
Have you experienced any of these symptoms before an exam—racing heart, sweaty palms, butterflies in the stomach, nausea, or a sense of impending doom? These are all signs of testophobia, a common but treatable problem among high school and college students. Here are nine ways to conquer your fear.
1. The number-one trick to staying calm? Be prepared. When you’re confident about the material, it’s much easier to keep your nerves at bay.
2. Rushing is the enemy of calm. Get to the exam at least ten minutes early and lay out your materials. Put your food on the floor if you have one of those tiny desks that feel like they were made for Santa’s elves.
3. Keep studying your review sheet until you’re told to put everything away; it’ll help block out unwelcome thoughts.
4. Don’t overdo it on the caffeine.
5. Listen to some relaxing music. (See the section on study music in Chapter 9 for ideas.)
6. Tune out your classmates if talking about the test makes you nervous.
7. Focus on your breathing. Take deep breaths and let each one out fully before you take another. In and out, in and out, one two, one two… there now, don’t you feel better already?
8. Think about what you’re going to do after the exam. (Hint: It should be something fun.)
9. You know that mantra we discussed back in the first chapter? Something like, “I am smart, I am prepared, I am ready for this test”? Say it now.
When you get the exam, your first impulse is probably to rip into those questions like a lion into a zebra carcass—but you should take care of a few things first. Make sure you write your name (and any other required information) at the top of your exam or on each test booklet. If you have multiple booklets, number each one so your grader won’t have trouble determining the order of things. Remember: A happy grader is a generous grader!
Now that you’ve claimed the exam as your own, it’s time to start answering questions, right? Wrong! First, flip through the test to get a sense of how long it is and what type of questions there are, and to make sure you have all the pages. Don’t read the problems at this point—it’ll take too long and you’ll probably just feel overwhelmed—but you should get a glimpse of what’s ahead so you can pace yourself. It’ll often say on your exam how long to spend on each section, but if not, you might want to spend half a minute deciding how to divvy up your time.
For example, if you have twenty multiple-choice questions worth two points each, ten short answers worth four points each, and one essay question worth twenty points, spend a little less than 40 percent of your time on the multiple choice, a little less than 40 percent on the short answer, and a little less than 20 percent on the essay. (Note that I said “a little less” because you want to have some time left over to check your work.)
This is easy enough to track if you have an hour to take the test, but what if your time is less easily divisible—say, forty-five minutes? Well, you know that 10 percent of 45 is 4.5, so you can quickly calculate that 20 percent is nine minutes (4.5 × 2) and 40 percent is eighteen minutes (4.5 × 4). This means you should spend about seventeen minutes on the multiple choice (remember the “little less” part), seventeen minutes on the short answer and eight minutes on the essay, leaving you with three minutes to review your exam.
You should always bring a watch to the test, but check it sparingly. If a section is taking you longer than expected, don’t panic. Just close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and keep working speedily and steadily.
Okay, you’re finally ready to start answering questions. Aren’t you excited? No? Well, think of it this way: starting the test brings you one step closer to finishing the test.
Unless the exam is an absolute breeze, don’t just start with Question 1 and work straight through to the end. When you come across a question that stumps you, skip it. Circle the questions you’re jumping over or, if you can’t mark up the test, write their numbers on a piece of scrap paper. If you can make an educated guess about a question, answer it but make a small mark next to it on the exam. In other words, you’re dividing the questions into three types: the ones you know (answer), the ones you’re not sure about (answer but make a small mark), and the ones you’re really not sure about (skip and circle).
After you’ve gone through all the questions, make a second pass in which you answer the ones you skipped to the best of your ability. As you complete each one, put a check mark next to it or cross it out on the scrap paper. It’s important to break up your test like this for four main reasons:
1. Your brain will have time to process the harder questions while you’re zipping through the easy ones.
2. You may see something in the test that’ll make a lightbulb go off for the ones you skipped or weren’t sure about.
3. Getting the easy questions out of the way will make you feel more confident and relaxed, giving you an edge on the harder ones.
4. You don’t want to get stuck on a difficult question and make yourself flustered and panicky when you’ve still got a lot of work to do.
Keep in mind, however, that you shouldn’t jump around too much because you’ll waste time rereading the problems. If you’re prepared, you should only be skipping a small number of questions—or better yet, none at all! When you’re finished with all your passes, go back through the test and make sure you haven’t left anything out.
Does this sound familiar? You just finished a test with forty-four multiple-choice questions, but when you look at your bubble sheet, the last row is…43? WTF!?! Don’t let this happen to you. If you skip questions on a Scantron test, do a sanity check every few minutes and make sure you’re on the right row. And if you do reach the end of the test only to find that you’re one off, tell your teacher immediately. He or she might give you some extra time or a new bubble sheet to transfer your answers onto. If you’re writing your answers in a test booklet, leave some room for the questions you skip. If you forget to do this or need more space, make a note in the margin that you’re answering this question at the end of the booklet.
No matter what your exam is on, some strategies will always apply. Multiple choice, short answer, true/false, essays, and other question types all have their own sets of rules and best practices. Here’s how to milk your test for all it’s worth.
1. Before you look at the choices, try to answer the question in your own words so you’re not misled by tricky wrong answers. Then see if any of the choices matches up with your answer.
2. As you read through the answers, cross out each one you know is wrong (process of elimination).
3. If one of the options is “All of the above” and you know that at least two of the choices are right, the answer is probably—guess what?—“All of the above.”
4. A choice that contains absolute words like “always” or “never” is rarely the right answer.
5. Make sure the choice answers the question. It may state something true without being the right answer.
6. Read all of the choices. Even if one seems correct, there may be a better answer farther down.
7. Is one of the choices a term you’ve never even heard of before? You may start thinking, “Well, I don’t know what this is, so it could be the answer,” but odds are the test-maker put it in there to trick you.
8. If you must guess, pick the answer that is longest or most complicated, or both. The test-maker is more likely to make up wrong answers that are on the simple side.
9. If “None of the above” or “All of the above” appears once in a blue moon, this could mean that it’s the answer.
10. Do you have “a feeling” that an answer is right, even though you aren’t sure why? If you have nothing else to go on, follow your instinct. There’s a good chance it’s on to something.
11. If you must guess, stay away from a choice that has a typo in it—the test-maker may not have bothered to proofread the wrong answers.
12. You may have heard that your first guess is usually right and you should avoid changing your answers as much as possible. But studies show that test-takers actually change their answers from wrong to right a little over 50 percent of the time. So if you gain some new insight into a question or realize you misread it the first time, don’t be afraid to change your mind. However, you shouldn’t keep staring at the question and second-guessing yourself until you barely know what it’s asking.
13. Multiple Choice Trick. If you have to guess on a multiple-choice question, here’s a tip that test-makers don’t want you to know about: when two or more options have recurring elements, the right answer is probably one of these choices. Let’s say you have a question—it doesn’t matter what it is—with the following choices:
a. 2x + y
b. 3y – x
c. 2x – y
d. y – 4
Since a and c are very similar, and b and d have nothing in common with anything else, the answer is probably a or c. Also note that since three out of the four choices have a minus sign, it’s more likely that the answer is c) 2x – y.
Here’s a slightly more complicated scenario. Let’s say you have a question with a two-part answer. For example: The ____ beat the ____ in the race.
a. zebras…horses
b. donkeys…horses
c. mules…gorillas
d. donkeys…kangaroos
It’s a good bet that the answer will be b, because two of the answers mention donkeys and two mention horses, while all the other animals are mentioned once. Only b mentions both donkeys and horses. Put yourself in the mind of the test-maker: he or she wants to make sure you know both parts of the question. By trying to make it trickier for you (making two or more answers sound plausible), the tester’s actually throwing you some major hints!
14. Be careful of over-thinking these yes-or-no questions. Sometimes it really is as simple as it appears.
15. Remember that all parts must be true for the statement to be true. If any part is false, the whole statement is false.
16. If you have to guess, statements that contain absolute words like “always,” “never,” “all,” or “only” tend to be false. Statements with words like “generally,” “usually,” and “sometimes” tend to be true.
17. If you’re out of time and have to put something down, you should probably guess “true”—it’s harder to make up false statements. However, this is where looking at tests from earlier in the semester can come in handy, as you may find that your teacher has a thing for Fs.
18. As with multiple-choice questions, it’s okay to change an answer as long as you’ve got good reason to do it.
19. Eliminate the negative. If a statement contains a word such as “no,” “not,” or “cannot,” read the sentence without the negative word and determine whether it’s true or false—the answer will be the opposite. For example, “It is not true that there are no camels in the desert.” Taking out the “not,” we get, “It is true that there are no camels in the desert,” which is clearly false. Thus the final answer is true.
If a sentence contains a lot of negatives, it’s time for a slightly different strategy. Here’s an example: “It is not unimportant that you do not answer this question incorrectly.” (Not that anyone in their right mind would actually say this, but teachers love this convoluted stuff.) The thing to remember is that negatives cancel themselves out. Also keep in mind that prefixes such as dis–, il–, im–, in–, ir–, non–, and un– make a word negative. So “not unintelligent” really means intelligent, and “not inappropriate” equals appropriate. First let’s underline all the negatives:
It is not unimportant that you do not answer this question incorrectly.
Since we can cancel out the two pairs of negatives (“not” and un–, and “not” and in–), the sentence simply means, “It is important that you answer this question correctly.” Now why couldn’t they have said that in the first place?
These questions ask you to define a term or explain something in a couple of lines.
20. Get straight to the point. You don’t have to write in full sentences, unless your teacher tells you to.
21. If more than one definition or answer can apply, include them all.
22. For definitions, explain what the term is and why it’s significant.
23. For short-answer questions, the teacher probably isn’t looking for a stroke of brilliance. It’s okay to give a rote response or regurgitate what was said in class.
24. For matching questions, the first thing to establish is whether all the choices must be used up (a one-to-one correspondence between the terms in both columns). It’ll probably say this on the test, but if not, see if the teacher will tell you. Start with the easy ones, and by the end the matches for the remaining terms might be staring you in the face.
Many students have difficulty budgeting their time on essay questions. Although it’s good to show off your vast stores of knowledge, you shouldn’t just write whatever comes into your head. A little planning goes a long way on this one. Here’s how to keep your essay under control.
25. Answer the question! It sounds obvious, but so many students fail to do this that it must be said. Make sure you read the question two or three times and know exactly what it’s asking. Don’t go off on tangents or discuss a related topic just because you wrote a paper on it.
26. Take it easy with the outlines. You don’t have time to construct a detailed plan. Spend no more than two or three minutes deciding on your argument, the main points you want to make, and the evidence you’re going to use. Jot down just enough to remind yourself what to include.
27. Argue, don’t summarize. Most essays require more than a rundown of the facts—you have to take a stand on something. If there’s more than one right answer, choose the one you can most easily defend, whether or not you agree with it.
28. Don’t beat around the bush. State your thesis in the very first sentence of your essay.
29. If you have room, leave some space above each line you write so you can insert words later without making your reader go blind.
30. Flesh it out. Be careful of making a lot of vague statements that don’t really mean anything. Your essay should be specific and detailed, even though you don’t have the books in front of you. Of course your teacher won’t expect you to quote texts or cite stats from memory—he or she is not that mean—but you should be able to paraphrase key passages, list major dates, name central figures, and so on. Remember: your teacher wants to see that you’ve been paying attention; this is your chance to strut your stuff!
31. Don’t limit yourself to the written word. You can draw on other sources, such as the lecture, class trips, even documentaries you saw in class. When you use evidence from beyond the book, make a quick note about where you got it. For example, “As discussed in class…,” “As we saw during our trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art…,” and so on.
32. Content matters more than style on an essay test; it’s okay if your writing isn’t smooth and polished.
33. Don’t forget the basics! Use a pen that’s easy to write with, and write in script if you can do so legibly. Your teacher may write indecipherable comments on your papers, but that doesn’t mean you can, too.
34. Stay away from stuff you’re not sure of, or phrase it in a way where you can’t be wrong. One of the best things about essays is that you have control over what you include. Don’t know whether something happened in 1905 or 1907? Play it safe by saying “the beginning of the twentieth century.”
35. If time is almost up and you’re nowhere near being done, start writing in point form. If you wrote your outline on scrap paper, now’s a good time to copy it onto the exam.
36. You may think you’ve hit the jackpot when your teacher announces an open-book test—and sometimes you’re right—but all too often it’s a curse in disguise. The questions may be harder than on a regular test. Sometimes they’re so complicated—especially in STEM classes—that having the book in front of you does you little good. That’s why you should study just as hard as for a regular test; don’t let the openness lull you into a false sense of security.
37. If parts of the book—such as charts, key passages, and diagrams—would be good to refer to during an exam, make sure you mark them with Post-it notes. If it’s allowed, write down key facts, formulas, and concepts in the book you’ll be using.
38. What’s the first thing you should do when taking a STEM test? Write down key formulas on scrap paper or at the top of the exam. You won’t have to worry about blanking out in the middle of the test, and you can refer to them whenever you want. It’s like having a cheat sheet without the cheating!
39. Think about where you’ve seen this question before. It’s very rare that a question will not be based on a problem you did in class or for homework. The values and phrasing might be different, but if you look closely, you’ll see that it’s just a variation of something you already worked on. Having trouble making sense of a word problem? Start representing terms with variables, and pretty soon it may look startlingly similar to a question you’ve seen before.
40. Always show all your work to get maximum partial credit. This includes the formulas you’re using and steps you could easily do in your head—or on the calculator.
41. Reread complicated questions before plunging in, and circle or underline terms to focus on what’s important.
42. If you can, do a quick estimate before solving the problem to see if your answer makes sense.
43. When in doubt, draw it out. This is especially helpful for word problems involving shapes and distance. If diagrams are already provided, mark them up.
44. If you’re not sure how to solve a question that contains variables, try plugging in numbers to make it more concrete. You may have to use positive numbers, negative numbers, and 0 to get the whole picture. If it’s a multiple-choice question, plug in the choices. The most efficient way to do this is by starting with the middle value and determining if the answer is higher or lower.
45. Don’t forget those units! Some teachers will deduct points if you leave them out, and you’ll be less likely to make careless mistakes.
46. Checking your answers is more important on math and science tests than any other type of exam. Nobody is exempt from careless mistakes. When you can, perform the opposite operation (multiplication instead of division, squaring instead of taking the root) on your answer to see if you get the original value.
47. If you run out of time on a problem, explain in a few words what strategy or formula you were going to use.
48. For all tests, if a question is really confusing, don’t be afraid to ask the teacher for clarification, either by raising your hand or going up to him or her. (If your question might give something away to the rest of the class, you’d better go up.)
49. If you make a mistake when writing or solving a problem, cross it out instead of erasing to save precious time—unless test space is limited and you need all the room you can get. Use a mechanical pencil instead of a pen so you have the option of erasing.
50. Finally, if you’re almost out of time with a lot of questions to go, focus on the easy ones that can be done quickly. It’s better to answer a few questions correctly than a lot incorrectly.
You may see all your friends handing in their tests early, but resist the urge to go with them. You put in many hours, days, even weeks or months studying for this test—why leave early just so you can save a few minutes?
When you check your work, start with the questions you made a small mark next to (the ones you weren’t too sure about). You have the greatest chance of changing these from wrong to right. Then review the ones you were sure about, keeping an eye out for careless mistakes. Next go over the ones you really weren’t sure about (which you initially circled) and see if any more lightbulbs have gone off.
What should you do after this first round of checks? Keep going. Unless you’re completely certain of all your answers, you should stay until pens-down time. Taking a short break—closing your eyes for a moment, stretching your arms and legs, using the restroom—can help clear your mind and give you a fresh perspective on the test.
The scene following a test can resemble a war zone. Desks in disarray, the rank smell of sweat in the air, students wandering around with a glazed look in their eyes—some triumphant, others defeated. A lot of people will stick around to compare answers, but I think this is a bad idea. Some students freak out when they discover their classmates picked a instead of b, whether or not these people are any better in the subject than they are.
Instead of surrounding yourself with this post-test gossip, work off your anxiety by taking a walk or a jog; and if you must check your answers right away, have a look in the textbook. Remember that you’ll get the test back soon enough, with answers you can trust. And it’s critical that you review your test when you get it back—both the wrong and the right answers. The wrong ones to learn from your mistakes; the right ones to reinforce what you know, and because you might have made a few lucky guesses along the way. You should also make sure the exam was scored correctly. If it wasn’t, check out the section in Chapter 4 on how to challenge a grade.
In the world of academics, “hard” is a relative term. Top students tend to say a test was hard if they weren’t sure about every single question. Mediocre or poor students may say the same test was easy because they’re relieved they passed, or because they misunderstood the questions, or perhaps because they overestimate their own abilities. So before you ask someone what they thought of the test, keep in mind that this question means different things to different people—or better yet, don’t ask it at all.