The content on this page is adapted from the book, Keys to Academic Success: Strategies for unlocking your educational potential so you can spend less time studying and more time learning. To purchase a digital copy of the complete book, click here.
Test taking is stressful for most students, so if you also get nervous during tests, know that you are not alone. The best thing you can do to prepare yourself for a test is to study and learn the material so that you are able to answer the questions easily and without second guessing yourself. However, even if you are well prepared it is easy to become overwhelmed during the test and to think you have forgotten what you have studied. Here are some strategies you can use to calm your nerves and earn a test score that truly reflects how well you learned the course material.
Provide Rationale
If your teacher or professor allows you to write on the test, take advantage of that and justify every answer that you select. This is particularly appropriate for multiple choice or true/false questions, but it can also help for short answer or fill in the blank questions. Some teachers or professors will give partial credit if they see that you were close to choosing the right answer, but even if yours does not, writing out the rationale for each answer will help you to better process the question and to avoid making a silly mistake.
For example, suppose that you are faced with a multiple choice question about pediatric development and the question asks the age by which most children learn to use a spoon. The choices are 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, or 18 months. First, note that babies generally consume only breastmilk or formula from birth until between 4 and 6 months of age. That means a baby would have likely never seen a spoon by 3 months, so you can rule that out. By the same logic, many babies are only just starting to see a spoon by 6 months with the introduction of solid food, so you can probably rule out that answer, too. That leaves 12 months and 18 months as possible answers. By 18 months, a child is a toddler, usually walking around, perhaps running. They’re playing with toys and sticking everything in their mouths, including spoons. So chances are they’ve been practicing that skill for a while and didn’t just learn it. So, that leaves 12 months as the most likely choice. By justifying each possible answer you were able to reason through the question, rule out definite wrong answers, and be more confident in the answer that you selected.
Mark Difficult Questions
As you work through the test, you will most likely come to problems that you cannot immediately answer. Instead of agonizing over these questions, mark them and come back to them once you’ve finished the other questions on the test. The material contained in another question may prompt you to remember the answer to a question you previously skipped, or perhaps just the confidence of knowing you’ve answered all (or most) other questions on the test will help you think more clearly when you face that question again.
Work Backwards
If you find yourself so overwhelmed during a test that you’re not sure what to do, flip to the end of the test and work backwards. Sometimes professors will write tests in the order in which they gave the lectures, so you might find the most recent material that’s freshest in your mind at the end of the test. But even if this isn’t the case, moving to the end of the test can almost feel like starting a test over and may help calm your nerves and allow you to regain control of your mind.
Double Check
If you finish a test with time left over, go back and double check your answers for accuracy. But don’t change any answers unless you are certain you answered incorrectly the first time. Typically, your first answer is the right answer, so just make sure you marked it correctly and didn’t make a silly mistake by misreading the question the first time.
Review Your Test
If you studied well and implemented these strategies during the test itself but you still did not perform as well as you had hoped, take the time to look back over your test to see what problems you might have missed and to try to identify why you missed them. This will hopefully help you identify where to focus your studies in the future. Perhaps you missed mostly reading based questions, in which case you should spend more time studying the readings before the next exam. Or perhaps you missed application based questions, in which case you should spend more time working on your comprehension of the material. Whatever the cause, knowing the reason why you did not perform as well on the exam can help you to perform better in the future.