What’s the #1 reason people don’t do as well as they should on tests?

You’d be surprised. It’s not because they’re stupid. It’s not because they didn’t study enough and don’t know the material away. It’s because they haven’t mastered one important thing- the art of taking tests. Don’t ever underestimate the importance of test-taking skills, because you’ll be surprised how often these will mean a large difference in score that has little to do with your actual knowledge and skills. But how do you develop these test-taking skills?

Test-Taking Tips!

Tip 1: The art of knowing what you know

This may sound trivial, but you’ll be surprised how many people mess this up. All this means is- before the test, make sure you go over what you’ve studied (and what you haven’t studied if you run out of time). When you get to a question you know, solve it. When you get to a question you’re not sure you know, don’t solve it- it’s a waste of time. Yeah, that’s right, don’t solve it. This way, you’ll have more valuable time to spend on questions you actually know how to answer, which will immediately improve your score.

What do you do instead with those questions you don’t know how to handle? Skip it for now, don’t stress out, and come back to it later. If you have time to work it out then do your best. And if not… well, this leads us to tip #2.

Tip 2: The art of guessing

Many people think that guessing just involves taking a stab in the dark for a question you don’t know how to answer. That’s not it. Guessing is actually a lot more complicated than that, and if you do it right you’ll find that more often than not, your guesses will actually be correct.

In order to guess, you first need to determine that A. you don’t know how to solve the question, and B. chances are if you spend more time on the question you won’t get it (or you just don’t have time left). In this situation, it’s guessing time. What do you do?

If it’s a multiple choice, there’s an easy process. First, eliminate any answers that you know can’t work. For example, in math, cross out numbers that are too high or low, and in verbal questions cross out any answer that’s not grammatically correct. From what’s left, see if the question hints at any of these answers. If an answer just repeats info from the question itself, it’s probably there to confuse you, so cross it out. Also, in many tests, options B, C and D are for some reason more frequent than A or E, which is why there’s a good saying- “when in doubt, circle C”. It won’t always be right, but it can’t hurt.

Is this an open ended question you need to answer and you have no idea how? That’s a bigger problem. A lot of people would tackle this by stating everything they know about the topic and hope they hit something right. That strategy is stupid, because most likely you’ll get more mistakes that way than right answers. Instead, make sure you restate the question’s information in your own words (which shows that you at least understand the question), then try to draw logical conclusions until you find the answer. If it’s possible, try working backwords- from the answer you know you should get and back. If you’re missing some steps, state it, and draw a big :( which will show the marker you know what you’re doing and may help you squeeze a sympathy mark.

Tip 3: The art of drawing Snoopy

This one’s a ridiculous but very helpful trick. If you’re totally stuck and have time to spare, what do you do? Some people would give up and hand in the test early. NEVER hand in a test a second before you have to even if you finish early, because in those few minutes remaining you may end up solving something you couldn’t do earlier or detect a mistake you’ve made.

Instead, go over your test once. See if you can spot any mistakes, though most likely you won’t- your mind is still in the same path you’ve taken when you first answered the test. You need to clear your mind, use a different part of the brain for a bit. To that extent, find an empty spot on the test paper or some scrap paper, and draw a picture. My favourite subject matter for a picture on a test is Snoopy. When you concentrate on drawing a picture, you clear your mind from the test material. After you’ve taken a couple of minutes off, try again a few questions you couldn’t get earlier, you may find that this time you can see a way through them. After that, keep checking over the test and finding potential mistakes.

Tip 4: The art of no panic

Not surprisingly, most people when they take test end up with too little time rather than too much time. This will cause anxiety and stress, leading you to make careless small mistakes that cost heavy marks. Stress can decrease your mark significantly.

If this just made you stress out even more, sorry. Resolving stress is a highly individualistic matter- you may find that bringing your lucky pen or something like that does the trick. But there are some generic tips. For example, pace yourself before the test, not during. If you know you have good pacing, don’t bother looking at the clock, it’ll just stress you out. If you’re writing a test in a big room with a lot of people, make sure you don’t look around too much- seeing other people’s anxiety will contribute to your own. Also, if you don’t know the room where you write the test, dress in layers and take them off if you have to- it’s amazing how better things look when you’re not too warm or cold.

If you do hit panic, taking a second to tell yourself “Chill dude”. Realize that one test is never the end of the world, and what’s the worst that can happen? Whether it’s a math test in high school or the GMAT, even if you don’t do that well, there are worse things in the world. So don’t panic, take it easy and you’ll do much better.

Tip 5: The art of the night before

It’s the night before a test. What do you do? Too many people would cram, try to study as much as they can, and cut low on sleep time. When they wake up they’ll rush to the test not eating breakfast and getting there as fast as possible to get some more last-moment studying done.

Realize this- whatever you study last minute, that’ll be the first thing you’ll forget. There’s no point, even if you didn’t have time to study all the material. There are better ways to spend your time. But realize this- if you’re a normal person, going to sleep at 8 the night before a test and then eating a huge 3-course breakfast won’t help much either, and it makes absolutely no sense too.

Just do what you normally do. If you get 6 hours of sleep every night, that’s exactly the amount of sleep you should get before a test too. If you eat a bowl of cereal every morning, do that before a test. If you just do normal things before a test it’ll be easier to be more relaxed and fill better going into the test, and the better you feel the better you’ll do.

That’s all there is to good test-taking

These tips are good. But one thing beats them all- practice. I’m not talking about practicing before the test like you should obviously do, but practice good test-taking. Simulate a test-environment to see whether you panic easily or not, and set your timing and pacing skills. Take a couple of simple trivia tests to perfect your guessing skills. Practice makes perfect, so go for it.

Good luck on that test!