I am an interactive learner. I am a thinker. I am creative, in my own personal way. On the flip side, I do not like standardized tests!
Yet when a student at Colorado Christian University, I learned some techniques which aided my success. I would have never graduated summa cum laude without implementing these techniques. Consider them, and discover whether they will help you.
When starting your exam, scan the entire exam to see the nature of the test. Then my big suggestion: Start with the essay questions if there are some. And of those questions, start with the one of which you are certain of your response.
Why?
Essay questions are the most challenging, yet if you are prepared, then you will be all set to write your answers without the distraction of the many issues covered in multiple choice questions.
As you continue, if there is an essay question you do not know the answer to, skip it until later.
Second, go to the short answer questions. After doing the essay questions, thoughts should be flowing on the subject at hand, and you should rock the short answers.
Again, skip any questions you do not know until later.
Third, answer the multiple choice questions. After writing those essays and short answers, you are on the downhill slope, and you can roll into multiple choice questions ready to focus on the correct answers, rather than getting distracted by the junk heap of possibilities.
Again, skip any questions you do not know until later.
A big tip: I use to cover the multiple choice possibilities with my arm when I was reading the question. I would try to think of the answer without looking at the selection. Thus I had my answer before looking at the various wrong choices.
For the finale, go back and answer the questions you did not know and thus skipped. (If you skipped many, scan the entire exam at the end to ensure you do not to miss any.)
Hopefully by the end you are in a zone on the subject, and hopefully you are not feeling a time pressure, thus it is the best time to consider any answers you were not sure of earlier.
For this last step, if you have extra time, take it!
When I was a student at Virginia Tech back in the last century, I was often one of the last students out of a class during a test. And some of those classes had more than a hundred students in them. I studied for those tests, and I realized that spending an extra fifteen minutes or so working on my test could result in getting one or two answers correct which would have otherwise been wrong. Those were some of the best spent minutes for me at Virginia Tech.
Take your time and do it right!
And stating this at the conclusion, I declare what should be done first: Pray.
If you say a prayer sometime before the test, even if it is on the way to the class, you are opening yourself up for God to help you become more focused!
Hunter Irvine
