Test Taking Strategies: How to Overcome Test Anxiety and Increase Your Chances of Getting the Best Test Grade

Many High School students and College students will experience some form of test anxiety from time to time. . There are many ways in which test anxiety affects students, and many ways that a student can overcome test anxiety.

The most important tool that you can use to beat test anxiety is to be prepared. Make sure you have all the pencils, pens, calculators, and scratch paper that you will need. Having to borrow paper and materials from other students, or even the teacher, will throw you off, especially if they allow you to borrow a different type of calculator than the one with which you are most familiar.

On the day of the test, be sure you arrive in class five to ten minutes early. This gives you time to prepare your workspace with a pen or pencil, your calculator, and any scratch paper that you may need. This also gives you a few minutes to mentally prepare for the test, either by relaxing, or reviewing some of the more difficult material that will be included on the test.

The most common form of test anxiety happens when the professor passes out the test paper. All of a sudden your mind goes completely blank. You have spent much of the last few days reviewing the course materials for the test. Prior to the test you had a pretty good idea of what was going to be on the test, and knew the correct answers to any questions that the teacher may ask. The moment the test paper is in front of you, you are unable to recall absolutely none of the information. As frightening as this may be for you, it's perfectly normal. Take a few minutes to read over the questions on the test. Key phrases in the questions will trigger your memory, so that you can answer the questions.

Answer the questions that you know first. On tests, chances are there will be enough questions that you either know the answer to, or that you will not have to think very much to be able to determine the answer, so that you can at least get a passing score. It might not be the high passing score that you wanted, but any passing score is better than any failing score.