Test Taking Tips for Students

General test taking tips:

  • Have a positive attitude
  • Be sure to review your material, ask your teacher for help a few days before the test if you find you don’t understand something
  • Get a good night sleep the night before the test
  • Manage your time, don’t spend too much time on one question, skip it and come back if you have time to take your best guess
  • Stay calm, breath! Complete the questions you know first them come back to the hard ones (don’t skip too many questions – try to take your best guess)
  • There is no race during testing. Take your time and check, recheck, and check your work again.
  • Be sure to fill in all bubble completely
  • Erase any incorrect responses completely and make sure there are no stray marks near the bubbles

Tips for answering multiple choice tests:

  • Read the question before you look at the answers
  • Come up with an answer in your head before looking at the possible answer choices, this way the choices given on the test won’t throw you off or trick you
  • Eliminate answers you know are incorrect
  • Read all the choices before choosing your answer
  • Use your best guess if you don’t know the answer
  • Don’t keep changing your answer, usually your first choice is the right one, unless you misread the question
  • In questions that say ‘all of the above’ or ‘none of the above’ in the answer choices, if you are certain one of the statements is true don’t choose ‘none of the above’; or if you are certain one of the statements is false don’t choose ‘all of the above’
  • Usually, the correct answer is the choice with the most information

Tips for answering open-ended question tests:

  • Read the directions carefully; pay close attention to what you are being asked to do. Often times you are required to answer more than one question
  • Make sure you understand all of what the questions are asking you, if not ask your instructor
  • Make sure you answer every question and support your answers with examples from the problem or story
  • If the question is asking for facts, don’t give your personal opinion
  • Write as neatly as possible, be sure you numbers and words are neat. (for example make sure your 9s don’t look like 4s)
  • Don’t write long introductions or conclusions, the bulk of your time should be spent on the body of the response or answering the questions
  • Be sure to include information from the question in your response, this will help you to answer multi-part questions
  • Pre-write to organize your ideas (it really does help)
  • Budget your time, don’t spend too much time on planning or your introduction, get right to responding to the questions