Final Thoughts
Personal test preparation begins well in advance of testing day. Classroom diligence on your part is important throughout the school year. However, a few things that may help once the test is here are worth noting.
Night Before
Get a good night’s rest. Go to bed a little earlier and set aside online gaming, texting, and late night television for a few evenings.
Morning Of
Eat some breakfast. Nothing heavy or sugary, but eat a little something to give your mind and body fuel to operate. Avoid caffeinated drinks like coffee and energy boosters. Most of these result in a crash of your system or can cause you to be a bit jittery in an already stressful situation. If you miss the taste of your favorite morning beverage, substitute something else to fool your morning routine for a couple of day until the end of the testing period.
Dress
Dress in layers. Nothing is worse than being too hot or too cold and trying to concentrate. The ability to take off or put on a layer allows you to regulate your personal temperature whatever the environmental or room conditions might be. Comfortable clothing and footwear are also important. Nothing is worse than sitting in tight pants or other uncomfortable garments for upwards of four hours.
The Test
Limit yourself to 2 minutes per multiple-choice question and 10 minutes on each open-ended problem. If after 30 seconds a multiple-choice problem appears hopeless, skip to another and come back; wasting valuable time on a problem you may not solve steals time from other problems you may be able to work through, but run out of time before completing.
Not Quite Sure
You may experience a problems or problems for which you cannot pinpoint an answer. Try eliminating the more obviously incorrect answers. Just guessing is a one in four or 25% chance when guessing. Eliminating even one possible answer that appears more obviously incorrect than others do improves your guess to one in three or 33%.
Just Cannot Do It
You may find a couple of problems to difficult to solve or even eliminate an answer for to improve a chance of guessing correctly. On these, consider selecting the same option for each. You have a chance that at least one is going to be that option, whereas randomly guessing differently on each may not get any.
Attitude
Enter into the test with confidence. The easiest self-fulfilling prophesy is not believing you can be successful. Be sure to read the question and focus on what the problem is asking you to solve for or calculate.
You can do this!