Samule KellerWe are rapidly approaching final exams right now, so hopefully you are aspiring to greatness because greatness is what precedes the growing of a great beard, so if you feel a little bit of prickly stubble coming in, well, you know your aspirations are in the right place.
I am gonna talk about how to not make dumb mistakes on exams. I wanna tackle 10 ways that you can stop making those stupid mistakes. As you may be aware, stress and anxiety are two of the leading causes of stupid mistakes on exams. So I have added some elements of that too. Specifically, I wanna focus on three main fears that I think all students have when exams are around the corner. The fear of the Unknown. The fear of inadequacy, the feeling that you’re unprepared and not ready for the challenge ahead. And finally the Fear of the Stakes, the feeling that everything is riding on this exam, and that your life will basically be over.
And now the tips. Some of these might seem a little bit obvious, but I wanna be pretty comprehensive in addition to brief, so even if you’ve heard these before, try to put them into practice.
Do not stress.
The number one mistake that I find students do and I used to do when I was like in high school I rushed I was stressed obviously it’s a midterm is an exam it’s uncomfortable and you’re kind of panicking now a way to avoid this a way to calm down is to plan your time so when you get that exam in front of you look it over like look over the entire exam don’t just start right off the bat because it kind of helps you to have a general overview of the entire exam and that way you get to like plan your time so if it’s like 20 multiple choices to long answer and one case study well you have to like estimate how much time okay I can spend one minute on each multiple-choice then 10 minutes on each long answer and then the last 30 minutes or like 45 minutes I’m going to spend on the case study because it’s worth like 25 points so that way it’s going to help you reduce your stress because you know what’s coming it’s not going to surprise you I find that like you know when you turn the page and you don’t know what’s coming you’re like oh my god that I spent so much time on this and I know this was coming in. That my friends I call knowledge explosion.
Be aware of the time you have for your test
Time management is key to academic success. Students around the world learn this sooner or later. When you plan your days and weeks in advance, time can be your friend rather than your enemy. And although time management can seem like a pain, once you have mastered this skill, it will enable you to get the most out of life. It can free you to live more effectively, calmly and enjoyably. It can help you get more done with less stress, disorganization, and frustration. It can also give you higher marks throughout the school year, as well as on your quizzes, tests, and exams. So aim to finish early. Put some time pressure on yourself. Just like with your homework assignments, time pressure can help you in the context of an exam. So if you’ve got 50 minutes, prepare to finish in 45. That way you’ve got time to double check later.
Double Check Your Answers
Speaking of double checking, so put the kibosh on the “I don’t feel like it” mindset when it comes to doing it because I know it’s a pain in the butt, but five extra minutes in the testing room going over your answers can mean the difference between an A and a B, and what were you gonna do with that extra five minutes anyway, like, go on Reddit back at your dorm or something? So double check those answers. Just take a look at the problem and see if your answer makes sense. You’ll have to identify something that is obvious about the question in order to do this. Don’t take too much time figuring something out, but if there is something obvious, then use it. For example, if you were calculating the average of a series of numbers, then the answer can’t be larger than the largest number or smaller than the smallest. It has to be somewhere in between.
Tackling the bubble sheets
This one has to do with tests that use Scantron bubble sheets, and it’s something that I used to do in my own tests. So basically when you’ve read a question on the test and if you’ve figured out the answer, then you’re about to transfer it over to that bubble sheet, first either lightly touch your pencil or your finger to the letter of the answer, and then say the letter in your head. That will drastically cut down the chance that you’ll bubble in the wrong answer on your Scantron sheet, which is an incredibly common error on that test format.
Transferring the correct answers
This has to do with the work you do on scratch paper, and it’s simple to draw a box around each problem’s work. That way when you’re looking at your scratch paper to fill in an answer, you don’t accidentally pull data from a different problem. I have awful handwriting. I used to write short stories by hand and could never read them. Perhaps they were Pulitzer-prize worthy… the world will never know. Luckily, I switched long ago to various electronic mediums. Since high school, I’ve been able to avoid writing anything by hand, so it’s not surprising that my handwriting has devolved into something pre-K. Since you’ll be writing by hand on your GRE scratch paper, a little handwriting practice will do you some good.
Watch out for Trick wording
For you it is kind of obvious but you’d be surprised how many people including myself sometimes Celtic don’t do this and that is read everything like don’t just skim through the questions yeah I know it okay on this one suicidal ideation malla read the whole thing like word per word read it all read all the choices if it’s a multiple choice question read all the multiple choices because you never know in psychology exams they’re so tricky one word can make the world of a difference so let’s see if you have the choices of a B C or D if you’re like oh I’d know that’s what I’d be oh that’s the right answer Circle it next question you haven’t read you haven’t read C or D so how do you know it’s not one of those if you skip them. The tip is to slow down and read the questions fully and watch out for tricky wording. A lot of questions might say, “Which of these is not?” instead of, “Which of these is?” So if you tend to read questions too quickly and you’re making mistakes, then use a pacing device like your finger. Simply move it along the text of the problem and let your eyes be paced by that finger. I do this every single week when I’m proofreading before sending emails because if I’m sending out an email to 17,000 people, I don’t wanna make a mistake, and it’s pretty easy for me to put typos.
Plan your essay the right way
This has to do with your essays, and it is to, no matter how easy the essay seems at first, create an outline for that essay before you start writing. Yes, it’s good for the organization but the big thing it helps with is staying on topic. A lot of students immediately take the prompt and then start writing from scratch, and the stream-of-consciousness style writing often ends up with their essay going into territory that the professor didn’t want them to write about. Even if you’ve understood the question, it’s still very easy to fall into the trap of writing the essay you want to write, rather than the essay you’ve been set. This is a particular problem if you’ve over-revised a certain topic area and know it inside out, but it ends up not coming up in the exam; you want to show off all that you’ve learned, and it can be tempting to shoehorn it into an essay whether it’s relevant or not. While it’s undoubtedly frustrating that you’ve had to learn lots of material that hasn’t even come up in the exam, it’s crucial to remain focused on the question and choose the material you refer to carefully. That’s not to say that the material you’ve revised might not still be relevant to the question in some way; but you’ll have to be very careful to make sure that it does support the point you’re making. Now, while I’m all for freedom of expression and creativity in your writing, if you’re not really staying on topic with the essay, you’re not gonna get a good grade. So make sure you’re staying on topic, and use an outline.
Trust your instincts
I know there’s a lot of debates that question whether or not you should like go back on your answers review your exam to me I find that every single time I went back on an answer I made a mistake I picked the wrong one I overanalyze it I doubted myself so definitely don’t do that if you’re not sure of a question leave it blank and come back to it at the end when you review your entire exam if you have time if you don’t have time to review your entire exam go back to the questions you didn’t answer and then think about it a little bit but definitely on the answers I mean on the questions you already gave an answer to don’t go back on them trust your gut like I said the subconscious is a wonderful thing and you will find that the quickest most spontaneous answer you circled is the correct one because it doesn’t allow you to overthink things. Watch out they you do this don’t overthink it go with your gut so if you’re like no no no no no no you read the question like I’m sure it’s eight and then you go back and you’re like ah but you know B is kind of good too what about C what about this word what does she mean by this word nothing didn’t mean anything might not work most of the time
Math Traps
This one has to do a sanity check after you get your answers on math problems. Before you go through the actual work of solving a problem, you probably have a general ballpark idea in your head of what the answer should be, so when you actually get that answer, compare it to that ballpark number. If it’s way off the mark, it doesn’t mean your answer is necessarily wrong, but you should probably double check your work just to make sure.
Know your own brain.
Do you have specific mistakes that you tend to make a lot? Maybe you get the order of operations wrong, or maybe you tend to multiply things together that should be added. Whatever they are, do your best to notice them when they happen, and then when you’re taking your next test, pay special attention on those areas.
Making stupid mistakes on your next exam, here’s a big related question. If you’ve already written down an answer, and now you have the compulsion to change it, should you actually change it? Well, there’s actually research on that topic, and we’ll be covering it in next article. Please leave any comments if any of these tips have helped you and also share something that you have experienced out of these.
Rabia Kanwal
