Pre-Exam Tips

Here are some important considerations before you step into the exam room:

• Remain positive: Envision yourself succeeding and develop some mantras or phrases you may use to encourage yourself during the exam. A right mindset can make a big difference!
• Be prepared: Preparation happens in the days and weeks leading up to the test, not the night before. This includes reviewing your course material regularly and doing practice exams and essay questions. Check out some of our other tip sheets for more specific advice on study strategies!
• Familiarize yourself with task words: Know the difference between instruction words that may show up on the test like “discuss,” “compare,” and “analyze.” If you’re feeling lost, consult our “Assignment Task Words” tip sheet!
• Be wise the night before: Don’t cram. By now, you should be doing nothing more than a quick review of key concepts. A good night’s sleep will go a long way in making you sharp for the test and reducing anxiety.
• Start your morning right: While you may be tempted to skip breakfast, try to fuel yourself with something nutritious. Plan to arrive early to campus and leave a margin for traffic and transit delays.
• Bring the necessary tools: Be sure to have everything you need with you – pencils, pens, a ruler, a calculator, formula sheet, or any other approved materials.
• Take a walk: Shortly before the test, take a short walk to calm yourself and increase blood flow to your brain.

In the Exam Room

All of your preparations are done. Now, what do you do once you enter the exam room?

• Arrive early and get in the zone: Take a few minutes to settle yourself, focus, and think positive thoughts.
• Choose your seat wisely: Try to select a seat that will minimize distractions for you. Perhaps a seat away from the door, in the back, or near the front of the room.
• Take time to understand the test: Read the instructions carefully and ask for clarification if in doubt. How is the test scored? Will you lose points for wrong answers, or is it okay to make guesses?
• Strategize and manage your time: Before you begin to answer questions, skim the test and designate time for each section. Allocate more time for questions that are weighted more heavily.
• Keep it neat: Ensure that your writing is legible. If instructors are unable to read your work, they may be less sympathetic and may lower your score because they can’t decipher your work.
• Pay attention to key terms, verbs, and phrases: What is your professor asking for? What task words are used?
• Answer the easy questions first: Get easy questions out of the way and you will likely guarantee yourself some points, boost your confidence, and save more time for the challenging work later on. 
• Jot down important facts and formulas: While they are fresh in your mind, write down (in the margins or on scrap paper) any critical facts, formulas, or mnemonics you will need to use to recall details later.
• Keep working: Work on a question until you get stumped, take a deep breath, and think about it for a minute. If you are still stuck, mark it and move onto the next question. Don’t allow yourself to get paralyzed – the answer may come to you later, and you can return to it then!
• Stay calm: If you feel yourself tensing up, close your eyes for a moment, take some deep breaths, and relax your muscles.
• Remember to review: Reserve time to review your answers at the end and double-check that you have not made careless errors.

Tips for Essay Responses

• Plan your responses: Take some time (briefly) to create informal outlines to ensure that your essay responses are well-organized. In the event that you do not finish an essay, your professor might grant partial marks for rough work (though this is not guaranteed).
• Double-space: Double spacing your responses is a good idea to make your work more legible and also to allow room for additions if necessary.
• Paraphrase the question to formulate your main argument: You may want to use some of the key vocabulary from the question and place it in your thesis and/or introductory statement.
  • E.g. “Discuss the role of courage in both Little Women (Lousia May Alcott) and Treasure Island (Rober Louis Stevenson).”
  • Your thesis statement should include the underlined words!
• Get to the point and stay on point: Your paragraphs in an exam essay will likely be shorter than they would be under other circumstances.
• Ensure your paragraphs are complete: Although your paragraphs may be shorter than usual, each paragraph should still have an introductory sentence that expresses an idea which is connected to the main question/argument. This should be followed by supporting sentences that provide explanations, examples, or evidence of that first statement.
• Remember to include an introduction and conclusion! Even if they are only a couple sentences, including these ensures you have written an essay, not just a longer short answer. 

Tips for Multiple Choice Questions

• Come up with your own answer before reading the available choices.
• Strike out unlikely answers and try to reduce possibilities to at least 50/50.
• Consider similar answers: Oftentimes, one of them is most likely to be true.
• Check longer, more detailed answers: These also tend to be true!
• Watch out for extreme modifiers: Statements with these modifiers (words like always, never, no one, everyone, none, only, etc.) are often false. On the other hand, true statements tend to be those which contain non-extreme modifiers (words like sometimes, often, many, probably, might, most, a few, etc.).