Naval Nuclear Power Training Command, Florida, 1996
1. Get a good night’s sleep (at least 6 hours) the evening before the test, even if it means studying a little less material. Pulling an “all-nighter” may sound enthralling and romantic, but that technique is an act of desperation and rarely works the way you want it to. Remember the mantra: “Well rested, well tested.”
2. On the day of the test, if there is time, go over the material you didn’t get to the night before, if any. If you covered everything, go over it once more to load it into your “high memory.” This will reduce your recall time and thereby free up more time to work on the questions/problems for which you aren’t as well-prepared.
3. Leave so that you will get to the testing center early. If you leave so that you’ll get there merely on time, if there is any unforeseen problem (heavy traffic, etc.), you will increase your anxiety and stress level immeasurably and unnecessarily. Incidentally, if you DO find yourself stuck in traffic somewhere, try to sit back and relax--realize that there is absolutely nothing you can do about it and you’ll get there when you get there.
4. Be physically prepared for the exam--food and drink. Don’t starve yourself and don’t overeat--have a light snack before the test. Have a caffeinated beverage--start drinking it 5-10 minutes before the test and if you can, bring it in and finish it while taking the test. It’ll increase your brain synapse firing rate, thus “keeping you sharp” throughout the exam. Don’t get a super-jumbo size, however, or you’ll be getting up to pee every 15 minutes.
5. Be physically prepared for the exam--sickness. If you are sick, use Nyquil or something similar to facilitate getting that good night’s sleep the evening before. Alka-Seltzer Plus Night Time Cold Medicine works wonders, too. Your goal is to make it so your sickness is not a distraction during the test. So figure out what your symptoms are and use chemicals to combat and neutralize them. This may mean throwing money at the problem by buying over-the-counter drugs. (Obviously, if you’ve gone to a doctor and (s)he has prescribed you medication, use that.) Some good chemicals to combat specific symptoms follow. Headache: conventional Bayer aspirin--it isn’t glamorous, but it does the job; never take on an empty stomach. Stuffed-up nose/sinuses: Sudafed. Runny Nose: bring tissues to the exam. Upset stomach: Pepto-Bismol (affectionately known as “pink cement.”) General feel-like-crap: Alka Seltzer Plus Cold Medicine. Cold Sores: Carmex applied with Q-Tips; never double-dip. Understand some basic principles: you have to balance absorption rate into the body with the chemical’s half-life. In other words, if you take 325mg of aspirin in the form of one giant horse-pill, it’ll last for quite a while as that big tablet slowly dissolves in your stomach; however, you’ll also not feel the effects of the aspirin as quickly. If you take that same 325mg of aspirin in the form of a powder dissolved into warm water, it’ll be absorbed rather quickly and you’ll feel it right away, but the effect won’t last as long. Be cautious about dosage levels and drug interaction precautions. You can do more harm than good if you overdo things.
6. Be physically prepared for the exam--other. Wear comfortable clothing to the test. Bring a light jacket in case the room is cold. Your goal is to be versatile enough such that you have no issues with temperature or physical discomfort. Make sure you’ve gone to the bathroom 5-10 minutes before the test. Evacuate thyself in all ways--this serves to make it so that either you won’t have to go during the test or at least you’ll minimize the number of times you’ll have to go. The idea is to conserve as much testing time as possible.
7. Minimize your distractions by turning off your cell-phone/beeper/watch alarm BEFORE the exam starts. Your fellow examinees will also silently thank you for this courtesy. If you think ambient noise might be an issue during the test, bring earplugs with you. Remember: YOU are in charge of YOUR OWN examination environment. If it isn’t ideal, take command of the factors you can control and make it as good as it can be.
8. Be well-supplied--writing materials. For most humanities-type exams, ballpoint pen is the appropriate medium in which to write. So, bring several of them in case one runs dry. Use black or blue ink--other colors smack of a lack of professionalism. For science-type exams, pencil is the appropriate medium. Use 0.5mm mechanical pencil and make damn sure you have enough lead. In fact, bring TWO such pencils so that in case one jams, you don’t spend a bunch of time screwing with it when you could just drop it and pick up the other. 0.5mm HB lead makes a nice, sharp, easy-to-read line--instructors like that, considering the alternative is something that’s more difficult to read. Most instructors will give zero credit to something they can’t read--remember: the goal is point-loss minimization; you need all the credit you can get. For pencil-based exams, also bring one of those big ARTGUM erasers; they do a very good job of erasing pencil. Also, you don’t want to burn up the teensy little eraser in the end of your mechanical pencil, pull the end cap off to adjust the eraser outward, promptly drop the cap on the floor where it rolls away, pull the eraser holder out and dump all the lead on the desk and floor, etc.
9. Be well-supplied--other materials. For science-type exams, if you can, bring in some plain white scratch paper in case you need it. Bring a ruler so you can make nice straight lines and good, accurate graphs if they’re called for. Bring a watch and put it on the desk in front of you. Note the start and end times on a piece of the scratch paper so you know exactly how much time you have left. Bring a good calculator whose batteries are nowhere near dead and be familiar with the operation of said calculator--don’t borrow one the night before the test. Some instructors will allow you to have a note card to bring in to the test; never pass up that opportunity. Simply making up the note card will help you to study. Certain classes may have additional other supplies that may be of relevance--for example, a compass, graph paper, Moliere diagram, or template. Don’t be without these things. Don’t forget your glasses if you wear glasses. Understand that some instructors will not allow you to have all sorts of extra stuff at the exam--bring it in a backpack anyway in case they do. Better to have it on-hand and not use it than to be able to use it and not have it. Other people taking the test will have proper supplies--don’t be at a tactical disadvantage to them. You may even consider creating an “exam kit”--a designated backpack or carry bag containing all of your exam supplies. Be sure to check it before you leave to make sure it has everything needed for the particular test you’re about to take.
10. Page-check your exam when you get it. Don’t be the first one done and out the door only to find out later that you were missing page four. The page-check is also a good time to get a feel for the exam itself--note how many problems there are, what their relative point values are, which ones you know you can do easily, which ones you know you will need a lot of time to work on, etc. Beware of double-sided pages. The infamous last question on the back page has lost many people many points.
11. It’s not a bad idea to write your name on at least one side of every page. Some instructors will separate exam pages when they grade--if they are clumsy, they may scatter them and subsequently mate up your exam page one with the idiot-sitting-next-to-you’s page two. Protect yourself from being the victim. If the instructor didn’t number the exam pages, number them yourself. You can use them to keep track (on a piece of scrap paper) which problems you skipped and need to come back to.
12. Answer every question. For Pete’s sake, write down SOMETHING. You cannot get any credit for a blank space; however, if you wrote down a key word or tricky phrase and a partial-credit point value was associated with that word/phrase in the answer key, guess what? You may just get some points for it, even if you didn’t know what the hell you were talking about. On True/False questions, unless it’s absolutely 100% True, it’s False. On multiple-choice questions, if you can eliminate even one wrong answer selection, you’ve increased your probability of guessing the right answer. Remember to look for the answer selection that BEST answers the question. More than one may be true, but only one is the right answer. Note that you may even be able to use other questions in the exam against answer selections in a particular question to rule them out, if the exam was poorly written. It’s not your fault that question three’s phrasing essentially gave you the answer to question eight--that’s someone else’s problem. Take full advantage of the opportunity; others will.
13. Make sure you answer all parts of the question. If a question asks you “In how many ways can you make change for a dollar if the bill is 99 cents? List them.” Then your answer is “One way: a single penny.” The answer is NOT “One penny.” Point values may be associated with both parts of that simple question--don’t lose them by not answering what the question asked. That brings up another good point: answer what the question asks, not what you want to talk about. If you have time at the end, go back through the exam and make certain that you not only answered every question and all parts of every question, but that you did, in fact, answer what the question asked and not your particular bent on an issue. This has particular relevance on humanities-type exams.
14. For science-type exams, don’t forget about UNITS. The area of a triangle is not measured in nothings, it’s measured in square somethings--sq ft, sq in, sq cm, etc. This provides a good check, too, as to whether you answered the question appropriately. If the question asked you for a volume and at the end of your calculations, you have something whose units are in liters, that’s good. If you wound up with something whose units are in inches, or even square inches, that’s bad--you need cubic inches. Units also help in the calculations themselves--by writing everything in a formula with the associated units, you can see whether you’ll have appropriate cancellations and whether you’ll need a conversion factor thrown in somewhere.
15. Also for science-type exams, write down the applicable formula first, then write it with the appropriate numbers substituted in, then solve it. You may get partial credit just for copying down the right formula, even if you make a subsequent math error down the line.
16. Label things (like graph axes), show your work, and write large and neatly. This is especially important in multiple-step problems with many intermediate results. It’ll help you keep track of where you are and will help the grader follow your work if you label the figure you just crunched out as the volume of the spherical portion of the tank and circle it. Once you’ve found the volume of the cylindrical portion of the tank, do the same thing. Now you can easily look back in your work and find the two numbers you need to find the total volume. (Label and circle this final result, too.) If you’ve continued your work on the back, write “(over, please).” If you’ve continued it on scratch paper, label the scratch paper with the problem number and number the scratch paper pages. Make it easy to follow what you’re doing.
17. Use all of the available time. If you finish early, go back through the test and make sure you’ve answered everything. Check your work for stupid math errors. If there’s enough time, rework the problem in its entirety on scrap paper. For humanities-type questions, READ WHAT YOU HAVE WRITTEN BEFORE TURNING IT IN. Does it make sense? Does it flow? Are there grammatical/spelling errors? Catching these things ahead of time is a lot better than turning in good work that has many foolish errors--it brings the outstanding essay down a notch or two and loses you points.
18. Manage your time. It makes no sense to spend 20 minutes on a 5 point question during an hour-long, 100 point exam. You can do the division and budgeting up front and write out your plan on a piece of your scratch paper. 100 points and 60 minutes... so that’s an average of 0.6 minutes per point--hence, a 5 point question should take me about 3 minutes, give-or-take. If it’s been 5 minutes and you still are nowhere with the question, drop it for later. Get to work on the 25 point question on the next page. As a matter of fact, there’s no law that says you have to work the problems in the order they appear--do the 25 point questions FIRST. Then work on the piddly-little 5 and 7 pointers. Better to run out of time and tank one of them than to tank a high-value question.
19. If you find yourself freezing up or panicking because you’ve flipped through the exam and think you don’t know any of it, make yourself knock that unproductive crap off. Take some deep breaths and try to relax. Clear your mind, then locate a question you think you have a chance at--read it carefully and start working on it. Focus. Don’t worry about what you don’t know; work on what you do know. Once you’ve regained control of yourself and have calmed down, become mindful once again of the relative point values and the time available--then act accordingly.
