36 ❯ Step 3. Develop Strategies for Success
and move on. Another question deeper into the exam might jog a memory of a theory
you studied or something you learned from a practice exam in this book. You can then
go back and quickly slay the beast. But if you spend a ridiculous amount of time on
one question, you will feel your confidence and your time slipping away. Which leads
me to my last tip.- Timing is everything, kid. You have about 70 seconds of time for each of the 60 questions.
Keep an eye on your watch as you pass the halfway point. If you are running out of time
and you have a few questions left, skim them for the easy (and quick) ones so that the rest
of your scarce time can be devoted to those that need a little extra reading or thought.
Other things to keep in mind:
• Take the extra half of a second required to clearly fill in the bubbles.
• Don’t smudge anything with sloppy erasures. If your eraser is smudgy, ask the proc-
tor for another.
• Absolutely, positively check that you are bubbling the same line on the answer sheet
as the question you are answering. I suggest that every time you turn the page you
double-check that you are still lined up correctly.
Section II: Free-Response Questions
Your score on the FRQs amounts to one-third of your grade, and as a longtime reader of
essays, I assure you there is no other way to score highly than to know your stuff. While
you can guess on a multiple-choice question and have a one-in-five chance of getting the
correct answer, there is no room for guessing in this section. There are, however, some tips
that you can use to enhance your FRQ scores.- Easy to Read = Easy to Grade. Organize your responses around the separate parts of the
question and clearly label each part of your response. In other words, do not hide your
answer; make it easy to find and easy to read. It helps you, and it helps the reader to
see where you’re going. Trust me, helping the reader can never hurt. Which leads me to a
related tip: Write in English, not Sanskrit. Even the most levelheaded and unbiased reader
has trouble keeping his or her patience while struggling to read sloppy handwriting. I have
seen three readers waste almost 10 minutes using the Rosetta stone to decipher a para-
graph of text that was obviously written by a time-traveling student from the Byzantine
Empire. - Consistently wrong can be good. The free-response questions are written in several parts,
each building upon the first. If you are looking at an eight-part question, it can be scary.
However, these questions are graded so that you can salvage several points even if you
do not correctly answer the first part. The key thing for you to know is that you must be
consistent, even if it is consistently wrong. For example, you might be asked to draw an
AD/AS graph showing how expansionary monetary policy can eliminate a recessionary
gap. Following sections might ask you to show the change in the aggregate price level
and real GDP—each being determined by the AD/AS graph you drew earlier. So let’s
say you draw your graph, but you show contractionary monetary policy. Obviously you
are not going to receive that graphing point. But if you proceed by showing correct
changes to the aggregate price level and real GDP for your incorrect graph, you would
be surprised how forgiving the grading rubric can be.