How to Study

Be selective and study in depth. The more classes you’ve managed to miss, the more selective you need to be in organizing your c ...

A fact or topic need not be repeated in order to scream “Learn me!” Just as you learned to watch a teacher’s body language and l ...

The best teachers use a combination of test questions to find out what you know. Frankly, some of them hate grading essay questi ...

Never Study “Everything” Once you’ve discovered the type of test facing you, you need to figure out what’s going to be onit (and ...

Familiarization also breeds organization, allowing you to concentrate on the test itself and not on its structure. This gives yo ...

Know the Ground Rules Will you be penalized for guessing? The teacher may inform you that you will earn two points for every cor ...

Discriminate and Eliminate There is usually nothing wrong with guessing, unless, of course, you know wrong answers will be penal ...

■ If two numbers differ only by a decimal point (and the others aren’t close), choose one of them. (Example: 2.3, 40, 1.5, 6, 15 ...

If you do guess at any of the objective questions and expect that your test paper will be returned to you, place a little dot or ...

Whom Are You Impressing on Your Way Out? Leave time at the end to recheck your answers, and don’tmake a habit of leaving tests e ...

7.The answer is usually wrongif it contains “all,” “always,” “never,” or “none.” I repeat, usually. 8.The answer contains a grea ...

Multiple-Choice Strategy There are three ways to attack a multiple-choice test: 1.Start at the first question and keep going, qu ...

Many experts recommend this method because they maintain that answering so many questions one after another gives you immediate ...

Don’t fall into the “answer daze,” that blank stare some students get when they can’t think of an answer—for 10 minutes. Do some ...

Here’s the method I recommend for answering comprehension questions: 1.Read the questions beforeyou read the selection. They wil ...

50–50 Odds Aren’t Bad. True or False? What can you do to increase your scores on true/false tests? Be more inclined to guess if ...

Few broad, general statements are true without exception. So always be on your guard when you see the words “all,” “always,” “no ...

By performing one simple task, you can eliminate two of the possible answers. Multiply the last digits in each number (1 3). Th ...

■ Try to write down all of your calculations—neatly. You’ll be less likely to make a mistake if you take your time, and if you d ...

Since you have to anticipate that there will be no easy questions, no matter how well you know that material, you need to do som ...