Test Taking Strategies (766 views)

By the last years of high school you should give your all and go hardcore- Spend as much time as you can studying, even if you have to sacrifice some leisure time. Sleeping well is also very important and you should try to get the 8 recommended hours of sleep so you go fresh and awake to class.
Stay up to date with your classes and avoid all-nighters because the lack of sleep can worsen everything (I had a blank mind for about 20 mins in a subject I was good at because I stayed up all night studying for other subject on finals).

When taking test, always answer the questions you know very well first, that way you can secure some points, and if you see you have gotten stuck in a question, start doing another. Wasting time over questions you can´t remember removes it from those you know.
In multiple choice tests, there are three kinds of questions: The ones you know, the ones you are dubious in and the ones you have no idea about. Don´t even bother with the latter ones. Once you have finished with the ones you know, go on with the dubious ones. There, you will choose the options you think are more likely to be the right answer and finally, depurate those options into the final answer.
Finally, don´t change the questions you were sure you answered right at the beginning.
(These tips are from a teacher)

If you are facing a long question (E.g. History), where you have to write down a lot of information, dates, places, names and actions (or meaning) are what you have to write down. Mentioning how many troops were on a certain place is less relevant that the name of the individuals who begun that war.

I hope this kind of helps.

This was already mentioned, but I always find skipping questions that are difficult straightaway is a pretty good strategy. For example, my end-of-year biology exam this year was unusually long (there wre over 180 marks available!) and I got stuck by the second page. So, I skipped it and everything else that seemed difficult, and did everything I was certain I knew. While this secured some definite marks, it also really kind of jogged my memory and got me into the correct mindset and then I was able to tackle the questions I found difficult at first. Half of the time, the questions that had seemed difficult were actually not too bad, I just needed a bit of time to get in the zone, if you know what I mean? So that test-taking method always works well for me.

When it comes to maths, I don't know if this is the same in America, where I assume you're from, but here you still get marks during exams just for any correct working out you do, even if you didn't get the actual answer right, so always make sure you do something the numbers you're given, because even though you may not get to an answer, you may do something right that counts for some marks! Also, when checking through, try to work backwards through your method from your answer and see if you end up with what you started with because then that's a sure sign you got it right!

When it comes to English exams I always try to keep in mind that it's quality over quantity - it doesn't matter how much you write, as long as it's good. I wrote a lot less than all my friends during this year's exam but I still ended up getting the same, if not higher, marks across the sections because what I wrote covered everything succinctly.
Depending on what kind of thing you're writing or what kind of question you're answering, there's usually a good technique or a list of 'tickables' (things you're always rewarded for including) you can find out which is a good thing to keep in mind during your exam - this also tends to be true for history and foreign language exams. 

Above all, I recommend just making sure you've understood the question correctly and haven't read it wrong at all. I try to underline/highlight important stuff in questions to make sure I a) know the key things they're asking me/need to talk about, b) know important bits of information they've given me, and c) have read the question properly! Honestly, not reading questions properly is, like, my number 1 reason why I lose marks! 

I also like to go through the exam and see how many questions there are during the test and allocate a set time for me to work on each question, leaving some time left over for me to go back and add more/check over my answers. Doing this ensures that I don't spend too long on some questions and have no time to answer others which is always stressful, so time management during exams always helps me keep my cool a bit! 

Also, this year when studying/revising for exams I downloaded this app about a month before (although I'd recommend using it even longer before if the exams are really important) which allowed me to study each subject to an appropriate degree depending on how much I felt I really needed to do, if that makes sense? For example, I told the app I didn't want to concentrate as much on my foreign languages (since I only needed to revise vocabulary which was less work than I needed to do for all my other subjects), and so when it made my study plan it spent the shortest amount of time on those. This was really helpful for me because it helped me manage my study time and made sure that I spent enough time on each subject, depending on how much I felt I needed to do!

Hope this helps!