ACE Your Exams, Tests, & Quizzes: 34 Test-Taking Strategies for Top Grades, Time Efficiency, Less Stress, and Academic Excellence

By Peter Hollins

Get inside a test creator’s head and give them exactly what they want for top grades. How to truly excel in school.

Test performance is not really about intelligence. It’s actually about your preparation, and how well you understand how to take tests. That’s an entirely different skill in itself. So let’s teach you how to truly excel in school.

Simple tips to improve your grades and rise to the top of your class – study smarter, not harder.

ACE Your Tests, Exams, & Quizzes is an instructional guide to the thing that matters the most in academic – taking tests. It takes you through the three phrases: before, during, and after. Before is all about your preparation, during is all about how to stay calm and look at test questions differently, and after is all about your post-mortem analysis for perpetual improvement.
A holistic look at you as a student, to practically guarantee your trajectory to the top of your class.

Learn how to perform under pressure. Destroy your test anxiety and stop worrying.

Peter Hollins has studied psychology and peak human performance for over a dozen years and is a bestselling author. He has worked with a multitude of individuals to unlock their potential and path towards success. His writing draws on his academic, coaching, and research experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Nov 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9798771546056

Peter Hollins

Pete Hollins is a bestselling author and human psychology and behavior researcher. He is a dedicated student of the human condition. He possesses a BS and MA in psychology, and has worked with dozens of people from all walks of life. After working in private practice for years, he has turned his sights to writing and applying his years of education to help people improve their lives from the inside out. He enjoys hiking with his family, drinking craft beers, and attempting to paint. He is based in Seattle, Washington. To learn more about Hollins and his work, visit PeteHollins.com.

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Table of Contents

BEFORE THE TEST

Chapter 1 – Laying the Foundation

Figure Out When to Start Studying

Start Your Revision Early

Maintain Good Study Habits

Identify Your Preferred Learning Style

Create an Exam Checklist

Gather Practical Exam Details

Don’t Skimp on Proper Breaks

Chapter 2 – Study techniques that work

The Leitner System

Do as Much Retrieval Practice as Possible

Do Practice Tests

Use Flow Charts and Diagrams

Practice Confidence

Study Before Bed

DURING THE TEST

Chapter 3 – Orienting yourself

Do a Memory Dump

Closely Monitor and Manage Time

Read All the Options in Detail

Look for Cues

Take Notes as You Read

Concentrate on What You Know

Should You Trust First Impressions?

Chapter 4 – Mastering Short Questions and Essays

Understand Story Structure

Make an Outline

Be Persuasive

Deploy Quotes from Other People and Sources Where You Can

Don’t Include More Examples than You Need To

AFTER THE TEST

Chapter 5 – The Test Postmortem

Sleep, Relax, and Get Some Rest

Assess Your Current Studying Techniques and Behaviors Thoroughly

Buckle Down. And Stay Buckled Down!

Chapter 6 – Becoming a Lifelong Learner

Learn From Your Mistakes

Conquering Test-Taking Anxiety

Talk to Your Teacher

Summary Guide

BEFORE

THE

TEST

Chapter 1 – Laying the Foundation

Figure Out When to Start Studying

Let’s start at the very beginning: the planning phase. If getting a good grade on a test is your ultimate destination, then having a study plan is a road map to get there. If you’ve ever studied for tests in the past and felt like you ran out of time to fit everything in, you’ll know exactly why the most important first step is to budget how many hours you have to work with.

The truth is, you actually begin studying for a test from the very first day you take a class—or even before. Preparing for a test should ideally be a natural extension of the focused work you’ve been doing with that subject all along. Done right, studying is more like revising since if you’ve planned ahead, you’ll already have taken useful notes, reviewed them, done homework assignments and practice, and made summaries as you went along. The final days and weeks before a test are when you gather everything together and make sure that you’re prepared for what you’ll face on exam day.

You need to answer two basic questions:

What do I need to cover?

How much time do I have available?

Sounds basic, but many students find themselves in trouble because they fail to answer one or both. Be warned: answering everything to the first question and as much time as I can humanly squeeze in is a recipe for disaster! You need to be specific. To decide what you need to focus on, you may use a guide or outline given to you by your teacher, or you can consult past papers to get a feel for the scope of what you’ll be tested on and to what depth.

This first question is not just about content, though, it’s also about how you’ll be expected to show your understanding, i.e., the form your questions will take. Again, past papers will give you an insight, but you can also think about the kinds of exercises and homework you’ve practiced throughout the course. We’ll look in more detail at different study techniques in later chapters, but essentially you will be dividing up your available time on different study tasks. These tasks could be:

Reading

Making summaries of what you’ve read, e.g., mind maps

Memorizing details, e.g., making and using flashcards for key terms

Worked practice, such as with geometry or algebra problems

Completing past papers

Once you understand everything you need to cover, then you can look at how much time you have and how to budget this time strategically. For example, you may be studying for a biology exam. Based on your teacher’s guidance and the formats of previous papers, you understand you need to cover chapters four to eight. You start by making a list of all the tasks you need to complete; for example, read through all the chapters again, make summarizing diagrams of processes, and complete practice questions at the back of the book. Then you make an estimate of how long each of these tasks will take you—being generous!

How do you know how long you’ll need for each task? You can guess, for one. Or, you can use what you know about yourself from previous study sessions. The most accurate way, however, is to actually measure it. For example, do a test run where you read a half chapter and time how long it takes you. Then you multiply this by eight to get an estimate of the time needed to read all four chapters. It may seem like this extra step wastes time, but in fact, it ensures you don’t waste time later.

Now, the exam is in three weeks. After tallying up how much time you need for each task, you can look at your calendar and start to schedule everything in, leaving enough time for breaks and unexpected changes. You draw up a plan of exactly what you’re covering each day, and how much time you’re dedicating to that task. It’s simple, but it works:

You know exactly what you’re meant to be doing and when. It can calm your nerves if you know that as long as you follow the plan, you will get it all done and be prepared come exam day.

You are now empowered to rearrange tasks a little when plans change, without interfering with the overall strategy. If you know you’ll have a big distraction happening on Tuesday, for example, you can comfortably schedule around it so you don’t feel pressured to squeeze everything in.

You are less overwhelmed—you don’t need to think about anything other than what’s in front of you for that day or study session. This gets you more focused and more relaxed.

One of the two biggest rules for effective study are:

plan ahead, and

spread out your tasks as evenly as possible.

That means that the earlier you start, the more time you have to put together a plan that will work and the more time you can spend on each task without stressful cramming. So many of us procrastinate when we’re feeling overwhelmed. We look at the massive pile of work to do and we’re exhausted or intimidated by how difficult it will be. But this kind of procrastination tends to be a self-fulfilling prophesy—the more we put off, the bigger the pile gets, and the scarier it looks the next time we muster up enough motivation. Think of a study plan as a way to reduce stress and make things easier on yourself.

Even still, things may not go according to plan, and we may have to fit more into a shorter time than we’d like. That’s not a problem! If you only have a week, three days, or just a day, you can still follow a condensed version of the same process above. Identify the most important material to focus on, decide what tasks you need to complete to study this material, decide how long each task takes, then schedule those tasks in the time you have available. Simple. The less time you have, the more you are going to have to focus on the most important material and skim the rest.

Finally, here’s one key tip for the days just before a big exam: don’t forget to take breaks and sleep! Your brain consolidates what it’s learned and revitalizes itself during sleep. The last thing you want is to turn up to a test groggy and forgetful because you’re sleep deprived.

Start Your Revision Early

The saying goes: The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second-best time is now. The same can be said of studying. The sooner, the better. You need to give yourself enough time to properly cover everything you need to study, as well as time to revise, work through any snags or problems, or ask for help.

We’ve all done a little last minute emergency cramming, but the truth is that you’re not likely to get very good results