Whether it be AP exams, SAT or ACT tests, or endless quizzes, high school is packed with unavoidable arrays of questions and alphabetic answer choices. In the first semester, these timed questionnaires may only seem to be a minor inconvenience; afterall, grades don’t count until the fourth quarter, so you’ll just “lock in” in the spring. This plan is foolproof.  Until it’s May, your grades are down, and that SAT score? Even lower. If this is you, here’s the good news; I’ve spent the past two years circling the same four letters- albeit in different orders- and have figured out how to take tests down to a science. Here are my top tips to ace multiple-choice tests. 

• Read 

More often than not, these standardized tests have some time limit. This means that you’re constantly being implicitly tested on your reading comprehension along with the content of your course. For me, I always make sure that I am reading a book outside of school that truly engages me and takes me out of the present moment, which is usually a work of literary fiction. Practicing reading comprehension daily and consistently accessing this “flow state” makes test days infinitely easier. 

• Ask Questions

The obvious tip would be to raise your hand in class, utilize SOAR 4, or stay after during office hours to fill in any comprehension gaps. Everyone knows this. But these questions are inherently flawed; you’re only gaining the information you think you don’t know. Instead, your pointed questions should be asked in tandem with open-ended ones too. In practice, it would mean sitting down with a teacher or peer successful in the class and asking them, “can you walk me through how you would answer this question?” This focuses the content through the lens of its application and targets any discrepancy between your thought process, which may or may not be wrong, and the response of an answer key. 

• Drill the Uncomfortable 

If you’re studying for a unit test and an AP exam, the hardest part about these tests is simply the scope of the material. At that point, the distinguishing factor between a student in the 90th and 75th percentile is simply how well they were able to recall five or six months of material on a given day. The biggest trap a lot of students fall into is passively studying. They line up all of their pastel highlighters, only to go into the test recalling their expertly-crafted penmanship and the number of accounts that saved their Pinterest post of their so-called study session. Instead, studying should be about active recall, utilizing online practice sets, Khan Academy problems, and textbook practice problems. All of these resources directly involve you by letting you make mistakes and see where your gaps are. While tedious and oftentimes demeaning, active recall is the most effective method for studying. 

While what you do on test day is, ultimately, what determines your score, there are things that are absolutely in your control to ease your testing anxiety. Focus on what you can, and let your luck of the exam questions and passages fall where they may.