Strategies to Tackle Exam Anxiety to Stay Calm and Focused
Conquer exam anxiety and gain insights for a stress-free approach to exams and academic success with these proven tips.
Do you ever feel overwhelmed right before or during your exams? Maybe you start feeling sweaty, short of breath, shaky, nauseous, or like your mind is moving a million miles a minute?
If you feel like exam anxiety is getting in the way of your academic success, you are not alone. There are many students who feel overwhelmed by the pressure to perform well on exams.
It’s important to be aware of exam anxiety so that you can prioritize exam preparation that will minimize your stress and give you the tools to respond to exam anxiety when you do experience it.
Building habits and strategies to remain calm and focused even in the midst of numerous ‘high stakes’ exams is an important process for many high achieving students. The ability to manage exam anxiety effectively is also a skill that will continue to serve you throughout your professional career.
Understanding What Causes Exam Anxiety
The first step in tackling your exam anxiety is understanding where it stems from and how it presents for you. Some common causes are fear of failure, perfectionism, lack of preparation, negative self talk, and low confidence. These can be mitigated with some planning and hard work. The nine strategies below will walk you through how to go into test day feeling confident, capable, and ready to overcome any exam-related dread as it surfaces.
Strategies for Managing Exam Anxiety
Start Preparing for Exams Early
Early preparation for exams is one of the most effective steps to combat exam anxiety. Preparation will not only build the hard skills you will need to do your best on your exams, it will also build your confidence. You’re far less likely to feel panicked or stressed on the day of the exam, if you are familiar with the material that will be on the exam and have successfully completed similar problems throughout your preparation process. Familiarity with the material can really help to minimize any day-of jitters.
Utilize Effective Time Management
Time constraints are often an additional source of stress during an exam. Nerves - that perhaps stem from perfectionism or fear of failure - may tell you to double down and work out a problem you are stuck on before moving on, which is exactly what can throw your timing off.
It’s important to remember that challenging problems that you haven’t seen in your preparation may come up on your exam. Even on familiar problems, you could make a simple error that you aren’t able to spot and therefore stumps you. Typically, missing that one right answer will be far less detrimental than wasting all of your time on one question and missing out on all of the questions that come after it.
Your early preparation for the exam will allow you to identify questions that you already know how to answer or solve. When you come across an unfamiliar or challenging question, you can skip it and circle back at the end of the test.
(Pro tip: If your exam is multiple choice, you may want to fill in an educated guess before moving on. That way, if you run out of time to go back to that question, you still have a chance of having answered it correctly.)
Your preparation should also include timed exercises that allow you to practice under a comparable time constraint. This will give you important information about pacing. You may want to determine how much time you have per question or section of the exam. That way, timing will no longer be an unknown and anxiety inducing variable that could derail your exam performance.
Practice Relaxation Techniques
Even with early preparation, some jitters leading up to and during the exam are entirely normal. It’s good to try out a few relaxation techniques to determine what works best for you. Here are a couple you can try if you feel your anxiety building:
Take a few slow, deep breaths. This can effectively lower your heart rate and blood pressure in a moment of stress.
Bring a fidget toy or stress ball to the exam if permitted.
Pause your focus on the exam by counting down slowly from ten.
Get Ample Rest
One of the most important things you can do for your body in the days leading up to an exam is get plenty of rest. You might feel tempted to sacrifice sleep in order to ‘cram’ for an exam. YOu are actually lowering your chances of doing well on the exam in doing so. Real learning and improvement is solidified when you practice repeatedly over time. Frantic preparation in the final moments before an exam will not compensate for a lack of preparation in the weeks or months leading up to the exam.
Now, it’s perfectly normal to feel nervous the night before an exam. You might have the impulse to stay up studying even though you have already been preparing diligently. In these moments, remind yourself that you have already put in the work to perform well on the exam. You’ll need a well rested mind for the test the next day! In fact, you are more likely to experience symptoms of exam anxiety during your exam if you have slept poorly the night before.
Here’s a couple tips for getting a good night’s sleep if your exam anxiety is keeping you up:
Exercise a few hours before you plan to head to bed
Stop looking at screens at least half an hour before bed
Maintain a consistent sleep schedule in the weeks leading up to the exam
Expect Some Anxiety
Even if you’ve done everything you can to mitigate your exam-day anxiety it’s very likely that you’ll still experience some level of stress or nervousness before or during the exam. This is entirely normal! Your body is telling you that you care about the outcome of the exam. Use this energy to focus in and give your best effort.
If that anxiety starts to feel overwhelming you may want to take some deep breaths, or even take a fifteen to thirty second pause. Giving yourself a few seconds to reset is far more efficient than continuing to push in a moment of overwhelming stress.
Join Study Groups or Work with a Tutor
One of the best things you can do to prepare yourself for an exam is join a study group or work with a tutor. First of all, a study group or tutor can hold you accountable to the early preparation that will give you confidence as test day approaches.
Additionally, the assistance of a trained professional - like a tutor - will allow you to make more significant growth over a shorter period of time. Instead of banging your head against a wall attempting a perplexing type of problem over and over again, a tutor can help you fill in any knowledge gaps and re-strategize your approach to challenging problems. A tutor will also be able to help you build good test taking skills including effective time management.
The same is true for study groups to a certain extent. You and your peers may find different problems challenging. Through teaching one another you are also solidifying your own knowledge. You may also find it useful to exchange tips and tricks about test taking strategies.
Get a Balanced Nutrition
Just like we discussed in tip number four, it’s so important to take care of your body so that your mind has the fuel it needs to focus on the exam. It might be worth thinking about what meals make you feel well-nourished. A good breakfast is an absolute essential for a successful exam day. You should also bring snacks and water with you to the testing site.
It’s worth thinking about your caffeine intake, as well. If you are a regular coffee drinker, there’s nothing wrong with having a morning cup like you would any other day. Drastically increasing your caffeine intake for exam day is not advised, though. Caffeine jitters will only add to any symptoms of anxiety and make it harder to focus.
Develop Good Test Taking Strategies
Even though it’s not explicitly taught in most schools, test taking is a skill that is learned over time. You can significantly improve your test outcomes and reduce nerves by using effective test taking strategies like:
answering easier questions first before you move on to harder or more time consuming ones;
crossing out wrong answers on a multiple choice exam;
identifying key words in a question or passage;
using the available resources (e.g. a calculator, a note sheet, scratch paper, a clock or watch, etc.).
A tutor can also help you to identify areas for improvement in your test taking skills and build a strategy that is specific to the format and content of your exam. Even some test day jitters won’t be able to derail your test taking experience if you have already developed strong test taking strategies.
Visualize Success and Push Negative Thoughts Away
Last, but certainly not least, envisioning your own success is proven to lead to higher test scores. You should feel proud of the hard work you have put into your exam preparation. Think back to all of the challenges you have overcome and all the times that, through practice, you have proven your own capability to yourself.
It’s also important to remember that your exam does not define the academic progress you have made throughout your preparation process. There will be many opportunities to showcase your capability throughout your academic journey.
Build Testing Confidence with a Study Skills Coach
Embrace these practical exam anxiety strategies as you approach midterms this year – arm yourself with mindfulness, preparation, and self-care techniques to confidently navigate exams and pave the way for academic triumph. Elevate your performance, reduce stress, and unlock your true potential for success.
If you believe your child could use help developing test-taking strategies and confidence, reach out to our team to learn more about working with an expert study skills coach or test prep tutor.
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