In a world where scores have a significant impact on courses, GPA, and future opportunities, students stress and cram for these timed tests, limiting their time to showcase their knowledge and preventing them from performing at their best. According to a Univervisity of Nebraska-Lincoln study on timed tests, “Evidence strongly suggests that timed tests cause the early onset of math anxiety for students across the achievement range.”
“The very first time I took it, I didn’t have confidence, and the time part definitely scared me,” senior Neely Edwards sais. Timed and untimed tests have been around since elementary school and have included the MAP and NSCAS to name a few. Tests have been a part of students’ lives from the beginning.
“When I was younger, when we took the MAP, I took like two weeks to finish that test,” Edwards said. “Because I was still more concerned about getting it right than time. So when they threw time in there, I was freaking out a bunch,” she said. Timed tests add pressure to the tester, making them feel unprepared for the test.
“There is anxiety about feeling not prepared, specifically about the ACT,” said senior Porter Friskopp. “I just walk in the room and try my best to focus and read. Forcing yourself to read and forcing yourself to consume what’s on the paper, you tend to focus on, instead of the stress,” he said.
With this pressure from the test, students might get caught up in questions, running short on time. Students might be forced to rush and guess to finish the test.
“Bubbling down at the end– I had to do that the first time,” senior Grayson Martin said. “The first time I took it, I bubbled down a lot, and I was like four points lower,” he said.
Finding test strategies is crucial to success in a testing environment, and each student has their own.
“Once I studied up and learned some strategies about getting faster, it went up,” Martin said.
Students spend countless hours studying and worrying about timed tests. With practice in and out of the classroom, sometimes testing comes easy to some.
“For me, timed tests have always been super easy,” Friskopp said. “I kinda have the ideology that you just keep going and don’t go back. There would be guilt of getting the right answer and changing it to a wrong one rather than getting a wrong answer the first time and rolling with it,”
he said.
Moving forward on a test and not getting held back on unfamiliar questions is a popular strategy that many students use.
“Once I kinda realized I know what I’m doing, I just trusted myself, and I was fine,” Edwards said.
Taking practice tests and reviewing material, using resources like John Baylor, are all great strategies. Remembering to prepare and focus on the test are key parts of achieving a good score on the ACT.
