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Tips on Reducing Test Anxieties

SeouliteSeoulite Core Member
in General 43 karma

Hi guys, I have a serious issue with test anxieties. How come does a person when he does a drill section by section and gets an average -6 on RC, untimed - but always do it on time - get a -15 on a recent preptest. I diagnosed this as lack of confidence and looming test anxieties. Any tips on reducing test anxieties? I appreciate your comments, thanks.

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  • nicsydney0210nicsydney0210 Member
    edited March 2023 52 karma

    I have the same problem, definitely averaging the same discrepancy as you during timed conditions. Hoping to get advice on this as well!

  • sucralosedaddysucralosedaddy Alum Member
    edited March 2023 310 karma

    Keep in mind there's other factors like fatigue (especially with the RC section placement), but I would agree a lot of it has to do with anxiety and there pressure that we put on ourselves.

    Mostly you need to keep doing timed tests to build confidence to get over it, but a strategy I found was purposefully reminding myself that I can miss questions on the test and still be a top scorer and I'll be okay.

    For example on a hard 4 section test you can miss -10 questions and still score a 173 (which is the median at the top schools in the country), so going into the test I always think "how I'm just gonna allocate those wrong answers".

    So I sort of plan ahead and think "okay I'll get -0 on LG, -2 or -3 on the LR sections, and that gives me -5 on RC since that's my worst section". For me its comforting in a way to think in these terms and it almost compartmentalize the individual questions as a whole and it lets me relax in RC to think I can basically leave a whole passage unread (and still maybe maybe get into Harvard hahaha).

    Say I was a little too confident and made a couple mistakes so I missed 2 on LG, got -3 and -4 on the two LR sections, but did a little better on RC by only missing 3. That a -12 and I'm still at ~171/170. That's a great day in my book (and now maybe maybe maybe with a good personal statement I'll just be a 25th percentile acceptance at Harvard lol).

    So whatever your goal score is, try to figure out how many questions you can miss on average and what your targets for each section should be, take your test with that in mind.

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