6 ways to help a nervous school entrance applicant

A quick disclaimer: these days, exams are in so many different formats: online, offline, adaptive, summative, multiple-choice, extended answer; the list could go on and on. Some of these tips will be more appropriate for some formats than for others, but any examinee will find something helpful below.

1 Don’t underestimate the power of one deep breath

One. Deep. Slow. Breath. It’s calmed many an examinee’s nerves, and my students know that when they’re feeling stressed, this is their first port of call.

2 ‘Mouth’ the questions

It’s incredible how effective this technique is. I tell my students that they should be ‘mouthing’ the questions they find difficult (obviously you can’t read out loud in an exam). When text is read like this, the brain processes the information in a completely different way. New connections and understandings suddenly appear. Not only this, but the student is forced to read every word of every question, making them much less likely to miss key information and make mistakes. It’s like magic – just try it!

3 Mark up the exam paper

When we’re in stressful situations, our cognitive capacity and working memory both suffer. In exams, one way we tackle this is to reduce ‘mental load’ – the amount of work that the brain is having to do at any one time.

I always tell my tutees that their ruler should be flashing up and down their exam paper. In reading, they should be underlining their answers when they find them in the text. In maths, I have them are marking up key information in question which will help them draw their bar model or decide what they need to do to answer a word problem. With the information marked up, they can devote all of their mental resources to tackling the questions, rather than wasting time and headspace re-finding information.

4 Get an overview

You wouldn’t take a journey without knowing the route, and you shouldn’t start a paper without getting an overview.

This applies particularly to reading papers. A student who reads the text first gains an overview, and so knows roughly where the answers to their questions lie. An examinee who dives right in will be wasting time, energy and headspace.

5 Don’t get bogged down

I tell my tutees that they must never linger too long on a tough question. It bogs them down, which can be very unhelpful both psychologically and in terms of exam technique.

Instead, I tell them that it’s much easier to tackle the harder, potentially stressful questions after they’ve got the confidence of a few well-earned marks under their belt. If a question is confusing or stressful, spend a small amount of time pondering it, and if an answer or solution is still not forthcoming, circle it and come back later.

Of course, this isn’t possible with some online assessments (such as the ISEB pre-test), as you cannot navigate back to questions you’ve previously seen, which is why the next tip is so important:

6 Learn to divvy up the time

A student should walk into an exam with a key piece of information: either the number of marks per minute, or the number of minutes per question, or the number of questions per minute. Not only will this allow them to use their time effectively, but it will also help them with assessments where they can’t skip back, because they can know whether they need to keep going or have time to linger.