How to manage test anxiety before exams

A little nervousness about exams is perfectly normal, and sometimes can even help performance by encouraging students to pay attention to details and stay focused on the challenge that’s in front of them.

However, for many students, the anxiety they feel on tests is anything but beneficial. 

Some students feel so nervous when they sit down to take exams that they have a hard time remembering the information they have studied.

Instead of focusing on the questions in front of them, a large part of their working memory is preoccupied with worries about whether they are moving through the test quickly enough or getting enough problems right, and fears about what will happen if they do not do well

Like a computer that freezes when it has too many energy-intensive programs running, students’ brains can freeze up during exams, making it hard to process or respond to the questions in front of them.

If your teen experiences test anxiety, or would simply like to go into their tests feeling more confident and prepared, there are a number of research-based strategies they can use to prepare themselves to perform more effectively on their tests.

Here are some of my favorites…

Test yourself on the material

In a recent study, 72% of students reported that taking regular practice tests on the material they were learning made them feel less nervous when taking tests and exams.  (Agarwala et al., 2014)

Taking regular practice tests on the material you are learning provides a number of benefits.

One is that you get frequent feedback confirming that you can successfully recall the information and answer test questions successfully, which improves your self-confidence.

Regular self-testing can also help desensitize students to the testing process, so the overall experience of taking a test becomes less stressful and overwhelming for them. The more similar you can make your practice tests to your actual test conditions, the more effective this will be.

Write about the stress

Before high-stakes tests, students will often try to ignore or downplay their feelings and pretend they are not worried. 

However, research suggests that acknowledging feelings and taking time to express them can actually help boost performance on high-stakes tests.

Psychologists found that asking students to take 10 minutes before a high-pressure test to write as openly as possible about their thoughts and feelings regarding the upcoming test performed significantly better than students who did not write about their thoughts & feelings, or who wrote about an unrelated, unemotional event. 

For students who are feeling anxious or nervous about a high-stakes test, getting their worries out of their head and onto paper can allow them to externalize these thoughts, and make it easier to let go of them and free up their working memory to focus on the task at hand.

One extra step that they did not do in this initial study but that we like to recommend to our students is to take a moment after they have finished writing to rip up the paper and imagine the worries dissolving and disappearing as they toss the paper fragments into the trash.

This is a quick intervention that students can do before their test, before they leave the house in the morning, while riding to school, or during a lunch break or study hall immediately before their exam period.

Turn nervousness into EXCITEMENT!

When students are feeling nervous before a test, the advice they typically hear before a test is to try to relax and calm down.

But recent research suggests that — rather than telling students to stay calm before a test — we should actually be telling them to get excited.

In her book The Upside of Stress, Kelly McGonigal shares findings from a study where researchers instructed one group of students immediately before their tests to “try to remain calm” and told another group of students to “try to get excited”.

The students who were instructed to get excited did significantly better on their tests than the students who were asked to stay calm. 

This might seem like a surprising result, but it makes sense if you think about how calm, anxious, and excited feelings are related to one another.

If you draw these emotions on a graph, nervousness is at the negative high-energy quadrant (upper left) and calm is in the positive low-energy quadrant (lower right).

These are such different emotions, it is challenging (if not impossible!) for most people to go from being stressed out and anxious to completely calm and relaxed…especially when they are still in the middle of a high-stress situation. 

In contrast, it is much easier to leap from one high-energy emotion to another and go from nervousness to excitement. In fact, the two feelings can often co-exist…for example, if you think about standing in line for a roller coaster, that is a situation where you might feel a combination of both feelings… a little nervous, and a little excited.

This is one reason why the (typical) test-taking advice to relax and stay calm can sometimes backfire. When students try to calm down but can’t get themselves to relax, they may start to get anxious about not being able to relax and start worrying that their nervousness is going to impair their performance…which takes even more of their attention away from the test itself.

So next time your teen is going into a high-stakes test, instead of telling them to stay calm and relaxed try encouraging them to get motivated and energized about the test, in the same way that athletes get pumped up and energized before running out onto the field for a big game.

Not only can this help improve their performance, but it can also help them enjoy the test-taking experience more, too!

Move!

Exercise is one of the best ways to reduce stress and anxiety. As an added bonus, exercise also increases executive functioning skills which can help boost students’ scores on tests by improving their focus and problem-solving abilities. (To learn more about the benefits of exercise on the brain, check out our review of the book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.)

It can be difficult for most students to use exercise to cope with exam-related stress that is happening during the school day. But if they can take a few minutes before school to do some jumping jacks, go for a quick run around the block, or sprint up and down the stairs a few times, this may help them feel less stressed and get in a great state of mind for the exam!

And any opportunity your student might be able to find to move their body during the school day is even more helpful. Maybe they could take a walk after lunch, or squeeze in a few jumping jacks outside in between classes.

Next steps

Which of these research-based strategies do you think would be most useful for helping your teen overcome test anxiety and feel more confident about their exams? 

Are there any other strategies your student has used successfully to help reduce their test anxiety? I’d love to hear what’s working for them!

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About The Author

Dr. Maggie Wray is a certified ADHD Coach & Academic Life Coach with a Ph.D. in Neurobiology and Behavior from Cornell and a Bachelor’s degree in Astrophysics from Princeton. She founded Creating Positive Futures in 2012 to help high school and college students learn how to earn better grades with less stress. Her team of dedicated coaches is on a mission to empower students to develop the mindset, organization, time management, and study skills they need to achieve their goals.