What are some strategies when taking multiple choice tests?

Question

I am in a medical program and the majority of the tests are multiple choice? I am the worst when it comes to taking tests. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Struggling Med Student.

Answer 1

Oh, THOSE tests. Ugh! :o) I feel the same way about multiple choice tests as you do.. and.. no, you can't possibly be the worst, maybe next-to-last worst at best, because I'M the worst. LOL

I guess the FIRST thing you should do when you get your test (this is what I always do) is close your eyes, take a DEEP breath, open your eyes, and start to peruse the whole test to get a sense of what you are in for. See how many total questions there are. Now I've done this myself, panicked, and gotten overwhelmed, but don't let it overwhelm you (heh!... here I am advicing you and I can't even follow my own advice :o) it's easier said than done -- not getting overwhelmed). This is just so that you have a sense or what is expected and how much time to allot to each question. This 'determination' / perusing step should only take 1-2 minutes at most. So it is worth doing at the very start.

You want to get a sense of what kinds of questions are being asked... how many... so that you can budget and gage your time. You'll be able to tell which questions will need more time than others to solve/answer. You'll also know 'roughly' what the average amount of time on each question is/should be. Taking into account that some may only take 5 seconds to answer after reading the question. But others might take 10 minutes... like a math question. But on average, you know approx. how much time you should be spending on a question.

Bring a watch with you to the test... so that you can see how you are doing as far as time... I know looking at it makes me panick because I see the time that has passed and the time left. But bringing and looking at the watch is not for panick reasons... it's so that you won't be so reliant/dependent on the professor/proctor... saying... "you have 15 minutes left!", and you go, "Oh, my gosh!!!" into panick mode. You have enough pressure as it is. The watch is so that you know that you have to hurry to finish... or okay... "I have extra time... to check my answers" or "I need to finish everything in blah-minutes that that I have blah-minutes to quickly check all my answers, as well as check for unanswered question and fill in last-minute guess answers"... I just mention the watch because most proctors do the "you have 15 minutes left" warning thing... thinking they are helping you... or only the "you have 5 minutes (or 2 minutes) left". You don't want to because of not having a watch realize at the 2-minute warning.. that you were taking your sweet time, so to speak (i.e. spending too long on the questions)... You don't really want to know... but you might like to have known that piece of fact around the 1-hour left mark... so that you know to hurry up. So bring your watch... and look at it from time to time... not too often, or you'll not have the time to solve the problems or it might make you freeze up. So occasionally from time to time... look at your watch... it only take 1-2 seconds... and is worth doing...

You also have your internal instinct clock... besides the watch. When you are stuck or are spending too much time on a question, you will know it because you will 'feel' it.... and when you feel and know that... you know that it is time to un-stuck yourself and move on to the next or another question elsewhere in the test...

I have the tendency to hold my breath during tests, especially multiple choice ones. Remember to BREATHE. Else what will happen to you is that you will start feeling lightheaded and hot/feverish... like I eventually feel like after holding my breath for so long. Remember to take deep breaths... do deep breathing, not shallow breathing. Then the oxygen will go to your brain... and your body will try to stay as calm as it can and your heart will beat as best it can under the pressure...

Secondly, know that you don't have to do the problems in the order they are asked... not unless you needed the answer in previous question to be able to calculate the answer of the next question. If they are all independent questions... you do them in the order that you want. Maybe you want to start with question 25... and then do question 7 next. Do the easy ones first... the ones you know will take you the least time... so that you have solid right answers right from the start. Save the hard ones.. the ones that take longer.. and have greater chance of you getting stuck on it and taking a long time to solve... thus wasting 'precious' time for the 'easier' questions... or the easier harder question to do. Then do the harder/hardest hardest ones LAST. Worse comes to worse, if you run out of time... or close to running out of time... no great loss... because the harder ones, not done, you just quickly 'guess'.... to 'buy'/collect possible extra points from perhaps guessing right.

Next strategy. When you have some idea, but not really sure... make an 'educated' guess. An 'educated' guess between two close answers is still a better chance than randomly selecting 1 out of 5 choices. An educated guess, you have a 50/50% chance of guessing right... because you eliminated 3 out of the 5 choices. Compared to randomly guessing, you have a 1 out of 5 or 20% chance of getting it right. However, if you don't know, think of it this way... instead of leaving it blank and 0% chance, 'at least' you have 20% change of being 'lucky', which is still better than 0%.

Next strategy... when in doubt and you don't know that answer, GUESS. It's the best thing that you can do, when you don't know what to do. And then go on to the next question.... or skip the ones you don't know (don't waste any more time on them).... if you don't know, then take a stab at guessing. You at least have a 1 out of the how ever many choices there are % chance of picking the right answer coincidentally. It's fine to guess, so long as you don't get penalized for wrong answers or wrong guesses. On my EIT and PE exams, we didn't get penalize for wrong answers or wrong guesses.

If it is any consolation to you.... I'm an engineering (a female, too!) and I had to take two 8 hour exams to get my license. I'm horrible when it comes to multiple choice tests because you don't have the benefit of partial credit. You are either 'right' or 'wrong'... no if, and's or buts.

I hate multiple choice especially if two of the answers are close. And I also hate them because if it's not one of my stronger topics... it throws in my direction possibilities... which confuse me... because i have 4 or 5 of these 'suggested' possibilities.

I guess one of the good things about multiple choice is that if you plain don't know, you can guess. Another good thing is that if there are two answers (say a calculation math problem) and you have one answer -12 and another with just 12 or +12, you know that there must be some 'trick' in the thinking... so they are testing if you know if and why it should be a + or - in the final answer. This goes the same with angles. If you see 45 degrees... and then 225 degrees... they are testing quadrants or some math thing in the formula you should know.... Or 102 degrees C and 102 degrees F in the answer choices... they are checking if you know what units your answer should be in...

Hope this helps... guess as long as you know you won't be penalized.

Me being so bad at taking multiple choice tests... I ended up passing both the 8-hour Part A test... and the 8-hour Part B test...and only had to take each part one time!

I struggled and succeeded.... you can too... and I know you can. You just have to believe that about yourself. And it helps to get a good night's sleep. You can't really take a test on 1 hour's sleep... so if the night before, you still don't know some subjects... then (take my advice), it's not worth staying up an extra hour or two to to learn/master the topic. Find a later time after the test to digest (no pun intended LOL) and master those topics.

Do the questions that you know first... don't trouble yourself with not sure questions (just mark those or circle the question to come back to later)... build up your confidence first while you are taking the test. It did me good when I made sure to pick 10 questions that I knew the answers to... before attacking something I was unsure of. You will really dig yourself in a hole before you have even begun the test... if you get boggled down by working on 10 questions you don't have a clue on... that just messes up your psyche. (it's better to start out feeling good with some right answers... than to start out really frustrated and muddle through the test... you won't do as well the latter way...) Just remember, if you don't know... 'it's okay'... it's not the end of the world... it doesn't mean that you'll fail the test... 'it's okay'... because there are so many other questions that you have the opportunity of getting right... these tests are LONG! Lots of questions... means that lots of opportunity to get answers right. If you are not getting answers... don't worry.... other people are also struggling... you all are in the same boat. (I haven't heard anyone say that the Boards to pass were a piece of cake to take... we all sweat...). You get something wrong... someone else is also getting something wrong. Otherwise it wouldn't be called a test.

Oh, I don't know if medical exam is like engineering. Our questions were independent of each other. That worked to my advantage, because although the previous format would have meant picking 10 questions and solving all of its parts and you could get partial credit... multiple choice if the next multiple choice question is not reliant on the answer of the previous... you can forget about the topic or put aside your frustration that you don't know the answer... because the next question may or may not be the same topic... it may be a topic that you know! The ones I really had ABSOLUTELY no clue, I just chose choice C (given A,B,C,D,E)... I stuck with the same letter figuring that some of them HAD to have C as the right answer.... works the same with sticking with A, or just B, or just D, or just E. But I usually do that in the last 1 -2 minutes remaining at the end of the test.

Lastly, if you have like a question that goes like... which of the following are true? And you have A) blah B) bluh C) blee D) all of the above, and E) none of the above... and you see that A) and B) are both true... no need to waste time to wonder if C is true... because since two choices are true.. then you know that the answer is automatically D) all.

It gets trickier when they ask that and then give you A) blah B) bluh C) blee, D) A & C, and E) none of the above. Because in this case, if you know A is true... you have to find out if C is also true to determine if you are going to put down A as your answer or D) (which has both A & C being true). It's not enough just to know that A is true. Your answer will be dependent on the true/falseness of C.

I agree with the 1st person that you should think before look at the answers... and also that the problems are like math problems and you are given things but have to use what you know. On the one hand, looking at the answer choices can confuse you.... on the other hand, looking at all the answers, can also aid you in figuring out the answer... like maybe the units... then you know that you are solving for something using some formula that will result in those units... If you have cm^3 then you know that you need to find a formula that uses the givens in the problem and results in or contains in the formula, Volume as a variable (or V) because those are the units for volume.

It is true that multiple choice tests and the answer choices do and can confuse you, but that is not ALWAYS the case... I have also found that looking at the answers can 'help' me solve the test problem... because it gives me a clue as to what kind of answer I should be getting...

Oh, last but not least (sorry, I keep on thinking of things and adding/editing this)... if you feel a tug at your heart to change an answer, DON'T go and erase/change your answer UNLESS you have 'good' supporting reasons to. Often times, your 1st instinct is the best. If you start second guessing after doing what person #1 said above (thinking the answer, reading the answers, and then getting confused... go with your 1st choice). I can't tell you how many times I put down an answer, changed it because I started doubting myself... and then really getting confused...and then found out when I got back the test... that I did, after all, have good instincts as to what the answer was possibly. But too bad, lost points because I changed my answer to my 2nd I-think-I-am-more-right-this-time-with-this answer. Go with your gut feeling and stick with it. On the other hand, you have to know when to follow and when not to. Sometimes I jump too quick to an answer, or think that this problem was soooo easy to answer, but turned out that it was a 'trick'question. Be on guard for those... because it's a trap for a gullible chicken like me. So follow/stick with 1st instincts, but keep your gullibility in check... don't jump in blindly or too quickly without giving some thought. Again, not too much thought, or you'll end up wasting time trying to decided between two answers... when you could be spending that precious deciding time solving another question-in-the-waiting.

Oh, and if there isn't assigned seating... I would sit as close to the front of the room as possible... but not directly in front of the proctor's desk when he is sitting down. Front and off to the side, so that you have the blackboard in front, and most of the other students behind you with your back toward them. If you sit in the back... you'll have more distractions which will break your concentration. If you are in the front you only see/feel the person coming up to the front to hand in the test... and have a slight idea that he is leaving, but won't know 'how many' are leaving or have left. If you are aware, you will only have the passing awareness/thought of 'another person finished/another person is leaving". If you sit in the back... and you look up.... you see all the people taking the test (and you feel pressure... when taking the test is bad enough and pressure enough)... and leaving... and then you feel horrible that you haven't finished... that you must be doing bad on this multiple choice test... If you sit at the front, you will be less aware and self-conscious of the people who have finished and left.

Another thing... just because people finished before you doesn't mean that you must be doing bad on the test. Sure, they may be bright and breeze through it, and even ace the test. But I also know of people who just breeze through it... just so that they can get out and do something else. You are taking the test and in the program to become a doctor. So take the time and as long as you need to... to complete the test. Multiple choice tests are not races.... it's not about who can finish first and who will finish last. As long as they are giving you time to take the test, use all of it... to your advantage. Many times I have left last... so that I can know that I did my best and know that I took advantage of the time given me. And ended up doing better than most of the people in the class. They give time, you use it.

Answer 2

I have a couple of suggestions.

First, think about the answer to the question BEFORE you look at the answers. Often you will know the correct answer, but when you look at the choices one or two of them will start you 'second guessing' yourself. So, think about the answer first and then look for that in the multiple choices.

Second, in a good multiple choice exam, some the questions/answers will not be straight forward. You will have to take the knowledge you have and use it to figure out the correct answer. So, if you look at the question/answers and you think "I don't know any of these", stop and think about WHAT YOU DO KNOW and use that information to figure out the correct answer (its like doing a math problem by figuring out the answer from the available information - you don't know the answer when you first look at the math problem, but you use the information given to calculate the answer).

Best wishes and good luck.

Answer 3

Hey there!

I just wanted to share with you what a wonderful teacher once told me in school.If you come across a questions and you DO NOT know the answer...not at all,You should always choose"B"...you're more likely to get it right by choosing "B"or the second one.Do this only if you have no idea and are really stuck on a question.

Hope this helps!

~*~Pip~*~