Student story: Standardized tests
About this video
A student who felt anxious about tests explains how she stepped back and planned how to give her best. She studied with friends, gave herself more than a month to prepare, took the tests more than once, and tried both the SAT and the ACT to see which gave her a higher score.
You'll be able to
- describe strategies for handling test anxiety through preparation.
- explain why someone might take both the SAT and the ACT.
Key words
- test anxiety
- Feeling scared or nervous before or during a test, which can affect performance.
- preparation
- Planned study and practice done well before a test date.
Transcript
- Personally, I'm not really a big test-taker, so one of my biggest fears was being really scared and anxious when I would take the tests. But then I took a step back and really reflected on, well, how am I going to give my best? I'm really close friends with a lot of girls, and thankfully, we love to study together, so that was good to have people to rely on, and it was also important to not just take the tests once, but take it multiple times, so that we can just practice through longer periods of times.
And we gave each other more than a month just to prepare. Preparation doesn't just happen overnight or in a couple weeks, but really understanding this is the date when the test comes, and this is how long we're going to prepare for it. And with me, I decided to take both the SAT and ACT, because I wanted to see whether I had a higher score in another test such as the ACT.
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