How to Gain Confidence and Get Over Test Anxiety
Test anxiety is very common, and has probably impacted nearly 50% of students at least once in their academic career.
Symptoms of test anxiety range from mild to extreme and from physical (sweaty palms) to emotional (low self-esteem).
For most, test anxiety is caused by a combination of factors, which can make it hard to alleviate.
Some tips for dealing with test anxiety are preparation, deep breathing techniques, mindfulness meditation, and positive affirmations.
We have developed a number of ways of addressing and decreasing test anxiety that our students experience while at camp, including focus exercises, lots of practice, and emphasizing a growth mindset.
How to Cope With Test Anxiety
Dealing with test anxiety is incredibly common. In fact, most people have probably dealt with it at some point in their lives. Many of our students each year battle with some degree of test anxiety, and we’ve developed research-backed methods, including our daily focus exercises class, to help them get past their anxiety while they are at camp and once they go back home. In this article, we share our tips and advice for managing test anxiety.
You’ve probably felt test anxiety before: You sit down to take an important test, and all of a sudden your heart starts beating faster. You feel butterflies in your stomach. Your palms start sweating and it becomes harder to grip your pencil. Maybe you feel short of breath, or your hand starts shaking, or you start to fidget in your chair. You look at the clock and realize you only have ten minutes left, and you look back down at your paper and realize you have no idea what the question is asking.
How common is test anxiety?
Test anxiety is very common. According to Healthline, test anxiety may affect 10-40 percent of students. That percentage may have increased in recent years and, in fact, may still be increasing due to the heightened importance of standardized testing. However, it is difficult to measure the actual rates of test anxiety since people experience it to different degrees and people may not report feeling test anxiety due to stigma against mental illness.
Symptoms of test anxiety
Test anxiety can involve physical, emotional, and cognitive symptoms. It can be very mild, like a feeling of butterflies in your stomach, or much more severe. It may impact students’ performance on a single test, or it might affect them on multiple tests over a period of weeks, months, or even years. It may even cause students to avoid tests or school altogether.
Physical symptoms
For example: sweating, shaking, rapid heartbeat, and dry mouth. More severe symptoms may include fainting, nausea, and vomiting. In extreme situations, test anxiety can lead to panic attacks.
Emotional symptoms
For example: low self-esteem, frustration, hopelessness, and depression. Students may feel helpless or fatalistic, like nothing they can do will mitigate the anxiety. Students with test anxiety may experience a vicious cycle in which they get in their heads about experiencing test anxiety, which might lead to more test anxiety, causing them to get lower test scores, which may further increase apprehensive thoughts in the future.
Cognitive and behavioral symptoms
For example: fidgeting, trouble concentrating, racing thoughts, and negative self-talk. A common symptom is forgetting the answers to even the easiest questions on the test, even after extensive studying. What are more symptoms of test anxiety?
Causes of test anxiety
For most, test anxiety is caused by a combination of factors. The relative importance of a test, outside pressure from friends, parents, and teachers, and an underlying anxiety disorder may all contribute to test anxiety or enhance its severity.
Some causes may include:
Being unprepared: knowing that you are not prepared for a test can heighten symptoms of test anxiety
A history of poor testing outcomes: students who have struggled with tests in the past may be more likely to experience test anxiety in the future
Being afraid of failure: a high sense of perfectionism and fear of failing can contribute to a student feeling pressured to do well on a test at any cost, which can sometimes lead to more test anxiety
If you feel test anxiety interferes with your daily life, impacts your performance in school, or feels like something you can’t control, talk to your doctor.
Tips and advice for dealing with test anxiety
Try some of these tips to combat test anxiety. All of these tips won’t work for everyone; if you try something and it doesn’t seem to help, try something else until you find something that works for you.
Prepare!
Test anxiety can stem from feeling unprepared for a test. To combat this type of anxiety, make sure you’re extremely well-prepared by studying effectively. Rather than cramming the night before a test, study for an hour at a time over a longer period of time -- research shows that this is a more effective -- and less stressful -- way of remembering information.
Deep breathing techniques
There are many breathing techniques out there. Some that we find helpful are:
The goal of equal breathing is to keep your inhales and exhales the same length.
Sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes.
Breathe in for a count of 4. Pause to feel your lungs as they are full of air.
Exhale through your nose for a count of 4 and pause for a moment at the bottom.
Repeat. You can extend the length of your inhales and exhales, but remember to keep them the same.
Square breathing, also known as box breathing
Similar to equal breathing, but square breathing extends the length of the pauses at the top and bottom of the breath.
Inhale for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, exhale for a count of 4, and hold for a count of 4 before repeating.
Mindfulness meditation
Meditation is another excellent technique for reducing any kind of anxiety and increasing mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation, in particular, emphasizes breathing and focusing on the present moment. Just like with breathing exercises, there are many different ways to practice mindfulness meditation
At its simplest, mindfulness meditation is being present in the moment. Here’s a simple mindfulness meditation for you to practice anywhere:
Sit in a comfortable position. Sit up straight, but don’t strain. Place your hands in your lap so you don’t have to hold them up. Feel yourself being supported by the chair or ground and release as much tension from your body as you can.
Focus on your breath. You can try a breathing exercise or let yourself breathe naturally, but focus on the sensation of air moving through your lungs.
When you notice your mind wandering away from your breath, calmly refocus on your breath without judgment or expectation. It may be difficult, but practice observing your thoughts without judgment and always returning your focus to your breath.
Other resources:
Positive affirmations
Positive affirmations can help retrain your brain to think more positively, which is especially helpful with test anxiety, when it’s easy to get stuck in a cycle of negative thoughts.
Test anxiety and Socratic Summer Academy
At the Socratic Summer Academy, we have students every year who are fantastic students, work incredibly hard in class, and try their best every day, but who don’t achieve the scores they deserve because of test anxiety. Over the years, we have developed many ways of addressing and decreasing test anxiety in our students. Some of these include:
Focus exercises
Every day after dinner, students take our Focus Exercises class, which we’ve developed over the years based on research about the best ways to combat test anxiety.
In Focus, students practice growth mindset, meditation, breathing exercises, and learn even more tips to improve focus and decrease test anxiety.
Full-length practice tests
- Students take five full-length practice SATⓇ tests while they are at camp. Getting intimately familiar with the SATⓇ exam while in a low-stakes, supportive environment goes a long way towards decreasing test anxiety when students take the actual exam.
- Our students report feeling more comfortable and confident during their actual test because of all the exposure they’ve had at camp.
Growth mindset
A major component of Socratic Summer Academy is our commitment to building a growth mindset in all of our students.
A growth mindset, defined by researcher Carol Dweck, is the idea that intelligence is not fixed and can be expanded with hard work. Students who work to achieve a growth mindset are often more resilient in the face of setbacks than students who have a fixed mindset (who believe that intelligence is fixed).
