Before the Test
You’ve got a big athletic meet coming up, or you’re playing in a concert, or you’re making an important presentation at work, or hosting an anniversary party for your parents. What do you do to ensure success? You prepare, of course. (Well, duh!)

The biggest part of preparing for a test is to study effectively right through the course. (Some study tips are on a separate page.) Don’t wait until the test is looming and then try to learn everything you didn’t really understand.

But there are a couple of things you can do in the nights (not the night, the nights) before the test.

Work a variety of problems.
If you’ve been doing the homework right along, and getting questions answered before they fester, you should be in pretty good shape.

But one thing is different between the homework and a test: In the homework, you know pretty much what type of problem each one is, because you just studied that type. That’s usually true on a quiz, too. But on an exam, several weeks’ worth of problem types are mixed together. You need to practice approaching problems where you don’t know up front what type they are.

How can you do this? If you’re lucky, your textbook has a section of review problems, or a practice exam, with problem types all mixed. If not, ask a classmate or your study buddy to throw problems at you, and practice recognizing the different types.

See also:How to Work a Math Problem

Don’t bother cramming.
Many students try to learn all the material in a marathon session the night before the test. While this may be partially effective where you have a lot of rote memory work, most of math is not memory work but recognizing patterns and selecting and applying useful techniques to problems.

In other words, you’re being tested mostly on skills, not on memorized facts. The only way to learn any skill is to practice, and in math that means working some problems almost every day. Most successful math students find that the best approach is to do the homework on time, and then just do a quick final review the night before the exam.

If you don’t know the material sooner than the night before the exam, odds are you’re not going to learn it then.

Make a crib sheet.
Try to reduce everything to one sheet of paper, and not by writing so small you need a microscope to read it. There’s surprisingly little to memorize in math, so your crib sheet doesn’t need to be very elaborate. Most of what you’ll need to know is not facts or formulas but techniques.

Why go through the exercise? Well, of course if your instructor lets you use a crib sheet during tests the answer is obvious. But even if you can’t use the crib sheet during the test, the act of making it up will organize the material in your mind and help you to retain it.

Overcome test anxiety.
To a certain extent it’s normal to be nervous about taking tests, even if you’re a very good student. While mild anxiety can be a motivating factor, high anxiety triggers your flight response and makes you avoid the subject — which makes the anxiety worse.

Being thoroughly prepared for a test won’t necessarily make the anxiety go away, but it can help you master the anxiety. Chapter 3 of Noltling’s book has some great tips for dealing with math anxiety, particularly before tests