How to avoid freaking out over crazy-hard questions?
Three concrete suggestions follow.
1. Handle intimidation
It’s normal to feel intimidated by a long, wordy, or complex problem. Most of the time, however, you’ll be able to answer the question correctly in a reasonable amount of time, if you give yourself a chance. Always approach such a problem with the mentality that you can solve it. Boil down the question. Reread and make sure you understand each sentence, part by part. You probably can, in fact, do this. If you slow down a bit, read carefully, take notes, and focus intently, you’ll be successful most of the time.
2. Dodge nightmare questions
Instead of getting hung up on an unsolvable problem, it’s better to surrender, as quickly as possible, and live to fight another day. Prevent the wasted time, loss of energy, frustration, and stress caused by battling impossibly difficult “nightmare questions.” The fight isn’t worth it. Avoid the bottomless pit. Earn points somewhere else. Once you realize a question is over your head, just guess and move on. Do not come back later, even if you have time.
3. Employ Skip-Guessing
Naturally, top students want top scores, and often assume they’ll have to work hard to crack every single question. But this is not true. Students can generally afford to skip-guess lots questions without worry (to confirm this, study the scoring tool for any official practice test). When faced with an uncomfortably difficult question, don't get stuck, whatever you do. Quickly make your best guess, skip the question for now, flag it for later review, and move merrily along.
1. Handle intimidation
It’s normal to feel intimidated by a long, wordy, or complex problem. Most of the time, however, you’ll be able to answer the question correctly in a reasonable amount of time, if you give yourself a chance. Always approach such a problem with the mentality that you can solve it. Boil down the question. Reread and make sure you understand each sentence, part by part. You probably can, in fact, do this. If you slow down a bit, read carefully, take notes, and focus intently, you’ll be successful most of the time.
2. Dodge nightmare questions
Instead of getting hung up on an unsolvable problem, it’s better to surrender, as quickly as possible, and live to fight another day. Prevent the wasted time, loss of energy, frustration, and stress caused by battling impossibly difficult “nightmare questions.” The fight isn’t worth it. Avoid the bottomless pit. Earn points somewhere else. Once you realize a question is over your head, just guess and move on. Do not come back later, even if you have time.
3. Employ Skip-Guessing
Naturally, top students want top scores, and often assume they’ll have to work hard to crack every single question. But this is not true. Students can generally afford to skip-guess lots questions without worry (to confirm this, study the scoring tool for any official practice test). When faced with an uncomfortably difficult question, don't get stuck, whatever you do. Quickly make your best guess, skip the question for now, flag it for later review, and move merrily along.
What matters is making the utmost of what you’re able to do on test day. To optimize your score, spend your limited time where it can be maximally effective, not on crazy-difficult problems you’ll just get wrong, anyway.
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