As a college student, a lot of your time is spent preparing for tests and exams that you’ll have to take. And while many of these tests are important for your classes or your overall GPA, having to take certification tests in order to become qualified in a certain field can have even more pressure on you to study well and pass. Because of this, you may feel an additional amount of test anxiety accompanying these exams. Luckily, there are things you can do when studying to help you get as prepared as possible for any test or exam. To show you how, here are three study tips to help you pass a certification test.
Plan What You’ll Study
If you look at the field of study in which you’ll be tested on as a whole, you may quickly become overwhelmed at the amount of material you have to be familiar with. This can cause you to try to study everything at an accelerated rate, which could very well result in you not diving down deep enough into any of the material to really learn it.
To combat this, Alice Johnston and Sophie Gadd, contributors to Mirror.co.uk, suggest that you create a plan for what you’ll study and for how long. Especially when you only have a short amount of time to prepare for your exam, it’s best to focus on the most important areas to know rather than trying to cram everything you possibly can into your brain. And once you’ve created a sectioned plan, you’ll feel like your task of studying will be much easier to tackle.
Talk It Out
While reading your own study materials and doing practice tests can be helpful, there’s a deeper level of learning that happens when you attempt to teach what you’ve learned to someone else. To accomplish this, Peter Jacobs, a contributor to Business Insider, recommends that you partner up with someone either in your class or taking the same exam as you so you can talk out the material and concepts together. Try to teach them everything you know about your area of study. Because they’ll have been studying the same things, they’ll be able to inform you if you’ve left anything else or don’t quite have a solid grasp on something.
Focus On Concepts Rather Than Facts
When you’re worried about taking a test or exam, you may find yourself getting fixated on memorizing certain facts and figures. However, when it comes test time, The University Blog shares that you’ll usually have more success by focusing on concepts rather than facts. When you’re able to link concepts together and draw rational conclusions between them, you’ll be much more likely to have a good idea of the materials in general and strategies out correct answers.
If you have a big test or exam to take for a certification, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you study effectively.
