Multiple Choice Test-Taking Tips

There are 50 Multiple Choice questions on the Global Studies Regents.
Additionally, there are 13-18 scaffold/open-ended short answer questions.
Combined, these questions are worth 76-77% of the total grade.
1 DBQ Essay and 1 Thematic Essay, combined are worth 23-24% of the total grade.

As soon as the monitor tells you to begin, flip through the test to see what you have to do. This will let you know what to expect. Budget your time. Then RELAX – take a deep breath before you start.

Read the questions and all of the choices carefully. Make sure you are reading what has been written and not what you hope or want to see. Then, pick out the one, best choice that answers the question. Make sure you read each question as a separate question and answer it as a separate question. The answer to any one question is not intended to help you choose the correct response to other questions.

Read every word in the question. Sometimes there are key words that will help you pick the correct answer. Pay close attention to these words. If you overlook one of these key words, you could miss a question that you really know.

BEST	GREATEST	NEVER
COMMON	LESS	NOT
EXCEPT	MORE	SOMETIMES
GENERALLY	MOST	USUALLY

All of the questions in the multiple choice section have the same value. You get as much credit for an easy question as for a hard one. Don’t waste time on the hard questions, mark the answer you believe to be right, place a question mark next to the question, and come back to it later if you have time. REMEMBER, your first guess is usually correct. Do not keep changing your answer.

If you don’t answer a question, you will not get credit for it. If you guess correctly, you will get credit. There is no penalty for guessing. If you are not sure which answer is correct, cross out the choices that you know are wrong and chose your answer from the remaining ones. By carefully eliminating answers you know must be wrong, you can increase your chances of guessing correctly.

If you're utterly stumped by a question, here are some strategies to help you narrow the field and select the correct answer:

1. Ask yourself whether the answer you're considering completely addresses the question. If the test answer is only partly true or is true only under certain narrow conditions, then it's probably not the right answer. If you have to make a significant assumption in order for the answer to be true, ask yourself whether this assumption is obvious enough that the instructor would expect everyone to make it. If not, dump the answer overboard.

2. If you think an item is a trick question, think again. Very few instructors would ever write a question intended to be deceptive. If you suspect that a question is a trick item, make sure you're not reading too much into the question, and try to avoid imagining detailed scenarios in which the answer could be true. In most cases, "trick questions" are only tricky because they're not taken at face value.

3. If, after your very best effort, you cannot choose between two alternatives, try vividly imagining each one as the correct answer. If you are like most people, you will often "feel" that one of the answers is wrong. Trust this feeling -- research suggests that feelings are frequently accessible even when recall is poor (e.g., we can still know how we feel about a person even if we can't remember the person's name). Although this tip is not infallible, many students find it useful.

4. If you're noticing a pattern developing in your responses, such as an overabundance of the same letter as the answer, then you may want to recheck your work. If the last two or three answers have been "A" and your new choices are either "A" or "C", most likely the answer will be "C". A test creator will rarely keep the same letter as the answer more than three times in a row.

5. On a typical multiple choice question, one answer is obviously wrong. Either it has nothing to do with the material in question or is deliberately meant to be distracting.

6. If the four choices are all short and related to each other, select 'all of the above'. 'All of the above' is a traditional catch-all for short bits of information, and not used nearly as often as you might think.

7. When deciding between two answers that sound vaguely correct, look harder for some subtle sign that one of them is incorrect. Did the character named in the answer really do that in the book? Identifying 'trick' answers that sound right is the real key to improving your chances of doing well on a test.

8. If you have to guess, and spot a typing error in one of the answers, choose one of the other answers.

When you have finished, review your paper and make sure you have answered all of the questions. Take as much time as you have. Check the questions you were unsure of - but make sure that you have a good reason if you decide to change an answer. Never leave a blank on a multiple-choice test.