Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

If you often find yourself struggling with narrowing your choices down and second guessing yourself, you’re in the right place. In this blogpost we’ll review how you can systematically approach multiple choice questions. This will help you break them down, simplify them, and become more confident in your test taking abilities.

Preparing for Your Test

Half the battle is in how you prepare for your test!

In terms of time management, set SMART goals and prioritize the studying that needs to be completed. Consider using a grade calculator to set a goal of the mark you want to achieve. You can also try out the Pomodoro Method, making a study schedule, and making sure you take lots of breaks! For more on these topics check out our blog posts on SMART goals and Time Management Skills.

When it comes to studying, try your best to start as early as you can. For more on study habits, check out our blog post here.

Note: for how to prepare the day and night before the exam, calculating your time, and how to stay calm while writing your exam, check out our blog post Test Taking Skills — Written Answer.

How to Tackle Multiple Choice Questions

To start this next section, let’s watch a video. The following sections below go more in depth with the points mentioned in the video.

Glance Over The Test

For many students it can be super helpful to flip through the test quickly to get some idea of the questions. The goal of doing this is to slightly prime yourself. Priming is a psychological finding that exposure to something influences how a person later responds to a related stimuli. For example, look at the image below. The first 4 words you read will liekly affect what you predict the 5th word will be.

When glancing over your test, make sure you only spend a minute or two doing this. You can consider just looking over the questions and ignoring the answers that are there too. With priming yourself beforehand through reading over your test quickly you’ll get some ideas flowing in your head. It may even get you thinking about what you studied. In doing this, when you later go back and actually answer the questions you’re better prepared to answer them. 

NOTE: If you are someone who often finds that knowing what’s coming next in a test stressful, consider your options:

1. Don’t glance over the test → if it’s going to stress you out right from the start and then throw you off for the rest of the test just take it question by question
2. Accept that there’s the possibility that there are questions you may have to make an educated guess on and read anyways → in all seriousness, no matter how well you know the material, there is a pretty good chance there’ll be at least a question or two (or three) that you have to narrow your options down and then select what is the most correct. If you can, trust your abilities and read over the test without letting it worry you that some of the questions are tricky

Answer The Easy Questions First

Now that you’ve scanned your test briefly and gotten a general idea of what you can expect it’s time to start answering questions. Start by answering the easy questions first and then going back over your test later. Why?

• Boosts confidence → It feels good to answer questions that are easy and that you are pretty sure you have correct. Knowing that at the bare minimum you’ll have these “easy marks” is a confidence booster. Starting with these questions helps build your momentum and gives you a sense of accomplishment early on in the exam.
• Reduces stress → Again, knowing you have some questions locked in, it’ll help lower the test stress that you’re feeling.
• Serves as a “warm up” → Answering easier questions first helps your brain ease into the test and getting into a problem-solving state. This way, when you do encounter more difficult questions your brain is now ready to take those on.
• Secures marks → In doing the easier questions first you are guaranteed as many quick marks as possible.
• Time management → If you get the easy questions out of the way quickly you’ll have more time to spend on other questions and check over your answers.

Consider developing a system like the one below that helps you easily remember which questions you thought were easy. This will tell you which ones are correct so you don’t need to review them much, vs. the ones you’re pretty sure are correct (“check over”) vs. the ones you will have to revisit as you’re unsure of them (“??”)

Anticipate What The Answer is

Before you even look at the options, read the question and think about what the possible answers might be.

• This helps you identify relevant details without getting distracted from the options
• This is potentially more efficient
• This can be confidence boosting if you are anticipating the answer and then it is also an option

Carefully Read The Questions

It might seem kind of obvious that when you’re taking a test you’d want to read the questions carefully. But what goes into reading something carefully? Here are some things for you to pay attention to:

• Pay attention to qualifiers and key words
  • Qualifiers = usually, none, always, never, etc.
  • Key words = except, all but the following, the best, the least, etc.
  • 100% qualifiers are often incorrect → “always, never, all, must”
  • Answers with “frequently, generally, tend to, usually, few, some” are often correct
  • Consider underlining or highlighting qualifiers and keywords when you’re going through your test that you pay extra attention to them
• If two answers are opposite, one is probably correct
• Look for grammatical cues between the question and options 
  • For example, the question and the correct answer will often share verbs of the same tense and have nouns and verbs that agree
  • E.g., if both the question and the answer have verbs in the past tense like ran and ran vs. an answer with running in it, the one where there is agreement is more likely the correct one
• Read all of the options; eliminate the ones you know are incorrect
  • Even if you’re anticipating what the answer is like we recommended in the last section, make sure that you do carefully read all of the options and cross out the ones you know are incorrect as you go through them
• Make sure you’re actually answering the question!
  • Do your best to read the question and understand what it’s really asking you. Sometimes when first reading a question you may think it is asking you about “A” but then when you re-read it carefully you realize it’s actually asking us about “B,” so make sure you’re taking the time to fully understand what the question is asking of you before you select an answer
• Never leave a question blank!!
  • Especially with multiple choice questions, there is always a chance that your guess is correct

Write on Your Test!

Highlight, underline, write notes, circle, etc.!

Writing on your test helps you focus on the main points and what the question is really asking you. It also helps you critically analyze the options, reducing errors. For example, if you know an answer is incorrect, write a quick little note as to why it’s wrong so that when you check over your test you can be confident that isn’t the answer. Writing on your test provides reference points so when you go back and review you can do it more efficiently.

For an example of a tricky true/false question above, we can see that while the first part is true the second part is false. The tallest building in the world is actually in Dubai, which is something you could also note in addition to just writing false if that helps you. Having this visual of only one part being true can help cement your overall answer of the statement being false and will make things easier for you when you check over your test.

With the multiple choice question “Which of the following statements about dolphins is true?” let’s break down each option. For a) we see that the first part of the question is true, BUT the second part is false, so we can cross it out. It’s not an option. Now going back to our section on Carefully Reading The Questions, we see the quantifiers “always” and “never” in options b) and d) respectively. Let’s mark these on our test and review the answers with “always”, “never”, and in c), “can”.

Remember how I said often times the opposite can be true? It might be tempting to eliminate c) based on this sentiment but in this case that opposites rule doesn’t apply! A hint that opposites may not apply in this case is because “always” and “never” are 100% qualifiers. Remember, these are test taking strategies but they’re not always going to apply to each question so remember to think critically and really read the question.

Draw Diagrams

Just like writing on your test, drawing can help clarify your ideas or act as a way to cue yourself based on what you were studying. Drawing little diagrams or other things that help you understand the question can be extremely helpful when you go on to solve the question.

Rewording The Question

Let’s say you get to a question and you frankly have no idea what it’s asking, and not because of the actual content of the question, but more so because the wording doesn’t quite make sense. Rewording the question in your own language can be a very useful strategy to overcome this!

• Don’t panic! Re-read the question carefully, breaking it into pieces
• Use context clues
• Rewrite the question
  • Use synonyms, e.g., changing “exasperated” into a more simple “annoyed” or “frustrated”
  • Focus on what’s being asked → identify what one chunk of the question is asking and then rephrase it in a way that makes more sent to you, taking the question piece by piece
  • Check over your rephrasal and make sure it mirrors the question but is in easier-to-understand terms
• Ask for help
  • If you’ve tried all of these things and still aren’t able to figure out what the question is asking, consider seeking help from the teacher or whoever is proctoring your exam; in general it’s always an option to ask for help and the worst case scenario is they say they aren’t able to help but at least you’ve tried

What if More Than One Answer Seems Correct?

It’s not uncommon at all to have a question or a few where it is really difficult to narrow it down to only 1 answer.

• Really ask yourself: which one completely addresses the question?
  • Again, look at if the option is partially or completely correct like in the true/false example we looked at earlier
  • Watch out for key words and qualifiers as these can help you narrow things down too
• If you think it’s a trick question, think again
  • Very few teachers are actively writing questions where all answers are on even footing and remember, there must be at least one that’s correct when it’s multiple choice!
  • It can be helpful to try and put yourself in the shoes of your teacher and think about what they might have been thinking when writing the question and it’s options
• Try imaging each answer as the correct one
  • When you do this you’ll likely have a gut feeling that one of them is correct and the others are wrong; trust your instincts if you’ve logically tried to determine what the answer is but can’t come to a conclusion
• Finally, if all else fails, there are only a few options, so you have a decent chance if you guess
  • For example, if there’s four options, you have a 25% chance of guessing it correct and if you can even narrow it down to three options you’re now at a 33% chance of making an educated guess

Difficult Questions

Sometimes there may be questions where you genuinely can’t narrow things down to the best answer…

1. Employ the strategies above
2. Take an educated guess

Don’t waste time with difficult questions! Especially in the case of multiple choice. If you can either spend 5 minutes trying to figure out one question that seems impossible or spend that time answering 5 other questions worth the same, then get the 5 marks from answering the other 5 easier questions. 

Checking Over Your Test and Other Tips

When reviewing your test and filling the scantron (bubble sheet) in, start by filling out the questions that you’re sure of (the ones with slashes instead of “check over” or “??”). Review them, but if you were confident enough earlier to put the “/” beside it earlier, don’t spend too much time here.

When you come to any questions that fall into that “check over” or “??” categories, do your best to finalize your answers and then fill them in. If you have the time to still do review, come back again to these questions to make sure you’re locked in on your answer. Once you’ve locked in on an answer, leave that question alone so you don’t overthink it.

Second Guessing Yourself

It can be really hard to not second guess yourself when you’re taking a test, especially if you aren’t or don’t feel fully prepared for it. Here are some things to keep in mind the next time you go to change your answer because you’re second guessing yourself.

First, trust your initial instincts. Chances are that you did understand the question and answered it correctly. If you were able to write on your test as to why your answer was correct earlier, then don’t second guess when you’re reviewing!

Second, avoid overanalyzing! It’s so tempting to read deeper into the wording of questions or convince yourself that the question is actually a trick question. Do your best to make sure you are understanding the question and taking it as it is at face value, utilizing some of the strategies we discussed above. Don’t say “oh but what if when they are asking this, they really mean to ask that” – trust that you analyzed it the perfect amount. This is again why writing on your test and writing future you pointers as to why you thought a question was wrong can help a lot. 

Third, review but don’t dwell. If needed, consider setting a time limit for yourself on how long you’re going to spend on each question to review them.

It’s also important to remember that in second guessing yourself, you are potentially losing a mark. When you look at things from this view, it’ll often really push you to figure out which answer really is the correct one.
In the long run, if your self-esteem is something you struggle with in general and this is affecting your test taking abilities, consider looking into some self-esteem and confidence building worksheets and activities.

Good luck on your exams and happy studying!

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Blog post adapted from the McKinney Psychology Presentation: Test Taking Skills as part of our Student Series. For more on our student series and other mental health blog posts, check out this link. For more information outside of this, please contact our office.