How to Manage Test Anxiety on Test Day
It’s easy to get anxious before a big test. Even when you’ve studied, practiced, and done everything you can to prepare, you might still feel nervous when you sit down to take it. That’s normal. Your nerves mean this test is important to you.
At Test Innovators, a big part of our mission is helping students understand and manage test anxiety. We’ve written a lot about the role of practice, preparation, and planning (and we have free resources for students and families who want to learn more). In particular, practice can make a critical difference, reducing anxiety by making the test feel more familiar.
Still, even the most prepared students can find themselves feeling anxious when the test begins.
So what do you do when that happens in the moment, when you are sitting down to take the test?
What Test Anxiety Is and Why It Shows Up on Test Day
Test anxiety is a kind of performance anxiety: the same emotional and physical response an athlete might feel before a big game, a musician before a concert, or anyone before doing something that matters to them. Symptoms can include: increased heart rate, shallow breathing, shaky hands, upset stomach, and racing thoughts.
These reactions are a natural part of your body’s response to stress, useful when you need to respond to physical danger, but not helpful when you’re trying to score a winning goal, sing an exposed high note, or solve a complicated math problem.
Performance psychologist Dr. Don Greene, who has coached Olympic athletes and professional musicians, discusses this phenomenon in Performance Success: Performing Your Best Under Pressure. “Stress is a human condition, integral to the structure and functioning of our bodies and minds,” he writes. The problem, Greene notes, is that “our bodies and certain primitive parts of our brains really haven’t changed much” since the days when we needed that stress response to escape predators. In other words, “[your body] doesn’t know the difference between a tiger and the solo horn part to Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche”—or a high-stakes test.
When adrenaline kicks in during an exam, “you have no outlet… there’s nothing you can do but sit still.” That energy has nowhere to go, which means your stress may show up in unexpected ways: sweaty palms, shallow breathing, or doomsday thoughts.
Learning how to perform under pressure isn’t about eliminating stress but about redirecting the energy you get from it so that it works for you.
(Greene, Don. Performance Success: Performing Your Best Under Pressure. Routledge, 2002, pp. 16–19. Available on Amazon or Routledge)
What to Do in the Moment
It’s the day of the big test. You sit down at your desk, listen to the proctor’s instructions, and as you start the first question, your heart beats faster, your hands shake, and distracting doubts start to creep in. Then your inner critic asks, Why are you feeling this way? I thought you practiced for this. You must not be ready.
Here are a few things to do in the moment to manage test anxiety.
Acknowledge It
First, acknowledge what’s happening and remind yourself that it’s normal to feel pressure in moments that matter. Simply noticing what you feel—saying to yourself, “I feel anxious right now”—can help. Naming the emotion can help move your brain out of fight-or-flight mode so that you can start to regain control.
Don’t try to repress the feeling or force yourself to feel calm. That approach usually backfires because it uses a lot of mental energy that would be better spent on the test itself. Instead, accept what you feel and work with it.
Adrenaline can be a useful ally during a test. It sharpens your senses and gives you energy. The key is to direct that energy toward focus and problem-solving rather than letting it spiral into worry.
It can help to remind yourself why you feel anxious. You’re not nervous because you’re unprepared; you’re nervous because you care about how you do. It means the test matters to you, and you want to do your best. That’s a good thing.
Ground Yourself in Physical Reality
Once you’ve acknowledged how you feel, bring your attention back to something real and concrete. Anxiety often pulls you into a spiral of what-ifs and critical thoughts. Grounding helps bring you back to the present moment, where you can refocus on the task in front of you.
Start by focusing on your body. Take a slow, steady breath in and out. Feel your feet on the floor, the texture of the test paper, and the weight of the pencil in your hand.
These physical details anchor you in the moment and help calm your body’s stress response. They remind your brain that you’re not in danger. You’re sitting in a chair, taking a test, and you prepared for this moment.
Take It One Step at a Time
When you’re anxious, your attention scatters, hopping from the question to the clock, to your score, to what it all means for your future. This thought pattern feeds anxiety. How do you break out of that spiral? Bring your attention back to the task in front of you and take the next small step.
Look only at the question you’re working on. What is it asking?
Even if you don’t yet see the full path to the answer, start with what you do understand. Take one step (e.g., identify key information, note the main idea, or eliminate choices you know are incorrect), then take the next step. If you get stuck, mark the question and move on; you can come back later. Each small action keeps you grounded in the process instead of lost in the “what-ifs.”
Test Prep Tip
Learn and practice test-taking strategies. Strategies aren’t magical shortcuts to the right answer. They give you a process, a series of steps you can follow even when your thoughts feel scattered.
Useful strategies to practice
- Read the question carefully. It’s easy to miss essential details when you rush.
- Underline key information. Highlight names, numbers, relationships, main ideas, and supporting details.
- Come up with your own answer before looking at the choices (Reading Comprehension). Wrong answer choices (a.k.a. ‘distractors’) are designed to distract and mislead.
- Backsolve (Math). For questions asking you to solve for an unknown, try plugging the answer choices into the equation.
- Plug in values (Math). When variables appear in both the question and choices, plug in your own numbers. Check the question and all of the answer choices. If more than one answer choice works with your numbers, pick new values and check again.
- Eliminate answer choices. Cross off choices that you know are incorrect to narrow down your options.
- Move on when needed. Your goal is to answer as many questions correctly as possible, so go after the easy points first and tackle the tougher items at the end.
Strategies give you concrete steps to execute on the test and help keep you focused on the process of solving the problem, not the pressure of the test.
How Parents, Guardians, and Educators Can Help
Adults play a fundamental role in how students experience testing. The messages students receive—about performance, preparation, and expectations—shape how they feel when test day arrives.
- Validate feelings, don’t dismiss them. Phrases like “Don’t be nervous” may seem reassuring but can make students feel misunderstood. Try “It’s normal to feel nervous before something important.”
- Label feelings, not people. Saying “You’re anxious” can make anxiety feel like a fixed trait. Instead, describe what’s happening in the moment: “You’re feeling nervous right now, and that’s okay.”
- Model calm. Students pick up on adult emotions. If you stay steady and confident, they’re more likely to do the same.
- Emphasize effort over outcome. Recognize persistence, preparation, and growth rather than focusing on scores.
- Encourage healthy routines. Rest, balanced meals, and short breaks matter more than last-minute cramming.
A calm, supportive approach lets students build a healthier relationship with testing, teaching them to value effort over perfection and to understand that feeling nervous is a normal response to something that matters.
Remember This on Test Day
Feeling anxious during a test doesn’t mean you’re unprepared or incapable. It means you care about how you do. The goal isn’t to eliminate anxiety but to use it productively. After all, you don’t have to feel perfectly calm to do well. You just have to remind yourself to focus on the task at hand, one step at a time.
Sara Laszlo
Sara Laszlo has nearly ten years of experience in private tutoring. An opera singer by training, Sara is especially interested in exploring better ways to practice and improve skills, whether musical or test-related. She holds a B.A. in Classical Civilization from Duke University and a Certificate of Merit in Voice from the New England Conservatory of Music.
