Mastering mathematics is absolutely essential for future opportunities in school and careers. Your children will need to reach a certain level of competency in math to take many advanced high-school courses, to be admitted to college, and to have a wide variety of career choices. Here’s how you can help them maximize their math-smarts.

1. Make sure your children understand mathematical concepts

Otherwise, math becomes a meaningless mental exercise of just memorizing rules and doing rote drills. Have your children manipulate objects to figure out basic concepts. For addition, they could add one, two, or more blocks to a pile of blocks and then tell you how many blocks are in the pile.

2.Help them master the basic facts

Mastery of a basic fact means that children can give an answer in less than three seconds. Considerable drill is required for children to give quick responses. Use flash cards to help your children learn the basic facts. When they don’t know an answer, have them lay out objects to solve the problem.

3. Teach them to write their numbers neatly

Twenty-five percent of all errors in solving math problems can be traced back to sloppy number writing. Improve your child’s number-writing skills by having them trace over numbers that you have written. Suggest they use graph paper to keep the numbers in problems neatly aligned.

4. Provide help immediately when your children need it

Math is one subject in which everything builds upon what has been previously learned. For example, a failure to understand the concept of percent leads to problems with decimals. If a teacher is unable to help your children, provide the help yourself or use a tutor or learning center.

5. Show them how to handle their math homework

Doing math homework reinforces the skills your children are learning in class. Teach them to begin every assignment by studying the textbook or worksheet examples. Then have them redo the examples before beginning the assignment to make sure they understand the lesson.

6. Encourage your children to do more than the assigned problems

Considerable practice is necessary for your children to hone their math skills. If the teacher only assigns the even problems, having them do some of the odd ones will strengthen their skills. The more time your children spend practicing their skills, the sooner they will develop confidence in their abilities.

7. Explain how to solve word problems

Mathematicians have an expression: To learn to solve problems, you must solve problems. Teach your children to read a word problem several times. Also, have them draw a picture or diagram to describe it. Make it easier for them to understand the steps in a problem by teaching them to substitute smaller numbers for larger ones.

8. Help your children learn the vocabulary of mathematics

They will never get a real feeling for math nor learn more advanced concepts without an understanding of its vocabulary. Check that your children can define new terms. If not, have them use models and simple problems to show you they understand how the term is used.

9. Teach them how to do math "in their head"

One of the major ways to solve problems is by using mental math. Kids should use this method frequently instead of using pencil and paper or a calculator. When helping your children with a problem, help them determine when it would be appropriate to use mental math.

10. Make mathematics a part of your child’s daily life

Mathematics will become more meaningful when your kids see how important it is in so many real-life situations. Encourage them to use math in practical ways. For example, ask them to space new plants a certain distance apart, double a recipe, and pay bills in stores.

When I started looking at colleges back at the turn of the century (the middle ages in web time), really the only resources available to me were traditional college guidebooks like The Princeton Review. While those books offered some great general information, they really only scratched the surface of what each college was actually like for students. Even if I sent away to the school for more info, it was still vetted and edited by the school’s communications department.

It wasn’t until I visited the schools I was interested in and actually talked to students that I started to get a real picture of what university life was like at those schools. Thankfully, students of today don’t have quite the same problems, and that’s all because of social media. Here are 10 social media resources for high school students (and their parents) to use in order to find out more about what college life is really like at the school they plan to attend.

1. College Prowler 

Those stodgy old college review books have all the basic information: academics, acceptance rate, matriculation rate, graduation percentage, number of students, etc. But rarely do they touch on any of the things that really matter to incoming students trying to pick where to spend the next four years of their lives. Stuff like, how’s the night life? How’s the food? Is there parking? What’s the weather like? It was with that in mind that Luke Skurman founded College Prowler in 2002. The problem, Skurman thought, was that the people writing traditional college guidebooks were so far removed from the colleges that they couldn’t possibly know what life was really like for students. So Skurman decided to do the most logical thing: he hired students to write the guidebooks.

Originally sold only in stores, the hundreds of College Prowler guidebooks are now available for free on the web site, along with thousands of student editorials and college reviews.  

2. Unigo 

Unigo offers a way for current students to rate and review the colleges they attend so that prospective students get a clearer idea of what life is actually like at the school. In addition to providing the basic information about each school — enrollment, tuition, how selective the school is, and notable alumni — Unigo also offers unique ratings on topics most guidebooks don’t cover, like drug and alcohol culture, political activity, and the accessibility of professors.

The site also provides links to college newspapers, radio, and blogs, and capsule reviews (quotes, best thing, and worst thing about the college) that give a quick overview of what students think about going to school there. In addition, Unigo offers photos, videos, and discussion forums for each school.

3. Communiversity 

At Communiversity, students can share their story of campus life using text, photo, and video. Each school has its own page, and current students can connect and share information about what their lives are like at their school. From Greek life, to off campus living, to what the local scene is like, Communiversity offers information that will be very helpful for incoming freshman choosing a school.

The site is set up in a wiki format, so anyone can go in and edit university pages and add new information, media, or tips and advice.

4. Campus Buddy 

Campus Buddy essentially builds on top of and extends Facebook to connect high school students with students currently matriculating at the colleges they are considering attending. After linking to your Facebook account and adding prospective colleges, students can visit each college’s page on Campus Buddy to learn about the school, view ratings from current students, and connect with students at that school.

Further, each college profile has a Q&A forum where students can ask questions about campus life from the people who are actually living it.

5. Rate My Professors 

There’s nothing worse than a dull, boring, mean, or unfair professor when you’re in college. That’s not to say you should always take easy classes (you’re paying for an education, so you should probably try to make sure you get a good one), but there’s also no reason to suffer with a universally disliked professor when you can avoid it.

That said, the ratings at Rate My Professors should be taken with a generous helping of salt. Still, for students trying to decide which college to attend, it’s a good way to get a general idea of what sort of professors you might have to deal with. If a large majority of a school’s professors are rated poorly, that might just be reason for pause.

6. The College Blog Network 

What better way to learn what life is really like at the colleges of your choice than by reading blogs about campus life penned by the students that live there? The College Blog Network is a directory of student authored blogs at a large number of schools. 

The great thing about student blogs is that they really run the gamut of topics. One student might write specifically about life for someone studying a certain subject, while another might write about what it’s like to participate on a school sports team, for example. The site will be rebranding as CollegeBlender in August.

7. StuVu 

StuVu offers student created videos, photos and reviews of college campuses. StuVu doesn’t just ask for reviews about the college as a whole, but about specific aspects of college life. So the same user might give a positive review to a local on-campus eatery, but completely trash the condition of the school’s dorms. That way, prospective students can get a real perspective on what students love and hate about a particular school and its environs.

Where StuVu really excels is in its video section. The videos offer a way for high school students to get a real feel for what the school and surrounding areas actually look and sound like.

8. YouTube

YouTube’s Education section offers a way for students to view videos from an exceptionally long list of universities. Often those videos will include taped lectures, interviews with students, overviews of campus amenities, or Q&A sessions with professors. Because visiting colleges that are a great distance away can be cost prohibitive for some high school students, the ability to check out schools via video is very helpful when deciding which colleges to apply for and which to attend.

iTunes also offers video from a much smaller number of schools via its iTunes U program.

9. The University Review 

The University Review is a very straightforward college review site for students. Current students select their university, then enter 1-10 ratings in ten different categories: Academics, Athletics, Campus & Facilities, Dining, Diversity, Greek Life, Housing, Parties & Nightlife, Safety & Security, and Surrounding Area. The site also lets users comment pro and con about the school, and rate the strenuousness of their workload. Unfortunately, even though the site is very simple and well-designed, it is not very heavily used yet.

10. YourCampus360

 Though YourCampus360 is only currently used by 10 schools (four of which aren’t active yet), it’s a great idea and very helpful. The site provides 360 degree virtual tours of college campuses and the surrounding area. That allows prospective students to get a feel for the campus before they (or their parents) pay to go visit the school. Hopefully more schools will sign on to the YourCampus360 idea in the future.

The site also enables schools to provide students with their own profiles, allowing them to blog, post photos, and put up videos about their experiences at the college.

There are many ways you can use an edublog in your teaching, here are ten to get you started:

1. Post materials and resources

The web is a fantastic tool when it comes to distributing resources – all you have to do on your Edublog is upload, or copy and paste, your materials to your blog and they’ll be instantly accessible by your student from school and from home. What’s more, you can easily manage who gets to access them through password and plugin safety measures.

2. Host online discussions

If you’ve ever struggled to create an online discussion space – you’re going to love what edublogs will do for you.

Students can simply respond to blog posts and discuss topics you’ve set them through comments of through our simple forum functionality – commentators can also sign up to receive emails when their comments are replied to and you can easily manage and edit all responses through your blog’s administrative panel.

3. Create a class publication

Do you remember the good old days of class newspapers? Well, they just got a lot easier with your Edublog – you can add students as contributors, authors and even editors in order to produce a custom designed, finely tuned and engaging collaborative online publication by your class.

4. Replace your newsletter

Always enjoyed photocopying and stapling pages and pages of newsletters on a Friday afternoon? Though not! It’s ridiculously simple to post class information, news, events and more on your edublog

5. Get your students blogging

It’s all very good sending your students off to blog sites, or even creating them for them, but you need to operate as a hub for their work and a place where they can easily visit each others blogs from. Your Edublog can be used to glue together your students blogs, and besides which, if you’re asking your students to blog… you should certainly be doing it yourself.

6. Share your lesson plans

We all love planning and admin, right? Well, using an Edublog can turn planning and reflection on classes into a genuinely productive – and even collaborative – experience. Sharing your plans, your reflections, your ideas and your fears with other educators both at your school and around the world using an edublog is a great way to develop as a teacher, and a brilliant use of a blog.

7. Integrate multimedia of all descriptions

With a couple of clicks you can embed online video, multimedia presentations, slideshows and more into your edublog and mix it up with your text and static resources. No cds required, no coding necessary – just select the video, podcasts or slidecast you’d like to use and whack it in your blog to illustrate, engage and improve your teaching toolbox.

8. Organize, organize, organize

You don’t only have to use your edublog as a pedagogue… you can equally easily use the tools to organize everything from sports teams in your school, to rehearsals for the upcoming production. You can set up as many edublogs as you like, so don’t be afraid to use a dedicated one for a dedicated event – your can even use it as a record to look back on down the line.

9. Get feedback

There’s nothing that says you can’t allow anonymous commenting on a blog (although you’re also entirely within your rights to put all comments through moderation!) but why not think about using a blog as a place for students – and even parents, to air issues, leave feedback or generally tell you how great you are.

10. Create a fully functional website

One of the great things about Edublogs are that they are much, much more than just blogging tools. In fact, you can use your edublog to create a multi-layered, in-depth, multimedia rich website – that hardly looks like a blog at all. So, if you’d rather create a set of static content, archive of important information or even index for your library – you can bend an Edublog to suit your needs.

When I was in high school, I had no worries, no cares, few bills, and no clue. I earned money mowing lawns, working in the meat market in my local grocery store, babysitting, sacking groceries, and building a home. But I spent every thin dime I made. On what? I have no idea. There isn’t one thing left to show for all that work.

Then, I went to college. College didn’t really do anything to prepare me for life in the real world and here’s why:

1. I took out multiple student loans

even though I didn’t use the self discipline required to succeed. I simply wasn’t motivated to study. I was borrowing and going into debt just to stay in school because that was what I was supposed to do. I didn’t have a real goal, graduation seemed so far away, and I was easily distracted.

2. Free money, in the form of grants, only furthered my distorted view of reality

Need money? Just apply for it! Let someone else pay my way. They proclaim that every man is entitled to exist without labor and, the laws of reality to the contrary notwithstanding, is entitled to receive his “minimum sustenance” – his food, his clothes, his shelter with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright. To receive it – from whom? –Ayn Rand (1905 – 1982)

3. The credit card vendors at the tables in the student center tempted me with that T-shirt!

Do you know why they give free T-shirts for credit card applications? Because college students will sign anything to get a free one, especially freshmen. Do you know why colleges allow credit card issuers to entrap students into a lifetime of debt? Because they pay the colleges.

4. The free health care myth distorted my world view even more

All I had to do was flash that student ID and I got “free” health care. It still hadn’t sunk in to my head that nothing is free. Someone has to pay for everything.

5. I got free software, too

Just by being a student, I was eligible to use the software put out by a myriad of companies, and that’s how they get you hooked on their product. It’s called the “Puppy Dog Close” amongst salesmen. Allow a family to take a puppy home to “try him out” for a few nights and they will never want to get rid of him.

6. ZERO teaching on personal finance

After graduating and beginning to work is when people should be making quality personal financial decisions, not when they should begin learning how personal finance works. There was never any teaching about an emergency fund, investing for retirement, buying a home, savings accounts, or frugality. College taught me only about all the freebies, nothing about responsibility.

7. Cheap housing only perpetuated my skewed view

The dorm was cheap but my apartment was even cheaper. It was only $235/month … split 4 ways. Split the gas bill, the power bill, the cable bill, and the food and you have a student living on less than $300/month. While it’s great that I didn’t spend much on living expenses, coupled with the lack of training I had on personal finance, I spent everything I made.

8. Are meal plans available to anyone but students?

Getting a 16 meals per week plan at college cafeterias where I could eat all I wanted at every meal didn’t cause me to learn about budgeting. It only caused me to get used to having anything I wanted and as much as I wanted.

9. There was never any time management teaching

When was the last time YOU could schedule your workday to be only on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 AM until 4 PM? Is there anything realistic here?

10. No teaching on interviewing or preparation for getting a real job

I knew all about regression analysis, capital structure, strategic management decision making, strategic marketing, and global human resource management, but I didn’t know how to interview, how to mimic the body language of my interviewer, how to deal with office politics, or how to negotiate my salary.

Nothing in real life is like college

Nothing in college really helped me prepare for life. I had a great time, I made a lot of friends, I met my future wife, I did a lot of fishing, I learned how to borrow lots of money, but I didn’t learn anything about real life. I didn’t learn anything about handling my finances, or about managing my time, or about budgeting my money, or about getting an interview, or about the dangers of debt.

None of these 10 items were that bad by itself, but taken as a whole, I believe they skewed my view of how life works, how employment works, and how debt works.

Since most colleges don’t teach these important principles, those most in need of this education are left to try and figure out this information on their own after they graduate or drop out for a lack of money.

Some will succeed in learning it and most will struggle, but all would be better off if they had learned it before entering the work force.

Many of you would like to get better grades but aren’t sure exactly what will help raise your marks. You may have trouble focusing or you may get bored easily. You may think it takes too much effort to get better grades. That isn’t necessarily the case. There are some very simple techniques that can help you to focus so that you’ll remember things better, make your studying more efficient, get more studying done in less time, retain more information and to actually get better grades.

1. Study in a Chair at a Table

Do all your reading, writing and studying at a table, sitting upright in chair. Be sure to have good lighting, fresh air and fluids nearby. This is the number one most important technique to getting more out of studying and getting better grades. So many people lay on the floor to study, sit on a bed to study or recline on the sofa to study.

If you are lying down, chances are, you’ll get sleepy and fall asleep. When you are lounging, your mind drifts out of focus. When you are sitting upright, in a well-lit room, your studying will be the most focused. Every hour of studying this way could be worth two hours of studying on the bed or sofa. That means more time for fun.

2. When You Study Set Goals and Take Breaks

Figure out how much work you need to do and how long it will take to do it. Set yourself the goal of completing a certain amount of work and then taking a study break. When you are studying, be very focused on studying. When you take your breaks, get up, walk around, get the blood flowing in your body and brain. If you are studying with a friend, hang out, talk, and socialize. Its harder to take breaks if you leave all of your studying to the last minute hand find yourself cramming like crazy in a 7 hour study session, but it still helps to clear your head. Measured study with break gets the most done without burning you out.

3. Start or Join a Study Group

When you have classes that involve complicated materials or have large volumes of reading, you should consider forming a study group with your peers. Quiz each other and explain things to each other. If there is a large amount of material you may want divide up the research and report back to each other. If you find that you are the one person in the group who knows much more than the others, You may still gain much from the study session. You will be practicing formulating your ideas. So even if you help bring your classmates from a C to a B, you may bring yourself from a B to an A. However, if the tests are highly competitive and graded on a curve, then you need to weigh the value of your study group. Make sure you leave yourself time to study on your own.

4. Know your Strengths and Weaknesses in Testing Types

People vary in how they respond to various types of testing. Some do best at essays, while others do better with multiple choice or short answers. If you are given a choice of testing types choose the ones in which you excel. If you have a weakness in one of these areas, we suggest you learn what it takes to do better. Also make sure you clearly understand what criteria your professor uses in grading.

5. Study a Little Bit Every Day

It’s much easier to study a little bit every day than trying to get all of your studying done in one 10-hour study session each week. You may find that you have more free time to do other things without feeling guilty about a big pile of work waiting for you at home.

6. Choose Classes that you like and find interesting in the first place

Of course if you like a class and find it interesting, you’re more likely to pay attention without getting bored. You are more likely to remember the lectures and the readings. Choose to take classes with interesting lecturers, who help interest and motivate you.

7. Finish Your Assignments On Time

This often proves to be difficult due to conflicts with other classes, work and your social life. Students who manage to read their assignments on time retain longer and require less studying for exams. We know of a few students who kept up with all of the assignments and were able to skip cramming for final exams, much to the dismay of their fellow students. We’re not saying this is easy.

8. Ask Questions and Volunteer Answers in Class

Not only does this get more attention from the instructor, but also it helps to keep you from getting bored or falling asleep. The added benefit is that some Instructors give you extra credit for class participation whether they tell you so or not.

9. Sit in the Front of the Class

We know sitting in the front of the class makes it harder to play tootsie with the person next to you. But sitting in the front will help you to focus and pay attention while helping you to retain more information. It will also help the professor to get to know your face, which may lead to more charitable feelings when grading time comes. Professors are sometimes more lenient on students they know than the faceless students in the back of the class.

10. Actually go to every Class

This technique is often overlooked. Some students might have trouble waking-up in the morning. Others may skip class to go shopping. For most students skipping an hour of class will require several hours of catching-up.

Good Luck. People we know with good study habits are less stressed and require less cramming before exams. They tend to get better grades too.

For many people Fall means exam time. Whether it’s a standardized test to get you into grad school or college or simply a mid-term exam, it seems that once the leaves start to turn it means that it’s time to turn to the books. Some enjoy the challenge. Others dread the anxiety. Everyone wants to know how they can do better.

I’ve spent thousands of hours teaching in my life. A good chunk of that time has been focused on helping to prepare people for various exams including the SAT, the ACT and the GMAT (while working for Kaplan) and for various technology exams while working at a Microsoft training center. In addition over the years I’ve taken each of those exams as well as the PSAT, the LSAT, the CMA and Level One of the CFA. I’d like to share the top 10 “hacks” that I’ve learned over the years and taught to others in the hope that they might be helpful to you.

1. Surround yourself with people who expect to score well

In my experience nothing will give you a better chance to score well then surrounding yourself with other people who expect to score well. Life works this way in general (the more successful people you surround yourself with, the more likely you are to succeed) but for some reason people forget about this when it comes to test-taking. If you’re looking to score 170+ on the LSAT you want to be hanging out and studying with others who are looking to do likewise. You’ll learn tips from them and be challenged as you study together in a way that you simply won’t be with people who have more humble expectations. And now with the Web it’s easier than ever to connect with people who have similar lofty aims.

2. Block your study time

Almost all exams are timed. Yet for some reason most people they don’t time their studies. Blocking your study time serves two purposes. First, it puts you in more realistic exam conditions to what you’ll experience on Test Day. Second, it’s simply more productive. In Tony Schwartz’s excellent book The Power of Full Engagement he recommends breaks every 90-120 minutes:

The body, if you listen to it, asks you for a break every 90-120 minutes. We override that rhythm at our peril. If people are operating effectively and are following the natural demand of the body, it pays for them to take a form of recovery every 90-120 minutes. Use a timer and block your study time and not only will it be more enjoyable, it’ll be way more effective.

3. Research your study materials carefully

I’m shocked at how many people use crappy study material to prepare for their exam. You’re likely going to invest dozens or even hundreds of hours studying. Why would you not spend at least a few hours planning and researching your approach and materials? Sadly, many people find themselves wandering the isles at a Barnes & Noble and end up grabbing the book that “looks good”. Don’t do that. Go to Amazon and read the reviews. Talk to your friends who’ve taken the exam (preferably the ones who have scored very well!). Frequent discussion boards for your exam and ask questions there. And if you end up taking a test prep class grill your instructor about the best study materials (if he or she can’t give you intelligent advice you may want to switch to another class!). The time you spend upfront will be well worth it!

4. Teach someone else

This is perhaps the most underutilized form of studying which is a shame because it’s one of the most effective. Perhaps the most effective. You’ve heard the adage that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else and that’s definitely true for test prep. I recently read the excellent book Disrupting Class which contained a great story about someone who discovered this to be true:

Dan recounted to us that as he began to teach accounting, “All of a sudden, I understood it! I had grunted through all those years as a student by sheer guts and willpower, memorizing all the rules. But I never understood why we had to do all of those things. As soon as I had to prepare for class and teach it, I understood it!”

The ideal is to find someone who’s preparing for the same exam and who hasn’t studied very much yet or is not expecting to score very high. Offer to tutor them for free. It’s one of the best ways to reinforce your knowledge of the material!

5. Tuck studying into the cracks of your day

We’re all busy but most of us have little gaps here and there throughout the day where studying is possible. Over the course of a day all those gaps add up. Find creative ways to study during those gaps. For instance, preparing flashcards that you can put in your backpack is a great idea. Then the next time you’re in line somewhere break them out and do a quick study session.

Audio can be another great way to maximize your study time. There are audio learning materials available for many exams and even if there aren’t you certainly can create your own. Ideally you can get these onto your iPod or iPhone and listen while you’re in the car, at the gym, etc. I used this hack a lot when preparing for my CMA exams and it was amazing how much studying I was able to do without taking any extra time out of my day.

6. Become an expert in the details of the exam itself

Over the years I taught many people who spent lots of time preparing for the exam without having much of an understanding about how the actual exam scoring and timing would go. Big mistake. If you’re going to do anything to prepare the first thing should be to know how the exam is administered. Is it pencil and paper? Computer adaptive? How long is each section? How does the scoring work? You should know the exam so well that you could write a blog post describing all the details that is completely accurate. All of that information is (usually) publicly available so there’s really no excuse for not understanding how the exam is constructed. This hack alone will mean a big difference between scoring well and scoring poorly.

7. Utilize The Million Dollar Proofreader Hack

This one can be very effective, especially if you practice it ahead of time. If you’re taking a traditional exam (this doesn’t work as well for computer adaptive exams although you can adapt it), try this once you’ve completed all of the questions. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. When you open them pretend like you are looking at someone else’s exam. Now pretend that you’ve been given a task. For every mistake you can find on that person’s exam between now and when time is up, you’ll be given one million dollars. Go back in and dissect every question as if there were huge stakes on the line (given how much your score can impact your future, there probably are!). In almost every case you’ll find at least one mistake and often many more!

Most people simply get through the questions and stop and wait aimlessly for time to be called. That’s a big mistake. Don’t be like them. Go after those millions.

8. Do dry runs

Here’s a secret borrowed from Olympic athletes. Do at least a couple dry runs before your big exam simulating the actual conditions of the exam as closely as possible. If you know your exam is going to be at 9 AM on a Saturday morning then starting a few weeks before do a practice exam on Saturday mornings at 9 AM. This will get your body and mind conditioned properly for the test and you’ll also find out what works (e.g., a good workout the night before) and what doesn’t (e.g., partying until 3 AM the night before) in terms of being ready to go.
For your dry runs try as hard as possible to simulate the conditions of your exam. If your exam is going to be on a computer do your practice exams on a computer. Try to do the timing the same as it will be for the actual exam. Basically you want to set it up so that when you walk into the real exam you trick your body and mind into saying “Hey, I’ve been here before. It wasn’t that bad.”

9. Get a tutor

Why a tutor? Simply put it’s the most efficient way of being taught. If you sit in a class with a lot of people you’re likely only spending a fraction of your time learning stuff that’s highly relevant to you. With a good tutor you should be spending almost all of your time on challenging questions and problem areas specific to you. Classes aren’t bad per se but if you really want to hack your exam and get a top score an individual tutor might be a better route to go.

Places like Kaplan and Princeton Review provide private tutoring face-to-face. If you want online tutoring you can find it here and on an increasing number of other websites. Craig list is also a great place to find tutors. It’s amazing how many smart people hang out in the “Tutoring & Lessons” category there!

10. Write the exam

This is probably the most advanced of the hacks. And it’s not for everyone. But if you’re looking to get that killer score that will get you into Harvard Law or Stanford undergrad then this is something you should definitely try. Here’s what you do…sit down and pretend you’ve just been given a job by one of the testing companies to write 50 questions for the next year’s exam (you’ll want to do this after you’ve done a number of problems so you’re familiar with the question types, structures, etc.).

By forcing yourself to write really good questions (and importantly, provide really good answer choices) your brain will work in a different way. You’ll start to lay “traps” for the prospective test-taker such as an incorrect answer choice that would be correct if a step in the problem were skipped. By writing questions in this fashion you’re going to be much less likely to fall into those same traps on test day. Writing questions like this can take a fair amount of time and mental energy but it’s an elite form of test prep that will give you an extra edge over the competition.

I hope you’ve enjoyed 10 Ways to Hack Your Next Exam. If you have other strategies for prepping for a test please post in the comments!

Time management system for your study can be boiled down to 10 basic principles:

1. Find a place to study where you won’t be interrupted

For some people, it’s the nearest library; for others, it’s a desk or card table in a secluded corner of their home. Whatever pleasant, distraction-free environment you select, you should find a specific place and designate it as the place where studying, and nothing but studying, occurs. Make sure all the materials you need are close by.

2. Reward yourself when you’re done

Let’s say you want to devote the next hour and a quarter to a particularly difficult element of the course that’s been eluding you. Instead of lashing yourself to the mast and braving the elements, promise yourself; say, a listen to a recently purchased CD upon completion of the task. When you start to droop a half-hour into your task, focus on this reward. You’ll boost your morale and make better progress!

3. Be disciplined but flexible and learn to adjust as you go along

Don’t beat yourself up for starting your reading at 10:15 when you had it slotted to begin at 10:10. It’s a waste of energy, and you can’t afford it. Use time overruns to help you make more realistic forecasts next time.

4. Don’t disengage immediately when presented with an unignorable distraction

Before you answer the phone, process the pressing question your roommate is shouting at you or make breakfast for the child who got up a little earlier than you thought she would, take a few seconds to be sure you’ve reached a logical stopping point in your study work. You’ll spend less time spinning your wheels when you come back to the work. Whenever possible, jot down a brief note that will remind you of where you left off.

5. Don’t skip around; first things first

Finish one task before you move on to the next one. Moving from topic to topic takes mental energy. Make the shift only after you’ve completed what you needed to. And remember the planning principle: Get the toughest, highest-priority items on the list out of the way first!

6. If something in your personal study routine doesn’t work for you, toss it and try something new

For some people, study groups are a great idea. For others, they’re a pain in the neck. For some people, absolute quiet is an essential while studying. For others, Pearl Jam on the headphones is a great way to get the motor running. Experiment until you find what makes you most productive and then stick with it.

7. Monitor your progress toward important goals

Schedules and hour-by-hour strategies are nice, but give yourself the freedom to try a new approach when a planning strategy has had a day or two to deliver the goods and hasn’t done so for you.

8. Write everything down

There’s a Chinese saying that goes something like this: “The faintest pencil mark is superior to the clearest memory.” If you got a good idea, commit it to paper. If you finish something, cross it off the list and save yourself the aggravation of finding you’ve duplicated your efforts later on down the line.

9. Bear in mind the complexity of the assignment when you allocate time slots

Aggressive scheduling is one thing, parting the Red Sea is another. If you try to cram too much work into too little time, you’ll reduce your personal effectiveness and increase your frustration level. That makes whatever you have to do next less likely to turn out well. Make realistic time estimates, and adjust them as necessary.

10. Take care of the equipment

Your mind and body are marvelous assets don’t misuse them. Get the sleep you need. Get the nutrition you need. Light exercise on treadmill is a great way to minimize the lingering stress.