Managing Test Anxiety on the SAT and ACT: A Game Plan

Is Test Anxiety on the SAT and ACT Common?

It’s incredibly common for students to experience test anxiety as they prepare for and take the SAT or ACT. Sometimes experiencing anxiety can feel like a personal failure, and managing it can seem insurmountable. However, students aren’t choosing to experience test anxiety, rather they are experiencing the fight or flight nervous system response that gets triggered automatically to help keep us safe in stressful situations. Resetting your nervous system can’t be done through thought alone. Instead, regulating your nervous system is a skill that can be taught and that gets better through practice. This blog post covers why test anxiety on the ACT and SAT is so common and lays out a game plan for how to address it.

Why is Test Anxiety so Common on the SAT and ACT?

Experiencing test anxiety on the SAT and ACT is very common. Prior to preparing, some students have previously experienced test anxiety in the school setting and know it will be a factor. Other students experience test anxiety for the first time while taking the SAT or ACT. 

The following aspects of the SAT and ACT may make test anxiety more likely:

1. It’s a timed test: the pressure to perform in timed conditions can put us into fight or flight
2. 82% of High School Students take the SAT or ACT: comparing scores may cause an anxiety reaction
3. The test is part of the high-stakes nature of college admissions: the high-stakes nature of this test may result in students experiencing more test anxiety

How Can You Conquer Test Anxiety on the SAT and ACT?

Students who anticipate experiencing test anxiety should start preparing for it as if it were a section on the test. In addition to getting to know the test, reviewing math, and learning new punctuation concepts, students should practice resetting their nervous systems in timed conditions. 

Test Prep Solution

*This is a generalized overview of a step-by-step process for education purposes and is not meant to substitute for anxiety disorder treatment by licensed therapists and psychiatrists or test anxiety coaching.

Step 1: Apply for Accommodations if Relevant

There are several accommodations that may help if a student has a documented anxiety disorder. It’s very important to test these accommodations out and consult with the student, as some of these accommodations may have the opposite effect based on personal anxiety experience.

Here are several accommodations available with documentation:

1. Extra Time
2. More Breaks
3. Separate Day Testing
4. Separate Room or Small Group Testing

These accommodations allow for students to either take time away from the test to reset their nervous system or reduce anxiety triggers.

You can learn more about applying for accommodations on the ACT and applying for accommodations on the SAT through two of our blog posts.

Step 2: Learn About the Physiology of the Stress Response

In a fight or flight response, the brain sends a distress signal, leading to epinephrine (also know as adrenaline) release in the blood. This triggers a cascade of whole-body symptoms that include increases in:

• heart rate
• blood pressure
• breathing
• oxygen to the core of the brain through blood flow
• sensory alertness

Source: Harvard Health

The activation of your sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight mode) is great if you need to physically run or fight, but because the brain and body are so busy carrying out the stress response, your body doesn’t have the resources to divert to the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that does higher-level thinking. This can be crippling when reading or solving math questions. The solution is to reset your nervous system by doing something physical so you can free up resources to go to the front of the brain for higher level thinking.

Step 3: Recognize Your Stress Response on the SAT or ACT

Students may experience Fight, Flight or Freeze responses as a result of an activated sympathetic nervous system. Here is a generalization of what they may look like in the context of the ACT and SAT:

1. Freeze Stress Response on ACT/SAT
   1. Forgetting how to do things you know
   2. Blanking on a question 
2. Flight Stress Response on ACT/SAT
   2. Finishing the test quickly to get the experience over with
   3. Going so quickly that small errors are made
3. Fight Stress Response on ACT/SAT
   1. Feeling frustration when you don’t know the answer
   2. Trying to push through instead of resetting when you feel frustrated

Step 4: Test Out Different Stress Reduction Practices

Practice a stress reduction practice that you can do in your chair during the SAT/ACT. These can include:

• stretching in your seat
• box breathing
• meditation
• body scan
• drawing
• writing
• closing your eyes
• putting your head down
• looking out the window

Everyone is individual, so it’s important to test out different methods and see which one works best for the student.

Step 5: Practice Using these Stress Reduction Techniques During Studying and Practice Tests

If a student is just told “breathe during the test,” they most likely won’t be able to do that successfully on test day to reset their nervous system. It would be just like telling a student to use pythagorean theorem on the math section without any instruction or practice. Students need to practice resetting their nervous system while doing timed practice tests to prepare for the real exam.

Test Day Goal

Importantly, the goal on test day isn’t to not feel nervous. Anxiety will inevitably come up, and we need a certain level of adrenaline to perform well on the test. The goal is to have the tools and awareness to bring the stress response down from a cognitive-shutdown level to an excitement level.

Personalized Support

Many students find it is helpful to have personalized support for both learning how to manage test anxiety and learning content on the SAT and ACT. If you have any questions about test anxiety support, feel free to reach out to our director, Hailey.