"Not a good test taker..."- I don't understand.

iskigates
Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:34:36 +0000

A lot of people have test anxiety and stress themselves out before taking a test and thus call themselves bad test takers. its not that they aren’t prepared or they aren’t smart, they just have anxiety related issues that keep them from doing their best.

personally, i’m a really slow reader. that doesn’t say anything about my intelligence or how well i can preform, it just means that it takes me longer to read a passage than most people, so sometimes i barely finish a reading section, and on the ACT i hardly finished a single section.

but it is possible to be really bad at taking standardized tests. i have a friend who has a 3.9 gpa (unweighted) with lots of APs, but only got an 1890 on her SAT because she gets anxiety and has trouble focusing.

i do agree that the term is over-used as an excuse though.