Arrive Early.  Leave extra time so you get to your test center early.  If you are rushed, or running late you may be stressed, and it is important to be as relaxed as possible for your test.

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The Night Before Your Test.  It's fine to do a little studying or review the night before your test, but don't stay up late or spend hours and hours studying.  At this point, you know what you know, and trying to cram in a bunch of math the night before will not be helpful.  You want a clear head on test day.

 

Don't Waste Time On Problems You Don't Know How To Do.  Read each question and decide if you know how to do it or not.  If you do not have any idea how to do the problem, don't waste time messing around with it.  Take a guess and move on.  You want to save your time to work on problems you are familiar with.  Many students do not have enough time to do all the problems on the test, so if you waste time on problems you don't know how to do, you may not have time to work on problems you do know how to do that are near the end of the test.   

 

Don't Leave Any Answers Blank.  Fill in a guess for every question.  Don't leave anything blank to come back to, because you may not have time to come back to it.  You can note down the question number on your scrap paper so you can come back to if you do have extra time. 

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Make Sure You Don't Run Out Of Time To Fill In Guesses To The Questions At The End Of The Test.  Monitor your time, and when you have 5 minutes left, stop working and write down the number of the question you are working on.  Then, fill in a guess answer for every remaining question.  Don't read the questions, just fill in a guess.  This should take just a minute or two.  Then, go back to where you were and continue working until time is up.

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Focus, Focus, Focus.  Focus on the one question you are doing.  Don't think about all the questions you haven't known how to do, and don't think about all the questions left to do.  

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Don't Panic.  You can get a lot of questions wrong, and still pass the test, so don't panic if you find many questions you don't know how to do.  Everyone taking the test encounters questions they don't know how to do.  This is normal.  Be prepared for it.

 

Manage Your Time.  This is a tough one.  You need to work fast enough to get through as many questions as possible, but slow enough to work carefully on the questions you are familiar with.  This is something you should practice ahead of time.  Re-do some of the practice sets in the Study Guides, pushing yourself to go as fast as you can, and do some timed Practice Tests.

 

Practice Tests.  You should do some of the timed tests you can find on the internet.  Click the Practice Tests button above, or search on-line for ETS HiSET Math Practice Test.  This will give you practice with working as fast as you can, but not too fast to work carefully.  It will also give you practice with handling questions you don't know how to do by taking a quick guess, not panicking, and moving on.