its just a piece of paper

a piece of paper that could fuck up ur whole life

before ever test i take in college/final exam, even though i dont need it, i go over every problem with a prof/tutor, that way i know how to do every question 100%. ive gotten 3 100% on my last 3 tests, but its pre-calcus, im not very smart.

eat chocolate on exams

really, it helps

Try some exercise before taking an exam, should help the factors you named.

What if you put yourself in exam situation at home? I'm positive that if you asked your professor for exercice exams they'd be happy to provide you with some, and ask a third party to stay nearby so you don't cheat or stop mid-way.
Best of luck :)

See a psychiatrist

this sounds good i'll make sure to try it thanks mate :-)

I've said this in other threads, but it's gotten me through numerous years of collegiate study - including a few classes I hardly even went to, with flying colors lol.

Step 1. Get a legal pad or large (long) piece of paper.
Step 2. Write down *everything* you think you'll need to know for your exam on that single sheet of paper. That way if you absolutely know something you can just erase it or not put it on to begin with and just make a mark so you repeat the thing you already know in that spot. If *everything* you need to know is too big to fit on the paper, you need to spend more time with whatever concepts so you can be more concise (thus understanding the material better).
Step 3. Memorize things on the sheet of paper relative to things that you know "I know x thing, and the 2 things I don't know so well on the paper are above and below it"
Step 4. Vick's vapor rub. Put some of it on your arm while you look at the paper and recite it in your head over and over.
Step 5. Take exam, put some Vick's vapor rub on your arm again, take test with arm close enough to smell the menthol.
Step 6: profit.

You can also glance over that sheet a few times before the exam begins to give yourself a little confidence boost lol. If you're really on your game you'll make that sheet a few days in advance of the night before the exam, so you can approach it more leisurely.

I mostly have to deal with oral exams recently - but nobody has noticed that if they ask me something unexpected I rub my nose to get a hit of menthol to kick start my brain lol. I'm a machine when it comes to name/dates/quotations which always at least gives you some brownie points in my fields lol :D

thanks marxist but i'm an engineering student who's struggling with maths and physics there's not much to memorize i just have to do lots of practice problems

Start working immediately in the exam. Don't give yourself enough time to be anxious, distract yourself with solving the question

What part of the exam messes you up the most, is it the tension before going in, blanking out/ panic attacks when you see the page, struggling to recall concepts when reading a question, completely not understanding what your prof is asking you to do, the idea of taking an exam in general?

how exactly are you studying? for STEM subjects you just have to do hella practice problems till you can confidently say you know the concept.

Do a ton of practice problems, in the exam don't answer questions in order, read through all the questions in the first 5 min or so and answer what you feel most comfortable with first, you wont have any nasty surprises half way through. If you find a question is taking you too long then ask a friend
Work through questions logically and present your method in a clearly layed out format.

i always panic when i see the page, which makes it harder for me to focus
i also have to finish an exam in 2hours, the time pressure is what tilts me the most

What sort of engineering are you doing, out of curiosity?

As a general rule of thumb, if you're studying in the sense that you are simply studying solutions to homework, practice tests, and so on, rather than doing practice problems by themselves (meaning, without heavily referring to your notes), you need to rethink the way you study. The aim of studying, especially in advance rather than "the night before" kind of studying, is to get comfortable enough with the material so you actually can "snap" your way through problems on the exam and utilize your time bank as efficiently as possible. Granted, some exams will throw some very tricky problems at you, but at that point you need to realize that those problems have a chance of being there and focus on flying through anything that is trivial in order to better arm yourself with the time needed to tackle more difficult problems.

I'm a little unsure as to why Skyrolla got downvoted, but exercise is a great idea too if you can somehow fit it into your morning schedule or maybe just do some walking for ten minutes. That can help with reducing tension and just making yourself feel good before an exam. I should also add that, realistically, you should focus on your learning and grasp of the material rather than embark on some grand journey to become a better test taker. Some people aren't test takers, though if you are bombing tests hard that's a different story.

energy engineering, thanks for the advice vand :-)

panicking as soon as you see the page isnt exactly a great habit, its kinda like being scared of being scared. i dont really have a solution for you other than remembering that dreading something is a waste of time and stresses you out for no reason

if you arent going to fail the test, why let it bug you?
if you are going to fail the test, no amount of feeling like a piece of shit or losing your mind now will change the amount of work you have to do later to fix it

i know when i had exams id be anxious about id just start with the absolute easiest thing i could figure out how to do, the things i was 100% certain of and then id work from there

im talking incredibly basic shit like 'write a method named 'abacus' which takes x as an argument' and me literally stopping there and writing

def abacus(x)
end

im really momentum based when it comes to exams so things like that would help me get comfortable and rolling into more complex questions

be able to anticipate questions, this is indicative of mastery

Personally, I always make a point of flicking through the test right away and seeing all the questions. Then I jump around and do easiest to hardest, so that I don't waste all my time on one question. Also, study-wise I just do a shit load of practice questions, and then go over the hardest ones with my prof.

see a shrink and make sure you don't have ADHD or some sort of anxiety. If you do, your life is gonna be better with therapy AND you can contact your school's disability offices to schedule exams in a place where it'll be easier to focus or you get a bit more time or something.

on top of that, test taking strats are essential. You said you're worried about time, so time management is an important skill to start to learn. When I take exams I basically do multiple drafts on the multiple choice section. I skim briefly and look for questions I know 100% and can guarantee the answer to. The first read through usually gets me ~50% of the questions. I do it again and start looking for questions I can narrow down to only 2 possible choices and questions I have no idea about. If there's no free response I start focusing on the 2 choice questions and hope that figuring one out will help me figure some of the others out. Once I get most of those done (~75% of the exam) I start looking at the remaining questions to see if any of the questions give hints about what I'm missing. If there's a free response I start working on it before I finish multiple choice in the hopes that writing stuff out will jog my memory

idk if that strat will work for you but its an example of how I stay focused in exams. Since I'm following a very clear plan it makes it hard to get truly stressed about it. I start off crushing what I already know and the only time I feel a time crunch is at the end if I have a few blind guesses left. I still get a bit anxious about exams, but trying to work through it that way lets me avoid that anxiety until the end

You may be able to go to your prof or student services and have your exams written in a different room or at a different time if you have exam anxiety.

don't go directly to a professor about this. They're gonna need documentation from your campus's disability support services who are probably gonna need documents from a psychologist/chiatrist. Even if your professor wants to help you they likely can't without something on paper

Some people above have mentioned already, but a great way to study is to do practice exams (if you don't have any, create your own questions in an exam-format and such). It seems like you're struggling more with the psychological aspect of test-taking rather than the actual memorizing of material.

Try sitting down in a room that is similar to your exam testing rooms and immerse yourself in that environment. Give yourself a time limit, start at an arbitrary time (eg. if you're studying in the afternoon, start exactly at 2pm and finish in 2 hours or however long the exams typically are). Don't look at answers if you get stuck, just treat it like an exam. Some people prefer to finish written answers and transition back to multiple choice based on time, so try that too if it helps. Ultimately you're trying to habituate yourself to testing, which can be done with some practice. When you write your actual exam, imagine that you're just doing another practice test. Just remember that exams are, ideally, a reflection of what you already know. You've done the practice problems, you know the material, it's just a matter of putting it on paper. Best of luck!

Repetition is clearly the key in math exams. I struggle with this a bit myself but I'm slowly but surely working on it. Studying multiple days in advance for any exams that you might have will leave you less stressed and will also help reduce the number of late night cram study sessions before a test.

Try reviewing the oldest content first, as that will likely be the stuff that you need to spend the most time on (or at least for me it is), and work your way to the newest content, which you will hopefully know the best by the time that you're getting around to it when studying. This has helped immensely for me and after high school where I didn't really have to study I had to completely re-learn how to teach myself to study, and this is one technique that an academic adviser suggested that I do

I've just found that if I feel that I'm prepared, I usually don't end up going into a test stressed or worried since the little bit of time before a test, I can use that to refresh content that's already been gone over, rather than seeing it for the first time. Also getting enough sleep is key, but as an engineer I understand that sleep isn't exactly the easiest concept to grasp since you're usually struggling to keep afloat from the copious amounts of homework and studying that you have to do. But it's certainly possible if you structure your free time correctly

Here's My Tips:

• STOP Playing Video Games Right Before, Yes I know it's hard, but is it worth failing and not getting a good grade over some video games?
  
• Study your stuff and ASK stuff. I know everyone studies, but half the people literally just skim through notes and stuff and don't bother to see their professors or teachers during office hours or whenever possible. Say you can't get access to a teacher because so many people go to your school. Guess what.... it's 2017. The internet is your friend. Youtube, google, internet forums are the places to go. You could literally learn all your math off of youtube, that's how much resources there are any more from just Youtube. Yahoo answers has so many active users, take advantage of it. The possibilities are endless. What if your studying some weird subject or you simply don't know what the terms/names for what you're learning to ask the internet? Ask a friend, a classmate, someone who took the class last year.
  
• Discipline yourself. Forcing yourself to make something happen is key here. Do you want to go to college and be successful and have money so you can have a life and afford cool things like games and cool monitors? Or do you want to work some minimum wage or some tough construction job that will make your life miserable? "But Stevie Im already in college" in that case, the same things apply in a sense, but you have to realize that you still need to discipline yourself. Stop procrastinating. Take some time to sit down, and familiarize yourself with the stuff you need to know. Your school is more important than partying, seeing friends, etc.
  
• You need to take care of yourself. Please, please, please for the love of God take care of your body. Get some good sleep. Don't eat all junk food during exams. Plan your studying accordingly. The last possible thing you want to do is be up till midnight the night before cramming. Literally 90% of people who do this don't do well because they're A.) Tired and B.) Don't know the information well so they have to cram.
  
• Form good study habits. Take advantage of resources, makes flash cards, make use of friends to study with, quiz yourself, take online quizzes if you can find any. Be so comfortable with your materials that you could literally teach the lessons yourself to someone who doesn't know what you're learning. If you can do this, not only do you know all your materials, but you will feel confident, and all the pieces should align for you to walk in to your exam and sit down and ace it.
  
• One thing I learned, because I love mathematics, engineering, and physics, is that it's very useful to make chants or saying to remember things. Memorizing a bunch of formulas won't help you, as there's literally too many to memorize. Memorize what each one does, so that when you see a number or something, you can go "oh yea, I just need to use this formula". Literally practice also solving problems and equations. I know you don't want to, nobody wants to. I will tell you right now that if you're seriously disciplined enough, you should not have an issue practicing. The only way you can memorize that much stuff is by practicing solving equations and etc to remember when you used them, what you make mistakes on, and so you can further practice what you're doing wrong. You also need to practice because you are going
  to want to be able to solve efficiently and quickly. Exams are timed. You absolutely need extra time at the end to check all your work and see if something doesn't makes sense. A regret of mine is taking too long to solve math problems and such, so that I didn't have enough time to check. I only got like a B+ on the exam. Me being a perfectionist, I changed my study habits second time around and got an A, because I was able to check and find out that I made a lot of mistakes.

I really hope that helped. All the things I listed helped me. I'm sure there are more, and I really wish you the best of luck. It's a stressful time for everyone, so you're not alone. Take it easy, and remember that you have to fail in order to succeed.

Once your taking the exam there is no point in being nervous. Your gonna get what your gonna get and you might just try your best and relax