The night before
No full practice test. There is nothing left to learn from one and you will arrive tired. If you want to touch the material, do a short warm up set of ten questions and reread your mistake list.
Pack the bag: charged device with Bluebook set up and the exam downloaded, charger, photo ID matching your registration, admission ticket, approved backup calculator, pencil, snack, water.
Sleep is the actual preparation at this point. Two hours and 14 minutes of sustained concentration degrades fast when you are short on sleep, and the last Math module is where that shows up.
Sloths climb down from their trees about once a week to defecate, a trip that costs an enormous share of their weekly energy and exposes them to predators on the ground. Biologists have long found the behavior ______, since no clear benefit to the sloth has ever been identified.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word?
The morning
Eat something with protein and some slow carbohydrate rather than only sugar. The goal is steady attention for a couple of hours, not a spike at 8am and a crash during Math.
Caffeine is fine if you normally have it. Test morning is not the day to try it for the first time, and it is not the day to double your usual amount either.
Leave early. Reporting time is on your admission ticket and centers do not wait. Traffic and parking at an unfamiliar school are the usual reasons students arrive stressed.
Reading and Writing is two 32 minute modules of 27 questions, about 71 seconds each.
Pacing the modules
Reading and Writing is two 32 minute modules of 27 questions, about 71 seconds each. Math is two 35 minute modules of 22 questions, about 95 seconds each. Those averages are the only pacing numbers you need.
Do a first pass answering everything you can do inside that budget, flag anything else, and keep moving. Then come back. Reaching the end of a module with three flagged questions and eight minutes left is a far better position than reaching question 18 with two minutes left.
Give Module 1 everything. Your performance there decides whether Module 2 is the easier or harder version, and the harder version is what makes the top of the score range reachable. Treating Module 1 as a warm up caps your score.
With one minute left in any module, stop working and fill in every blank. There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so a blank is a point thrown away.
Using the break
There is one 10 minute break, between Reading and Writing and Math. Stand up, use the bathroom, eat the snack, drink water. Moving is the point. Sitting still for another ten minutes does not help your circulation or your focus.
You cannot use your phone and you cannot discuss test content. Both can get your scores cancelled.
Do not replay the section you just finished. It is closed, you cannot go back to it, and the only thing rethinking it does is spend attention you need for Math. If you need a reset, take a few slow breaths at the start of Math Module 1 rather than dwelling during the break.
When something goes wrong
If your device dies or crashes, Bluebook saves your answers locally as you go. Restart, sign back in, and you pick up where the timer left off. Tell the proctor rather than trying to fix it silently.
If a question seems broken or the app behaves strangely, raise your hand. Proctors can log issues, and an issue that is never reported cannot be considered later.
If the whole morning goes badly, you can cancel the score afterward, but think hard first. A score you keep but never send costs you nothing, and if your colleges superscore, a single strong section from a bad day can still count.