A lot of people naturally approach tests by trying to solve the problems in order. For some tests, that's not the right approach. Going in order may be a bad i

A lot of people naturally approach tests by trying to solve the problems in order. For some tests, that's not the right approach. Going in order may be a bad idea. Actually trying to immediately solve the problems may be a bad idea. For example, it may be more efficient to check the units of all the multiple-choice answers first, to see if there's only one that's possibly correct. You could try to figure out the best strategy during the test, but it's far more effective to learn these things before the test. If you've already done a dozen practice tests, you'll know what kinds of methods there are to quickly eliminate incorrect multiple-choice answers. You'll know, say, that there are fundamentally 8 types of problems, and you'll be able to skim the test and immediately recognize which problems call into which categories. This is why people who do test prep get higher scores. That doesn't mean that we should throw out standardized tests, but it is silly to deny that test prep helps (a lot).