Top tips - Multiple choice exams

15 / June / 2022

If you are studying our level 2 Gym Instructing or Level 3 Personal Training qualification, you will be doing a multiple choice exam. We are here to give you some top tips on how best to prepare and tackle the exam, lets go!

We provide mock exams for these assessments, which are a simulation of what the exam will be like. This is a valuable tool so take advantage of them! Take the mocks in exam conditions, don't refer to your notes or google the answers as you won't be able to do that on the day. If you pass the mocks but you gave yourself 2 hours and googled the answers, then that is not a good indicator of your readiness! The age old saying “fail to prepare, prepare to fail” springs to mind.

So you have prepared for the exam, you are feeling confident in your knowledge, smashed all the mocks and it is time to book the exam! Once your assessment is scheduled it's time to think about how to approach the multiple choice exam, here are our top tips:

Take your time- you have an hour, use it wisely. If you have flown through the questions in 20 minutes, take your time to go back through every question and make sure you are happy with your answer. If you are unsure, flag it and come back for further evaluation. This is one of the most common mistakes we see, so really think about how you can utilise the time to your advantage. One mark can be the difference between pass and fail, so take the time to review your answers! We see so many students fail to check their answers and then miss the pass grade by 1 or 2 marks.

Read the question carefully- this might sound silly but reading the question out loud can really help you understand what is being asked. Read the question out load, and also the four possible answers, this might just help you decipher the correct answer. If you just glance at the question and don't take time to really consider all the possible answers, you might miss a keyword! Maybe you mis-read "increase" as "decrease", and you know the answer but because you read it wrong, ultimately your answer is wrong.

Answer by elimination- now this might sound strange but if you really don’t know the answer, this technique is better than just guessing! Read the question very carefully and then take each of the 4 options and start ruling them out. Think about how it couldn’t be each one, you might just surprise yourself and narrow it down to two possible answers. In which case, you went from a 25% chance of guessing the right answer to 50%!

There you have it, our top tips for smashing your multiple choice exam! Remember, these are just tips on how to best approach the exam and use techniques to maximise your success. Really make sure you understand the content and are confident in your knowledge before booking your exam, tips and tricks can only go so far!