How many times have you thought to yourself, “I’m just not a good test-taker” or “This test is too hard”? Do you study for hours and then bomb on test day?
To start, let’s watch a quick video by Patrick J. Cohn, Ph.D., a sports psychologist and founder of Peak Performance Sports, LLC in Orlando, Florida.
Sports Psychology: Self-Confidence In Sports - Click here for more blooper videos
Let’s recap the major points that Dr. Cohn makes in this video and figure out how they apply to our SAT and ACT prep.
First, Dr. Cohn explains that confidence, fundamentally, is “the belief in your ability to execute” or to get the job done effectively. He wisely narrows this down to general confidence, like “our team can win this” or “sure I can achieve my goal score”, and task-specific confidence, like “I know I can consistently make contact with the ball” or “I know everything I need to know about geometry to answer this triangle problem.”
These concepts of general and specific confidence ask us to start prepping for a test really believing that we can achieve our goals and then following up by equipping ourselves with a vast vocabulary, a thorough understanding of grammar, and a super mathematical foundation. Obviously a lack of task-specific confidence is going to destroy your general confidence.
The other important element of confidence that I think is so applicable to our test prep is the idea of the “confidence roller coaster.” Just like a tennis career or a basketball career, we don’t judge a player’s overall capability by a couple of bad games or even a bad season. In the same way, if you let a bad test destroy your confidence or a difficult month at school undermine your perspective of yourself as a great student, you get on the roller coaster. Your test prep and college application process should be a long term, carefully timed and administered process.
According to Dr. Cohn, we build confidence on past successes, quality practice, and knowing that we are fundamentally able to achieve a task. What does that mean for you? Every time you learn a new skill, note it and get excited about it. Every new piece of information you learn is one more trick up your sleeve, just like a different pitch, and better pass, a more perfect spiral. Pay attention to your successes! Embrace them! Let every new word, fact, or test-specific fact become a building block to a more confident you.
