So, we have come to the long awaited multiple choice strategies post. A large number of your tests during your first year of university or college will probably be multiple choice, especially if you are in a science program. I love multiple choice tests because they are not subjective, the answer is given to you, and managing time is simple since all questions are of equal weight.
Before you read my post, you should probably know about my inspiration for writing it. There
is a post over at MedHopeful by Joshua that I read during my last year of high school on the same subject. I found it very helpful and I recommend that you read it first before you continue to read mine. Since it is so well written, I will not be repeating the strategies discussed there. My post here might be considered my personal addendum to Joshua’s post.
Let me start this off with a full disclaimer: the tips I share here are by no means foolproof, (So yes, the title was a ploy to catch the attention of more readers). Learn from them, but if you follow them for every single test you write, you may not be very successful. I will discuss why this is so in depth during the next section of this post. The majority of these strategies deal with narrowing down options on questions you have no idea how to answer. The truth is that even very well prepared students sometimes face a question they don’t know the answer to – but that doesn’t mean they have to get it wrong.
Now! Lets get started.
Not all Multiple Choice Tests are Made Equal
You might write multiple choice tests in many classes and feel like they are all the same basic concept. Well, you wouldn’t be wrong! Multiple choice tests all have the same attributes: many questions to answer that are usually allotted 1-3 minutes each, 4-5 possible answers, and equal weight all for correct answers. Some multiple choice tests deduct marks for wrong answers – most don’t. Joshua discusses multiple choice tests that deduct marks very thoroughly, so I will leave it up to you to read his post if you are interested in that subject.
So how are multiple choice tests different? From what I’ve seen, the way multiple choice tests are designed can vary substantially from class to class BUT remain very consistent from test to test within the same course. This is because different professors design their questions differently. Why? Sometimes, multiple choice tests are designed differently because of the course content. For example, you will consistently see “all of the above” or “both a and b are correct” in knowledge-heavy courses like biology, but you will be hard pressed to find options like that on a calculus exam just because of the nature of mathematics. Even MC tests for the same subject can be written differently – it’s often a matter of the professor’s personal preference. A very particular professor may often throw in trick questions to see if you are paying close attention to details, whereas a professor with a different teaching style might not agree with the concept of trick questions.
It’s important to understand the design of the test, because it helps you select your strategies appropriately, study efficiently and save time on the test. For example, one of your MC strategies for biology might be to go through each of the answer choices and see if they are true or not after you read the question. On a calculus exam, just calculating the answer and looking for it among the options would be much more efficient than working backwards through each of the options. For the same math exam, you would spend more time doing calculations in preparation for the exam because you know that’s what you will be tested on. Finally, when you know whether applying certain strategies on a test will work or not, you can immediately decide how to approach a question once you read it. It will save precious time on the test.
So how do you know how your test will be styled? Well, the first thing to do is a take a look at the course syllabus. Look for key words like “knowledge and understanding of” (like completing readings) and “application of concepts” (like doing calculations) to decide what the purpose of the course is, and as a result, what you can expect on the tests. Since it usually depends on the professor as well, pay close attention to your professor in lectures. My psychology professor told us at the beginning of the semester that he would not put any trick questions on the exam, and he held true to his word. However, the best way to understand the tendencies of your professor, (whether they: enjoy putting many “all of the above” type options, require calculations, focus on details or larger concepts, have a tendency to include outlier options, include simple diagrams or expect you to draw your own, etc.) is through the actual tests themselves. Sometimes past tests are made available: check your library, google search, or sometimes they are given by profs as practice material. It is essential that you go over these and recognize the tendencies of your professor so you can prepare yourself appropriately. If you have no sample questions available, it can be useful to make mental notes about the types of questions you are encountering most as you move through a test. If you often leave tests early, after checking your answers, take some time to analyze the format of the test before you hand it in.
So now that we’ve covered how to distinguish between test types, let’s get down to the strategies themselves.
How to Approach Questions with Multiple Similar Options
When faced with a question with a question that has two or three similar options and the rest are different, often times the correct answer will be one of the similar ones. This is because professors know that some students will know part of the answer but don’t know the second part or don’t have enough knowledge of detail. They like to weed out these students by presenting two similar options, forcing the student to guess. However, this format can also benefit some students: the ones who don’t know anything about the question to begin with. For examples, I am going to use questions from a practice exam provided by my chemistry professor during first semester. Take the question below for example:
Let’s say you have no idea how to approach this question. If you take a look at the possible answer choices, you will notice that there are two options that are more similar than the others, just based on how they are written. They have the exact same words and spelling in them, but are just in a different order. They are A and C. Now, you only have to guess between 2 possible answers rather than 5. In this case, the correct answer is C.
Sometimes on calculation based tests, the opposite is true. Say for example you are faced with a question like, “What is a good decimal approximation of 2/3?” In this example, let's say there are the following four possibilities:
A) 0.23
B) 0.2
C) 0.67
D) 0.22
Unless the professor is testing you specifically on something like significant digits, it is unrealistic of them to expect you to distinguish between the very similar options A, B and D. As a result, the correct answer can only be C. Warning: this situation is not exactly common, but I’ve seen it at least a couple times so I thought it was worth mentioning. This is a good example to relate back to the first part of this post: remembering what the prof is looking for is IMPERATIVE. If they were testing significant digits, and the question said 1/3, this would be a perfectly valid question with 3 viable options.
It’s Never Answer E
Ok, just kidding. If only multiple choice tests were that easy! However, there is an important strategy concerning the situation where your final option on a MC question is “all of the above” or “none of the above”. When you don’t know how to approach a question like this, it is important to consider that the last option has more requirements to be correct than all of the other options. If “all of the above” is the correct option, all of the 4 statements above MUST hold true. This is less likely than only 1 of the statements holding true. Let’s break this down to probability: each statement has an equal probability of being true (50% of the time) and being false (50% of the time). It is helpful to compare this to a coin toss, so let’s assign heads to a true statement and tails to a false statement. If you flip 4 coins, the probability of you getting a mixture of heads and tails is more likely than you getting 4 heads (or no heads, if the question says none of the above). You can see this on multiple choice tests: if you go through answer keys for multiple choice exams, and only look at the questions with an “all of the above” type answer, that option shows up as the right answer less often than 25% of the time for tests with 4 options per question.
All of this is to say that if you have absolutely no idea how to approach a question like this, pick the “all of the above” option less often when you are guessing. However, DO NOT use this strategy when you see at least two statements that you know are correct. Another example where this advice goes down the drain is when your professor only has 2 or 3 questions with an “all of the above” option. In this case, the professor probably included this option because it has significance as either the correct answer, or being a trap answer (common misconception). This strategy is a desperate last measure if you can’t narrow down the options at all.
Personally, I appreciate questions with an option type like “none of the above”, because if you find fault in even a single one of the other options, then you can cross out 2 possible answers instead of one, largely increasing your odds of getting a question right. It’s like a freebie!
Spot the Outlier
Some teachers choose to make this pretty damn easy. Since exams are stressful, many times teachers throw in a question with a ridiculous option choice. I’ve had some pretty wacky things come up on exams, anything from “spongebob squarepants” to “@&^!*#!!”. Although not all outliers are always this visible, the point is that they are often present in questions and can help you narrow down option choices.
In this question, A is visually the outlier, you can spot it at a glance because it looks different than the other options. Sometimes spotting the outlier requires a bit of knowledge about the subject or reading through the options and it does not “pop” out as an outlier.
Above, the outlier (D) is not as easy to spot since it does not visually pop out. However, all of the other options include the word “theory”, and the outlier does not. Since the question asks what the “concept” belongs to, it makes more sense that a concept would belong to a theory, rather than a concept belonging to a concept. Spotting this outlier requires a bit of knowledge about the terms “concept” and “theory”, as well as some logical reasoning.
When you can identify an outlier in “all of the above” type questions, this strategy is particularly helpful because you can remove both the outlier as well as the all of the above option.
Look for Hints in Other Questions
I used to treat multiple choice tests on question by question basis. However, I realized that it is more beneficial to consider the multiple choice test as a whole. When you do this, it is easy to see that multiple choice tests contain a whole slew of free information – they are practically cheat sheets. How is this possible? Since many of the concepts you are being tested on are related, referring back to questions you have already answered can sometimes help you narrow down options or understand concepts for a different question you are having difficulty with.
Let’s delve a little into this by scrolling back up to the first example I provided from my chemistry exam. We can identify this question as a naming type question. After narrowing down the options based solely on which are most similar to each other, we deduced that the correct answer was C. Now say if later on in the test, you are presented with another naming type question, but this time all of the options are drastically different. Well, you could just guess, or you can refer back to our example and use it as a blueprint for working on the question you are having difficulty with! Every time you get an answer right on the multiple choice exam, you are building your cheat sheet for the very same exam. I’ll make up a couple of questions so that we can investigate another common occurrence. Just because I’m not very creative, they are biology themed, but remember that this can be applied to any multiple choice exam:
Which of the following cell structures produces proteins?
A) Lipid Bilayer
B) Chloroplast
C) Ribosome
D) Electron Transport Chain
E) None of the Above
Let’s say you aren’t sure about A, B, or D, but you clearly remember your teacher talking about Ribosomes in the role of protein synthesis, so you (correctly) select C. Later on in the exam, you are presented with the question:
What type of proteins does the smooth endoplasmic reticulum create?
A) Intermembrane
B) Actin
C) Intramembrane
D) All of the above
E) The smooth endoplasmic reticulum does not create proteins
And you are stumped! You comb through your memory and the only thing you know about the smooth endoplasmic reticulum is that it is made of a lipid bilayer. If you neglected the rest of your exam, you would be forced to guess the answer to this question. But wait! If you looked back at the first question you answered, you could see that you chose Ribosome to be the correct answer. Therefore, the other options in that question MUST have been wrong. Now you have another piece of information: no lipid bilayers produce proteins. Finally, you can answer the second question correctly, with the answer E.
This is one of my favourite strategies because it can be used in any multiple choice exam: business, math, science, social studies, regardless of how the teacher designs it. Always! Use your exam as a resource whenever possible. This is why is it so important to skip questions that you are not sure about. Instead of wasting your time combing your memory on how to solve it, move on! There may be a question later on in the exam that provides some vital information about the one you are having difficulty with, or sparks your memory.
Identifying Trick Options
Trick options are the real silent killers when it comes to MC tests. You can expect to fall for a trick option trap if you don’t think critically about what is being asked, or if you rush through a test. Whether you fall for these options or not often comes down to your selection of inductive/deductive logic, attention to detail, and reading comprehension. It is debatable whether or not these are areas that it is fair for your professor to test you on or not, but I will not get into that debate. The reality is that you have to deal with them. Here are some strategies for identifying trick options:
1. An excess of detail
Professors know how most students think when answering questions, because they were once students themselves. Sometimes they will include a long and elaborate (albeit incorrect) option to trick students into thinking that since it has the most detail, it must be the correct answer. A common pitfall of many long statements is that the majority of the statement will hold correct, but a small detail will be incorrect, rendering the entire option wrong. To avoid falling for this trap, read through the WHOLE statement carefully when picking options with a long statement.
2. The false outlier
Once again, let me reiterate that tricky professors like to imitate how students think when they write tests. Sometimes they make all the answers similar except one, and the one that is different is the correct answer. Since students like to find shortcuts, they immediately cross out the different answer without properly understanding the question. This however, doesn’t happen that often because it is a freebie for students who read the question properly. The false outlier is MUCH more common on calculation type problems. This is because two drastically different numbers can be the result of a single calculational error, such as forgetting a negative sign. Professors make the outlier the correct answer, but then put an option that includes a small calculational error, and make the remaining options similar to the one with the small error. This way, a lazy student that doesn’t check their work gets the answer with the small error, sees that most of the rest of the answers are similar, and is content with their answer and doesn’t bother to recalculate. The lesson here is that you must always check your answers if you have time!
3. The negative, or double negative
This one is when professors play around with words to see if you are really paying attention to the test. Sometimes professors like to throw in a couple questions where a single word can change the meaning of the question. Joshua discusses this in his post. Read the question carefully! Remember, you can ALWAYS ask a supervisor to clarify what a question is asking.
4. The correct answer, but to a different question
Sometimes a question will have many options that all look familiar. Say if the question is asking for the definition of a certain term, they might include real definitions of other terms to confuse you. To combat this, DON’T just study key terms or notes at face value. Make sure you understand the material and make connections between why definitions make sense instead of memorizing. I have firsthand experience of this type of question screwing me over: During one of my chemistry midterms, I saw a diagram I had seen pop up on a practice midterm. Not knowing how to interpret the diagram because I had committed the answer on the practice midterm to memory, I got that one wrong because it was asking a totally different question.
5. Designed for common knowledge
One of the main themes of my first year uni education was disproving many common misconceptions the general public holds. Professors like to weed out people who are making guesses by putting in some options that are generally believed to be true by the public or have a different meaning when they are used in general terms. For example, sodium chloride is often interpreted as meaning the same thing as salt, whereas the technical definition of salt encompasses many more compounds. To avoid falling for these traps, read through all of the options and select the answer that is closest to what you were taught in class, rather than the answer that is closest to what the public (and sometimes even you) believe to be true.
In Closing
I hope the above tips and strategies will prove as helpful to all of you as they are for me. Remember: there is no substitution for studying and practice is the best way to become good at multiple choice questions. The only way I was able to analyze these trends was by doing many, many, MC tests throughout my life. I hope you got something from this post and I wish you the best of luck with your future tests!!
Please leave comments to let me know if this was helpful, if you have any questions, or if you feel I am wrong about anything. Thanks for reading!
