How do you know that you are gonna ace an exam in science? Are

Check if your uni has a test bank or anything similar. Looking at older tests helps you know what to expect.

>>7803068
Do past exams in conditions as close as possible to the real thing as possible. When you do the exam it will feel like a drill.

Know the material. You can do this by
studying
doing problems
going to office hours
using any of the thousands of resources available to you

That's what I've been doing for years, and I'm the student everyone else comes to when they're having trouble.

>>7803470
>people actually rely on this as their first tool

What? Just don't be a beta faggot.

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106KB, 425x518px

how to be alpha:
>Step 1: You know nothing, you god damn idiot
the minute you think you know something about a concept you remove the need to study it, do math on it, and explore it.
>Step 2: categorically go through all chapters covered on the exam and apply step 1
Pay careful attention to the fundamentals
>Step 3: Wake up early and get breakfast
why would you skip breakfast to get an extra hour of sleep? what the fuck is wrong with you? I don't care how little you slept, an extra hour will hardly make the difference. Eat something, have a coffee, and more importantly have a minute to fully wake up and let the smoke clear.
> Step 4: walk into exam fresh as fuck and ace it.

>>7803068
You don't need confidence. You just need to care less.
Realize that this one test likely isn't going to affect jack shit in the medium-long run of your academic career.

If you studied a reasonable amount, just go in there and write as nonchalantly as if you were doing homework at home and you'll come out with an A.

>>7803068
I don't think i've ever gone into an exam and just "knew" that I was gonna ace it. I'm also usually heavily caffeinated going into exams, so I tend to be extremely nervous and jittery for the first couple of minutes.

You should know the material well enough that you can still function when you're nervous. I think that if exam-time butterflies are enough to knock you off your game, then you're probably only understanding the material at a mechanical level.

Just brain dump at the last minute. Has worked for me my entire life desu but your mileage may vary.

>>7803068
I noticed two things:
-the less I care, the better I do
-the more I think I'll ace it, the more I do

the moment I start caring too much is the moment I start rambling.
It used to be easy for me because as >>7803520
said, it didn't matter in the long run. But now I can't afford to make any mistake (some shit about double degrees and having to succeed at everything on the first try to get both) so I started getting stressed.
But I recently re-learned to stop giving fucks about everything and I started acing stuff again with even less preparation.

>>7803559
>the more I think I'll ace it, the more I do
Some of this is selection bias.

You think you'll ace it because you do actually know the material very well. Confidence is definitely important, but it can't make up for not knowing anything.

>>7803563
no I actually don't know the material very well. I'm very confident in my analytic skills. I agree that this sounds biased and probably isn't true for some cases, but I can confidently say this was true for a lot of them, I remember that state of mind very clearly.
Also I should say that I don't always ace things like that because I don't know some of the material, but I get good enough results with what I know.

>>7803584
What I'm saying is you can't fairly judge the effect of confidence. It's hard to tell if you did well on those tests because you were confident and not some other reason.

>>7803590
ok cool anon, you do you, I'll go ace the last exam of my life next friday

I always think it is funny when undergraduate pchem kids show up to my exams thinking that since they got A's by memorizing pathways, classic synthesis strategies from nicolau's texts, and pumping out data in analytical/instrumental analysis that they will pass my exams.

Enjoy your trick questions and convoluted 2 particle physics tricks.