Why relying too heavily on practice tests can have an adverse effect on your actual test performance.

As I wrote in my last entry, taking practice tests is the best way to study. However, there is one major pitfall that all avid practice test takers must avoid; we'll call it the "one trick pony syndrome." The point of practice tests is to ensure that you can apply what you learned in class to paper, to ensure that you aren't the guy with a 50-inch vertical who can't make a shot to save his life.

The point is not to bond yourself to the practice test to the point where switching numbers will result in temporary brain paralysis.

Many students will run through the teacher-provided practice test five, ten or even twenty times as their only form of ...

Digging 3 meters down into the dark marine mud of a former log storage pond in Mindanao, Philippines, scientists have discovered five live specimens of an elusive creature previously known only through the 1 to 1.5–meter-long calcium carbonate shells it left behind.

By carefully chipping away at the end of a chalky tube (right, above), researchers found a long, black, wormlike mass oozing from its casing – the first live specimen of the giant shipworm Kuphus polythalamia. The animal’s length makes it the longest of any living bivalve, a class of typically small critters including clams, oysters, and scallops. And as far as shipworms go, which usually burrow into and feed on wood from ships or sunken trees, K. polythalamia is unique for squa ...

Started in Imperial China in the 10th or 11th century, upper-class court dancers would wrap their feet to make them permanently smaller.

Although this made it difficult for a woman to walk, small feet indicated that a woman’s husband did not need his wife’s labor. To make the feet even smaller, sometimes the baby’s feet were broken and wrapped tightly. Some baby’s toes were cut off! Footbinding was banned by the Chinese government in 1911, but continued to be practiced in some places for several decades, as shown in the picture above. ...

Before the test you can study alone or in a group – which option is the way to go?

Everybody has their preferred method of studying. Some are a.m. studiers, some are more nocturnal. Some power through with no nourishment, others make their desk look like the dinner table at a Bavarian holiday party. But no matter when, where or how, studying can always be broken down into a dichotomy: studying in a group or studying alone.

Study groups pool the brainpower of several classmates. Granted, this pool might only amount to slightly more knowledge than you possess yourself, but at other times the pool can be akin to the Mensa JV team. That's why you should always hedge your bets with a decent amount of self-studying. Knowing a bit about the material ...