BUDGETING YOUR TIME During your preparation, familiarize yourself with the timing of your exam. Whether you
have 25 minutes, or an hour, you should spend time on three distinct tasks: planning, writ-
ing, and revising. The writing stage will take the longest, and, for essays that do not hold
grammatical and spelling mistakes against you, the revising stage will be the shortest. But
every essay should include all three.
Planning The subject of prewriting was covered in Chapter 1, where six strategies are explained. Review
this material, and decide, based on a few practice essays, which one works best for you. Know-
ing exactly what you will do when you begin the exam will not only help you save time, but
it will also take some of the pressure off, too. Some exit exams (such as Indiana’s Gradua-
tion Qualifying Exam) judge your prewriting notes, outlines, and other graphic organiz-
ers, making it even more important to have a strategy that you know you do well chosen
