Strategies will save you precious time and energy on the test, as well as give you a fighting chance on problems that you don't know how to do.

Additionally, strategies can give you a blueprint for every question type. I always tell my students, "your brain is not your friend on test day." You're likely to be tired, stressed, hungry, distracted, etc. Instead of using all of your brain cells thinking about how you're going solve a problem, strategies can be like an automatic, conditioned response that help you to get started right away!

Still not a believer? At the very least, you should think of strategies as another set of tools for your toolbox. If you are taking the test and a question stumps you, you can rely on some strategies to give you a different approach (even if that just means eliminating a couple of answer choices).

That being said, in order for this to work for you, you need to be very comfortable with these strategies, through practice and repetition. Therefore, when you do practice problems, make sure to engage the strategies you've learned, as much as possible. One good thing to do is to re-work a test that you've already taken, and use different strategies the second time.