I have always tested well and must add that the tests under discussion do not measure motivation and determination. I am not associated with any educational system in any way, but do test people for a living and make training, educational and job recommedations. Tests only measure a person's behavior/responses on a given day, so fatigue, illness, depression, worry and length of time since leaving school can and do interfere with using scores to make predictions. A good score may indicate the ability to perform a task, but a bad score may just be the result of using the wrong test. For example, essay vs. multiple choice, timed vs. untimed for a person with a coordination problem, small print instead of large for a person with a visual impairment, English for an English-as-a-second-language person, and the whole arena of problems that come with evaluating the performance of individuals with a specific learning disability(if you can get an accurate diagnosis and not just some slacker stating that the person has a "Learning Disability"(duh -which one? - math, word recognition, comprehension, spatial, etc.) This also applies to diagnoses of ADD and ADHD. A particular problem involves giving a math test with word problems to someone with poor English skills and then thinking they don't know much math. While preparing for a test by studying facts may or may not help much, studying the form of the test questions will likely help by improving the taker's comfort level and providing clues to approaching the usual types of questions encountered. Multiple choice questions often have one or two obviously incorrect answers, true-false questions often include the telltale words always or never, and arithmetic questions can be estimated to eliminate an answer or two or to check the final calculation. And finally, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior(homework completion,grades, attendance, work history, etc.) Putting my soapbox back in the closet for now. John