Anxiety
6 Strategies for College Students to Reduce Anxiety
Behavioral science provides many options for handling stressful events.
Posted December 3, 2024 Reviewed by Abigail Fagan
Key points
- Many students suffer from anxiety related to tests and public speaking.
- Practices such as mindfulness, rituals, and expressive writing can ease anxiety and boost performance.
- Giving and receiving help can also lower anxiety and prepare students for finals.
The end of the semester can be a nightmare for college students who get stressed out by exams. Up to 40% of students experience some test anxiety, with about half of those students suffering extreme test anxiety. For finals that include a presentation, about two-thirds of college students have a fear of public speaking.
How can we help students alleviate their anxiety, perform well on their exams, and maintain their physical and mental health? Behavioral science has identified several easy-to-implement practices that can help students cope with the stress of finals. Here are six strategies that you can share with students and that you’re welcome to use yourself!
1. Craft a ritual
A ritual is any sequence of behaviors that has no real purpose but much symbolic meaning. Think of Rafael Nadal, the tennis legend, who before a match always adjusts his socks, water bottles, shorts, and hair in a particular way, in that order. Rituals like this help reduce anxiety before a stressful event. In fact, students who performed an arbitrary ritual before a difficult math exam performed better than those who sat quietly for a few minutes.
2. Practice mindfulness
College students who engage in mindfulness (e.g., breathing exercises; meditation) show reduced anxiety. The benefits of mindfulness, however, are felt most strongly by those who regularly practice, so introduce this strategy to students as soon as possible.
3. Write about your feelings
Writing about negative feelings before a stressful event, known as expressive writing, helps eliminate intrusive thoughts and boosts performance among test-anxious students in STEM courses, as well as on standardized tests like the MCAT and LSAT. The key is for students to write in detail about their feelings to help release that anxiety. Students may also symbolically crumple, rip, or otherwise destroy their expressive writing to physically cast out those self-defeating thoughts.
4. Give advice to others
Our understandable response to test anxiety is to give students advice about study habits, sleep, exercise, and whatever else might alleviate those feelings. This whole post is advice on giving advice to students! But asking test-anxious students to share their strategies for coping is also beneficial. Giving advice makes people feel competent, motivated, and empowered, and doing so has increased study time and academic performance.
On our student success platform, we’ve asked thousands of college students for their advice on dealing with test anxiety, and here are just a few of their responses:
- “Get good sleep and eating before doing classwork, homework and tests.”
- “Study by reviewing lecture notes and exercising before the day of taking the final exam.”
- “Not waiting for the last minute to do projects or study. Meditating helps too.”
- “I make sure to have a plan for my exam to study two weeks in advance.”
5. Express gratitude
The end of another term is a great time for students to say thanks to the faculty, staff, peers and family who helped them succeed. Not only will sharing gratitude make someone’s day, but for the grateful student it alleviates stress, increases focus on learning, and strengthens resilience in the face of academic challenges. Students might start a gratitude journal to get them through finals week.
6. Ask for help
Finally, students will be less anxious and better prepared for finals if they ask for help from their instructors, peers, tutoring services, advisors, and mental health professionals. One of the best ways to encourage students to take advantage of resources is by norming asking for help as something that represents success, not a deficiency. This approach is especially helpful for students who feel threatened by help-seeking, and who need to know that what they’re doing is normal and acceptable. Just be sure to normalize leveraging help, not just the commonality of anxiety, so that students know where to go and what to do to get the support they need.
Hopefully, all of your students will benefit from at least one, if not several of these strategies as they prepare for finals. You, as well, might benefit from these practices as you finish the semester. Stay relaxed, be healthy, and good luck!
