Things You'll Need:
- Driver's License
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Step 1
Know your exam. The series 7 is exactly like the practice tests you’ve been taking. In fact you’ll likely read a question and swear it was one of the questions on the practice test. The questions on the series 7 are pulled from a data base randomly. There are 250 questions but you may have a completely different 250 questions than the guy sitting next to you. 80% of your questions could be options questions while 10% of his questions may be options questions. They give an outline of what you may get, but the best way to do it is take the test prepared for any type of question.
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Step 2
Prepare your cheat sheet. If there are things you have trouble remembering or if there are key questions that are usually on the exam that you don’t want to forget write it down. Take a blank piece of paper and write down everything you want to remember on that paper. Fold it up and put it in your pocket. Take it everywhere with you and when you have a minute take it out and stare at it, burn it in your memory. Once a day try to rewrite it from memory. Do this over and over until you can recreate the entire paper from memory.
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Step 3
Wake up with plenty of time to get to your test. The last thing you want is to be running late. Eat a balanced breakfast. You are going to be in there a long time and it’s going to be very stressful. You’re going to be using a lot of brain power; you do not want to be there on an empty stomach. Make sure to drink plenty of water before you go, that last thing you need during the exam is a headache. You can take as many bathroom breaks as you need.
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Step 4
When you show up to take the exam they will ask for your identification i.e. driver’s license. They will take your picture and assign you a seat. They will give you two pencils and scratch paper. You will be walked to a computer where you will take the test. They may have headphones or ear plugs for you to use to block out noise. Before you start the exam write everything you can remember from your cheat sheet onto the scratch paper they gave you. Take as much time to do this as you need because the timer has not started yet. When you get stuck on a question refer to your cheat sheet. The computer will have directions as to how the test works and how to select your answer. Once the directions are over you receive the first question and the timer starts. You can take a bathroom break at any time however, your time on the clock does not stop.
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Step 5
The key to taking the series 7 is to not freak out. If you freak out you will fail. You have studied a lot, you know the information. Stay calm and believe in yourself. Don’t concentrate too hard on the questions. They are created to confuse you and to make you second guess yourself. If you find a question that uses English words but you swear to God that it must be written in a different language because you have no idea what it is even talking about just look for a familiar word. Take that one word and look at the answers given. One of those answers is related in some way to the word. You will have noticed this in the dozens of practice tests that you should have taken.
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Step 6
Keep your time in mind but don’t fixate on it. If you get a hard question that is taking too much time just skip it and go back to it in the end if you have time. You want to get in as many questions that you know before the time runs out. If you ran out of time and had 10 questions left and they were questions that you didn’t know anyway, that is better than running out of time with 10 questions that you did know being left unanswered. Besides that you will probably end up with more time than you think at the end of the test, and then you know for sure you can spend more time thinking about the harder question without having to worry about time.
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Step 7
On your lunch break eat a balanced lunch and give your mind a break. Do not study for the test just rest. If you haven’t learned the information by now you’re not going to learn it at lunch. Give your mind and body the nourishment it needs and just rest.
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Step 8
When you go in for the second half you will notice that one half of the test was significantly harder than the other half. Hopefully it was your first half and you have that over with. If at any point while you’re testing you need to take a break to clear your head or go to the bathroom it is okay. Put your head down at your desk or close your eyes for a minute, whatever you need to do.
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Step 9
When you’re done the computer will immediately score your exam. Well I wouldn’t say immediately, it takes about 10 seconds. Those 10 seconds are the longest 10 seconds of your life. They will be filled with regret, anxiety and a prayer to the Gods to have pity on your soul. Keep in mind no one aces this exam, NO ONE! The closest I’ve personally seen is a guy who had been a Broker for years and then decided to take a few years off when his children were young. His license expired and so he had to retake the series 7. He got a 98% when he retook it. The reason that is baffling is because they are always changing the test so there are practice questions in there as well to measure the degree of difficulty of the question. This means there are questions in there that no one has ever seen before. It is impossible to study for them. You just have to hope you understand the material and the way the question is worded.
This is such a traumatizing exam you will remember it in detail for the rest of your life. You will remember where you sat in the room, who you talked to after you got your test score, what you ate for lunch and your score itself for the rest of your life.
