Introduction A variety of issues affects the academic performance of students, with most being external. Various stress factors affect learners in colleges and universities and prevent them from operating at their full capabilities. However, there are also internal issues, which require different methods to address them. Some students do not study enough while others do, but all are worried about the extent of their knowledge. Tests serve as the metric for the evaluation of what one has learned, and so, they become a focus of students’ worries. The phenomenon has earned the name ’test anxiety’ and affects many students negatively. It is necessary to develop methods of addressing it to ensure that people can learn and finish their education. For this purpose, this essay will analyze two research papers on the topics and highlight their findings. Test Anxiety and Self-Efficacy The work by Jennifer Barrows, Samantha Dunn, and Carrie A. Lloyd proposes self-efficacy as a potential solution to the issue. They confirm that test anxiety affects a student’s test performance negatively. However, Barrows et al. put forward the thesis that test anxiety reduces test performance, but improved self-efficacy can help students resolve it and achieve better results (204). They find in the literature review that the characteristic “influences people’s belief about their capabilities, which has been shown to enhance students’ academic performance” (Barrows et al. 205). As such, since one factor reduces a student’s self-opinion and the other improves it, the researchers propose the idea that the positive factor may mitigate the negative. They conduct a study on 110 students in a variety of majors and gauge their test anxiety and self-efficacy, then collect their results on a test and analyze the results. The investigation finds that both factors influence one’s performance, and students with high self-efficacy and low test anxiety perform measurably better than vice versa. However, as Barrows et al. conclude, “test anxiety may be too detrimental to have a moderating variable, even high self-efficacy” (207). Students with high self-efficacy do not necessarily have lower test anxiety values than those with low scores in the characteristic. Regardless, the promotion of the trait is beneficial for academic performance, and the findings are useful. As Barrows et al. highlight, “studying increases test performance, but […] confidence in doing well, also has a considerable effect on the outcome” (207). Additionally, the authors note that the study provides future scholars with potential research directions in the continuing search for test anxiety moderators. Test Anxiety and Scheduled Preparation Hasan Yusefzadeh, Jamileh Amirzadeh Iranagh, and Bahram Nabilou discuss students’ trend of cramming for exams the day or the hour before they begin. Yusefzadeh et al. confirm that “test anxiety is one of the effective factors causing the students to perform poorly” (246). They put forward the thesis that scheduled study preparation reduces students’ test anxiety and improves their academic performance. They also investigate the characteristic from various angles, observing its relationship with general anxiety and stress. Notably, they find that the levels of general and test anxiety in students