Throughout my vigorous time taking exams throughout high school and college, I've learned that I heavily prefer multiple choice over essay style questions. Multiple choice helps me do better for three main reasons. I can easily connect them to my brain, they can help use deductive reasoning, and if all else fails, they are much easier to on.
First off, I can much easier connect multiple choice to my brain. What I mean by that is that, websites such as Quizlet and Kahoot, use the principle, that one question matches with one answer. It is much easier for me to connect two things together, through brute memory. If I keep telling myself "blank" equals "blank" over and over again, eventually I'll memorize it.
Multiple choice also uses deductive reasoning, by seeing all possible answers in front of you, your brain can recall what is useful information, and what is not. It helps us to narrow out incorrect answers, to get the correct one. Sometimes on multiple choice questions, I'll look for key words in the answer such as "always" and "never" that I remember from studying to connect to the answer.
Many times during stressful tests, students brains will sometimes just go blank, and even though they know they know the information, they cannot recall it. Multiple choice relieves some tension from that stressful situation because most times you can guess for a 25% chance. That is much better than a 0% chance you would have with an open ended question. While many people would call this unfair, how it could reward students with some answers, who haven't studied at all. This is not the case because, you would have to be very lucky to guess on every question, and do well.
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