October is a big month for testing: The SAT started being offered on Oct. 3, and the ACT is offered on Oct. 24.

Additionally, nearly all high school juniors across the nation will be taking the PSAT on Oct. 14, and many other sophomores and juniors will be taking the PLAN in October as well. The PLAN predicts a student’s performance on the ACT test and also measures academic achievement in English, math, reading and science.

All this testing can cause a lot of stress. Test anxiety is a real phenomenon.

What about the student who studies hard but then freezes during the actual exam? Some students unfortunately and unwittingly believe that a single test has the power to determine their future college dreams, their happiness and their income potential. Don’t believe that; it simply is not true.

According to Jed Applerouth, founder of Applerouth Tutoring Services, “Test anxiety appears as early as elementary school, becomes more prevalent in high school and can endure into college, graduate school and beyond. Academic research has found that 61 percent of students will experience test anxiety at some point during high school, and 26 percent of students will experience test anxiety on a regular basis. Test anxiety is more prevalent today among American students than at any prior time.”

Girls are more likely than boys to experience all forms of academic anxiety, including test anxiety.

He suggests several steps educators, parents and students can take to try and alleviate test anxiety.

• Normalize test anxiety. Let students know that we all get anxious about different things: public speaking, flying, meeting new people, remembering names, etc.

• Draw skills from other domains of competence. Help students identify areas where they’ve been successful. Ask if they experienced stress there and how they managed it. Adapt those skills to test-taking situations.

• Understand the body’s response to anxiety. Once a student identifies a test or exam as a threat, stress hormones are released into the blood stream, the sympathetic nervous system engages, and the body prepares for a fight-flight-freeze-or-fold response.

• Teach self-regulation. Once activated, the anxiety/stress response can run rampant, or be deactivated by intentional, mindful, focused efforts. Self-regulation is an inside job; it’s an acquired skill that we tend to develop with age and experience. An individual skilled at self-regulation can quiet the initial activity and reduce the stress response.

• Encourage students to write about their test anxiety. Writing about fears and anxieties enhances self-regulation. Research from the University of Chicago reveals that 10 minutes of expressive writing about test anxiety significantly reduces anxiety and improves performance.