There's lots of advice (some of it conflicting) on what to study to pass the PE exam.
I think something very important that may be missing is an ability to take a multiple choice exam.
I'm sure I just squeaked by and I wonder how much of it is attributed to test taking ability.
My steps:
1) read the questions in order - I recommend not totally skimming, but not reading too much detail. Read enough to get a sense if you could answer it easily or not. If it requires one thorough reading and simple calculation - Do it and move on!
2) Any questions that cannot be answered immediately - move on. Make sure you read it enough to "know what you don't know" about it. I think this is important. First, something later on may jog your memory and it all falls into place. Second, when you get to the research phase, you may be able to save time by researching multiple questions in parallel.
3) Although you are moving on through the questions, rank them in difficulty, stars, numbers or something. When you go back to research more you'll attack them in order.
4) the first pass can also be used to answer the questions that you know that you don't know (and probably never will!). You can use this to make a wild-ass guess and not worry about it again - be careful though. Often times, you will think you have no idea, but something will come up later and change that.
5) eliminate wrong answers by crossing them out - use a quick note to justify your rationale for when you return to the question. I usually do this even for the ones that I "know" the answer to.
6) after the first pass of the exam - BREATHE!. Whether or not you feel great about the answers, you made it through one pass. Then start attacking the questions in the order that you ranked them.
7) Sometime before the end (but usaully near the end, maybe half hour or so) go back and check you answers in the ranked order that you have. Even though you were sure of the anwer, things may have changed.
8) spend the last 5 minutes, checking the complete shading of the circles, erase stray marks, make sure the answer sheet corresponds correctly answers, guess at whatever you didn't fill in earlier.
If you read the whole message - then I hope I didn't waste you time!
Good luck to all!