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High schools have to justify results to colleges through timed essays with grading achievement rubrics. Colleges use aptitude exams--the GRE, SAT,
MCAT, LSAT, GMAT--which out of fairness, have to put time
limits on writing. And professors overloaded with lecture-size classes use timed essays for grading. None of this is the best way to
learn.

Before the test

Know this: graders are mainly looking to see that you can understand
the question and can respond with appropriate content. And they're more
interested in (and grade primarily) critical thinking and analysis than
grammar and mechanics (GRE). They're not trying to trick you.

First, find out about the exam type. Ask what your teacher mainly wants you to do. The most common types are:

• analyze an issue
• repeat facts you’ve learned
• make a persuasive argument
• reflect on your personal experience
• compare/contrast
• explain/identify

Then do what you can to build a repertoire of details and a skeleton structure
for your paper. If you know the essay will come from a previous class
reading, look over that text and jot down key ideas and even quotes
that you can potentially insert into the essay. Also jot down a few
potential connections you could make to the theme of the
reading.

Test prep services often provide clients with these "knowledge
banks" prior to a test, which brings up ethical issues of plagiarism.
In response, testing companies have developed software to detect similar essay content.

As for prefabricating a structure, this can save loads of time, but
it can also backfire. Don't be too determined to stick to
five-paragraph structure just because you're familiar with it.

Keeping in mind these potential risks, here are some very general guidelines for timed essay structure:

Finally, before class, do some freewriting to get into the flow of composing and to prevent writer's block

Read the question(s) carefully, and mark and circle keywords.
If you do not understand the structure of the questions, ask the
professor to explain. Keywords will be useful to tell you what the
essay mainly should do, and it will give a sense of words to emphasize
in your response:

1. In his essay "Debating the Unknowable," Lewis Thomas says, "It is the admission of ignorance that leads to progress,
not so much because the solving of a particular puzzle leads directly
to a new piece of understanding but because the puzzle-if it interests
enough scientists-leads to WORK." How does this idea relate to your reading of The Hot Zone?

2. What are the traditional characteristics of a fairy tale? Use examples to illustrate, either from your reading or your childhood memories.

In the above prompts, paying attention to keywords tells you that #1
should primarily be comparing/contrasting ("relate"), and gives you
some of the key ideas to structure your response around ("ignorance,"
"progress," "work"). Details and facts ("what", "examples") should be
the bulk of #2, and a good response will use both reading and childhood memories.

After finding keywords, always take time to form a clear outline.
List main topics and points you can elaborate on. Organization always
adds confidence in your writing and is the key to writing a
well-written essay answer.

While you write

Don't panic. If you start feeling frustrated or hopeless, pause,
take a deep breath, and get all zenlike. Don't waste your precious
brain space worrying about how you're running out of time.

Don't try to be creative or highly original in your response. While
creativity and iconoclasm has its place in writing, the timed-essay is
not that place. Since the ultimate goal of grading timed essays is
assessment (and "creativity" is not on any rubric I've seen), you have
to answer the question the way you think the grader wants it answered.

Much of this has been stated above, but it bears repeating:

• Make a clear statement about your point and purpose near the
  beginning. Continue to support your thesis throughout the essay by
  providing examples and description. Avoid restating it without support.
• Budget your time for a)organizing thoughts, b)composing, and c) checking/revising.
• Do not worry about spelling and grammatical mechanics.
• Structure your paragraphs clearly. Make sure each has a topic sentence and that each paragraph focuses on a single point.
• Use examples, facts, stories, hypothetical situations, and
  explanations to support your ideas. If teachers only see generalized
  statements--even if they're on-topic--they'll think you're writing bull.

Early On

• Restate, in your own words, what the prompt is asking. Remember: you have to demonstrate to the grader that you understand what's being asked and the grader expects you to summarize information before analyzing,
  like you would in writing without prompts. One of the most common
  comments I make grading timed essays pertains to abrupt responses:
  
  For a prompt asking you to analyze an immigration proposal by Governor Schwarzenegger:
  
  
  
  Too abrupt: "I disagree. First of all..."

  Too abrupt: "This an unreasonable plan because..."

  Still lacking summary: "While Schwarzenegger’s plans for
  controlling immigration seem to be relatively reasonable, they are
  presented with no reason to support them."

  Better: "In his recent proposal to solve the California
  immigration problem, Governor Schwarzenegger proposes a plan that both
  deals with stopping new immigration and with immigrants already in the
  state. Specifically, he wants to secure the border, develop a work-visa
  program that would allow a temporary legal option, and assimilate
  immigrants into American culture. While these ideas seem reasonable and
  balanced, Schwarzenegger's plans are unfeasibly optimistic, fail to
  consider potential risks, and use terminology that is not fully
  explained."

• Make a clear point about what you're trying to accomplish in the
  essay. Unlike non-timed writing, where you can use a more nuanced
  development of ideas, you have to write for graders reading lots of
  essays quickly. If they don't find a clear point, they'll start taking
  off points.

In the middle

• Have clear topic sentences that show the direction of your essay as
  well as the main points you're making. Again, in non-timed writing, you
  have the freedom to be more complex and creative with topic sentences.
  But due to the speed at which graders are grading, you need to put
  transparency foremost.
• Give examples, hypotheticals, facts, philosophies, comparisons,
  analogies, and even anecdotes to make concrete the points you're making
  in those topic sentences.

By the end

• Without saying, "in conclusion," reaffirm your main point.
• But if you can, add some new perspective or dimension to what
  you've already said. This will show the grader that you can take a step
  back from the sequential analyzing of details and understand the prompt
  globally:
  
  "Beyond these issues of practicality and
  terminology, it is important to consider why Schwarzenegger might be
  making a proposal like this. The fact that this statement was released
  prior to elections may suggest that it was primarily a political move,
  which would mean that..."

After you compose: always revise!

It’s crucial to save time for revision. Unfortunately most of us
intuitively believe we'll get a better grade if we spend the whole time
writing. This simply isn't so. Here's one potential explanation for why
timed-essay graders give shorter but richer, revised papers better
grade: they're under enormous time constraints to grade essays quickly.
So they don't want their time wasted. Add to that the fact that they're
reading responses to the same prompts that they know, intimately, what
information is answering the prompt and what is fluff.

• If the essay is not very clear, then you might want to see if you
  can add short sentences and or even a paragraph that elaborates and
  sums up what you have applied.
• Avoid repetitiveness in the essay.
• Look for confusing or murky sentences, words, and ideas and eliminate them.
• Get rid of clichés, generalizations, and quotations that aren’t related directly to the topic.
• Check that the information you included is understandable, readable, and to the point.

Note that checking grammar is not among that list. Sure, you should
be aware of grammar (and if grammar is a particular weakness of yours,
do check), but generally, this will not be a large determinant of your
timed-essay grade.

After the test

This one's most important: celebrate. Do something physical, like
bowling, to get all that pent up energy out. And after all that, spend
a little time evaluating your performance, so that next time you can be
that much better.

References

• Camp, Roberta. "New Views of Measurement and New Models for Writing
  Assessment." Assessment of Writing: Politics, Policies, Practice. Ed.
  Edward M. White,William D. Lutz, and Sandra Kamusikiri. NewYork: MLA,
  1996. 135-47.
• Tepper, Nana, and Rocio Costa. "Discussion: Making Assessment a
  Process." Alternative Perspectives in Assessing Children's Language and
  Literacy. Ed. Kathleen Holland, David Blooms, and Judith Solsken.
  Norwood: Alex, 1994. 157-61.
• The GRE's list of policy and research reports on timed writing