Introduction: Understanding the mechanism through which test anxiety affects students' learning outcomes is critical to its management. Test preparation strategies are associated with test confidence and might also affect students' academic performance. However, previous studies have downplayed the role that students' test preparation strategies might play in the associations between test anxiety and their academic performance. Therefore, the moderating roles of students' test preparation strategies on the relationship between test anxiety and students' academic performance were explained by framing our study within the dual-deficit model. Method: A cross-sectional research design was adopted, and 248 high school students constituted the sample. Results: The main findings revealed significant negative relationships between worry and cognitive test anxiety subscales and students' academic performance scores. In addition, there was a significant joint negative relationship between test anxiety components and students' academic performance, while students' test preparation strategies were not a significant moderator. Discussion and Conclusion: This may indicate that deficits in learning strategies may not have a significant impact on the effects of attentional-cognitive deficits on students' academic performance. It is concluded that cognitive-attentional deficits could challenge the strengths that may come from test preparation strategies.