-1-Unauthorized copying or reuse of any part of this page is illegal. Copyright © 2008 FastForward Thinking Inc., all rights reserved. www.fastforwardthinking.com THE FIVE THINGS YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST KNOW ABOUT GUESSING IN ORDER TO DO WELL ON THE SAT Everyone's been in this situation before: You're taking a test and time is running out. You think that you might have an idea what the answer to the question is, but you're not one hundred percent sure. Do you guess or do you leave it blank? If you're taking a test in school where you've got nothing to lose by guessing, then it's a nobrainer – go ahead and guess. But it turns out that the SAT is an entirely different animal with its own set of rules. Guessing too many times on the SAT can lead to huge losses due to penalties, while not guessing enough can leave plenty of points on the table. That's why it's crucial to have your strategy in place long before test day, and that's where The Five Things You Absolutely Must Know About Guessing In Order To Do Well On The SAT comes into play. In this concise study guide, you'll learn everything you need to know about guessing on the SAT, as well as several things about the SAT that you probably never knew. Just read carefully, then practice and apply what you've learned here on test day and you'll be well on your way to a great score on the SAT. If you'd like to learn about more ways to quickly and easily boost your SAT score, just visit us online at www.fastforwardthinking.com where you'll be able to: • Take a free online practice SAT and receive your score range instantly without ever submitting any personal information • Sign up for a free account which gives you access to online SAT prep tools • Download the Top 10 SAT Secrets you MUST learn in order to boost your score quickly and easily • Avoid costly SAT prep courses by preparing on your own with our personalized SAT diagnostic self-study plans • Register for at-home, online, or telephone tutoring if you need live help Well what are you waiting for? Turn the page and let's get started! -2-Unauthorized copying or reuse of any part of this page is illegal. Copyright © 2008 FastForward Thinking Inc., all rights reserved. www.fastforwardthinking.com RULE #1: ABSOLUTELY NO RANDOM GUESSING ALLOWED On many tests in school, you receive partial credit for answers that are almost correct, and you generally don't lose points for leaving questions blank. Instead, you just don't gain any points for the questions you skip. So what do you do? Well, most people struggle to finish every test in school and put down an answer for every single question, regardless of whether or not they really know the correct answer. On the SAT though, taking this same approach can lead to a much lower score than you otherwise would have received. Let's talk about why. First, every answer on the SAT is worth the same amount of points. That's right, easy questions are worth just as much as hard questions. Unlike most tests you face in school, the SAT is a standardized test. Because each teacher in every school across the country assigns grades slightly differently, colleges and universities need a fair way to both evaluate and compare students from different parts of the country. After all, if you had stellar grades for all four years of high school but had to work very hard to get them, taking advanced-level classes all the way, it wouldn't be too fair if someone who took only remedial-level classes and received similar grades but were to be ranked just as highly as you. Similarly, what if someone in another city took the exact same courses as you and did much worse, but was lucky enough to have teachers who were extremely easy graders? It wouldn't be too fair if this person were ranked just as highly as you either. That's where standardized testing comes into play. It turns out that colleges and universities really do want to know the truth about you and your grades, and the best way for them to do this is to compare you against a large group of students on the same test with the same scoring and grading schemes. Back to our story. We said that you should absolutely NOT guess randomly. What we mean by this is that you should never guess if you haven't first eliminated at least one wrong answer. Keep in mind too that we're not talking about at least one answer choice that you're "kind of" sure is wrong. We mean at least one answer choice that you're absolutely, positively convinced is wrong without the shadow of a doubt. Why no random guessing? "After all, if all the questions are -3-Unauthorized copying or reuse of any part of this page is illegal. Copyright © 2008 FastForward Thinking Inc., all rights reserved. www.fastforwardthinking.com worth the same amount of points, maybe I can grab a few extra points on those hard questions just by getting lucky," you might think. Well, because every time you guess incorrectly, you lose one-fourth of a point (with the exception of student-produced response (SPR) questions on the math portion of the test). Huh? I thought each section of the SAT was worth 800 points? Well, it is, but there's more to the story. It turns out that every time you answer a question correctly, you gain one point towards your raw score. Every time you get a question wrong, you lose one-fourth of a point from your raw score. This raw score is tallied up at the end of the test, rounded to the nearest whole number, and then converted into what's called a scaled score, which is the number out of 800 that you're probably used to seeing. At this point, you might be saying, "So if I only lose one-fourth of a point on my raw score, and this raw score is converted into a score out of 800 anyway, what's the big deal?" The problem is that the odds are stacked against you, and the test makers don't want you to do well if you're randomly guessing. In fact, they want all guessers to do about the same, which is rather poorly, in fact. You'll see what we mean by that in the next section, but for now, remember that you should never guess on 1-out-of-5 multiple choice questions if you're left with 5 possible answer choices. -4-Unauthorized copying or reuse of any part of this page is illegal. Copyright © 2008 FastForward Thinking Inc., all rights reserved. www.fastforwardthinking.com RULE #2: PICK YOUR GUESSING ODDS AND STICK WITH THEM How well do you think you'd do on the SAT if you didn't even read the questions and just guessed completely randomly on every single question? What if you had a lucky day? About average? Below average? Above average? It turns out that the test makers have designed the test so that everyone who randomly guesses without eliminating any wrong answers will do just about the same: poorly. How poorly? Well, somewhere around 680 out of 2400 to be precise, or in the absolute last percentile of all SAT test takers. Definitely not the score you'd like to see next to your name. But this is how the test makers have designed the SAT in order to make sure that random guessers do just about the same no matter who they are and where they come from. After all, you wouldn't want someone who just had a really lucky day guessing randomly to do better than you, would you? Neither does the College Board, and they've set things up so that guessers don't have an unfair advantage over those of us who are working diligently to get a legitimate score. But what if you boosted your odds by only guessing on questions where you could eliminate 1 out of the 5 possible answer choices? This is a much more interesting story, because your odds have just gone up dramatically. Specifically, if you're looking at a multiplechoice question with 5 possible answer choices, your odds are generally 1-out-of-5 if you're randomly guessing, or 20 percent. But, if you could eliminate just one answer choice from each question, your odds on each would jump up to 1-out-of-4, or 25 percent. Now how well do you think you'd do overall if you guessed randomly on every single question? It turns out that you'd gain about 130 points and end up with a score of approximately 810 out of 2400. Still not a stellar SAT score, but realize that you still didn't really know any right answers. You just knew one wrong answer for each question and you guessed randomly on the whole test. It really gets interesting if you exercise a little more caution. What if you were able to eliminate two wrong answer choices from every question? Your odds would now be 1-out-of-3, or approximately 33 percent on each question. Now how would you do, on average, if you guessed on the entire test, but every question had only 3 possible -5-Unauthorized copying or reuse of any part of this page is illegal. Copyright © 2008 FastForward Thinking Inc., all rights reserved. www.fastforwardthinking.com answer choices? Well, you'd gain about another 170 points and end up with a score of 980 out of 2400. Starting to get the point? Boosting your odds leads to more and more points, without ever really being 100% sure about any "right answers." Keep in mind that this is a game of boosting your odds and gaining points simply by eliminating wrong answers. Let's take one final look at guessing odds by considering what would happen, on average, if you were to eliminate 3 wrong answers from every multiple-choice question, leaving you with 1-out-of-2, or 50 percent odds on every single question. It turns out that your score would end up somewhere around 1270 out of 2400, or right around the 22nd percentile. Remember folks, this is better than nearly one quarter of all SAT test takers, and it was achieved purely through guessing. The bottom line is this: Pick your guessing odds and then stick with them throughout the test. Your choices are: • 1-out-of-4: a 25 percent chance of guessing correctly • 1-out-of-3: a 33 percent chance of guessing correctly • 1-out-of-2: a 50 percent chance of guessing correctly Don't waver just because a particular answer looks really attractive. For example, if you decide that your own guessing odds are going to be 1-out-of-3 on the SAT, don't ever guess on a question unless you can positively eliminate two wrong answers. Next we'll talk about why. -6-Unauthorized copying or reuse of any part of this page is illegal. Copyright © 2008 FastForward Thinking Inc., all rights reserved. www.fastforwardthinking.com RULE #3: BEWARE OF TOO-GOOD-TO-BE-TRUE ANSWER CHOICES AT THE END OF A SECTION Where do you find the absolute easiest questions on the SAT? When I say easy, I mean the questions that almost everyone in the country could answer with just a few seconds of thought. It turns out that many people already know the answer to this question: at the beginning of each section. On the SAT, questions generally progress from easy to difficult within each section or subsection (with the exception of paragraph and passage-based reading questions in the critical reading section, and improving paragraphs questions in the writing section). Among many other things, what this means is that as a guesser, you don't need to worry so much about trick questions and tricky answer choices at the beginning of a section. In other words, the test makers have tried to design the SAT so that at the beginning of the section, what you see is what you get. You don't need to worry too much about tricks here, because the test makers want these questions at the beginning of a section to be easy and straightforward. At the end of a section or subsection, on the other hand, the test makers pull out a lot of stops to make sure that people get these hard questions wrong. One of their tricks is to inject answer choices that look deceptively attractive but are dead wrong. Have you ever worked through a really hard question at the end of the test, did just a tiny bit of simple work on it, and noticed an answer choice that matched up perfectly with your quick calculations? Did you choose this answer choice and end up getting the question wrong? If so, it was probably because the test makers intentionally included a wrong answer choice that was either partially correct, or one that was simply meant to trap you. Why would they do this? Well, it's pretty simple, actually. At the end of each section, the questions are meant to be hard. If you've already designed a question and the mathematics, grammar, or vocabulary in the question are pretty difficult, but not enough people are getting the question wrong, an easy way to make the question even tougher is to insert traps into the answer choices. Some people call these wrong answer choices "attractors," but no matter what you -7-Unauthorized copying or reuse of any part of this page is illegal. Copyright © 2008 FastForward Thinking Inc., all rights reserved. www.fastforwardthinking.com call them, the real trick is knowing where to find them and what to do about them. Let's say you've reached the end of a group of 18 identifying sentence errors questions on one of the writing sections of the test. You're reading a sentence, looking for grammatical errors, and lo and behold, there sits in front of you an answer choice that just seems too good to be true. An amazingly easy question at the end of a subsection – the test makers must have screwed up! So you don't bother to eliminate any wrong answer choices and you go ahead and put down your "right" answer, only to later find out that you were tricked. If this were the first question in the section, your approach might have been more reasonable, but this is never the case when you're near the end of a section. If it seems too good to be true and you're at the end of a section, it's probably a trick question! As a general rule, you should ALWAYS try to eliminate wrong answers as you work through each question, and then pass on any questions that don't have good enough odds for you. When you're at the end of a section, don't ever simply jump to what "seems" to be the right answer. Remember that these questions are meant to be hard and are meant to require a decent bit of logic, skill, and manipulation. Only guess on these questions if you've done a decent bit of work and then eliminated the proper number of absolutely wrong answer choices. But what if you're "kind of" sure that an answer choice is wrong, but you're not 100 percent convinced? In this case, you should consider NOT eliminating this type of answer choice. When we tell you to eliminate wrong answer choices, we really mean answer choices that you're absolutely convinced are not correct. Here's one final point to keep in mind when you're considering this easy to hard progression of questions in each section and subsection. The only exceptions to this rule of questions getting harder as you move through the test are: • Passage-based reading questions and paragraph-based reading questions in the critical reading portion of the SAT • Improving paragraphs questions in the writing portion of the SAT -8-Unauthorized copying or reuse of any part of this page is illegal. Copyright © 2008 FastForward Thinking Inc., all rights reserved. www.fastforwardthinking.com Therefore, with all other questions, always remember Rule #3: Beware of too-good-to-be-true answer choices at the end of a section. -9-Unauthorized copying or reuse of any part of this page is illegal. Copyright © 2008 FastForward Thinking Inc., all rights reserved. www.fastforwardthinking.com RULE #4: DON'T LEAVE ANY STUDENT-PRODUCED RESPONSE (SPR) QUESTIONS BLANK ON THE MATH SECTION This rule is pretty easy and straightforward. Don't ever leave any "grid-ins" or student-produced response (SPR) questions blank on the SAT. Why is this? Well, this is the only portion of the test which doesn't have any penalties for wrong answers. Why would the test makers do this though? It turns out that there's a huge difference between the studentproduced response questions and plain old multiple-choice questions which have 5 answer choices labeled A through E. With plain old multiple-choice questions, your chances of guessing are 1-out-of-5. Therefore, out of 5 guessers, one should get the question right and 4 should get it wrong. Or, to look at it another way, if you were guessing on 5 of these questions, you would expect to randomly get 1 question right and 4 wrong. As we discussed previously, you'd get one point for the right answer, and you'd lose one-fourth of a point for each of your 4 wrong answers. Overall you'd break even. With the student-produced response questions or grid-ins, they're still multiple-choice questions, but the odds that you'd randomly guess a correct answer are astronomically low. Why is that? Well, if you take a look at the bubble sheet, you'll notice that each SPR question has room for a combination of 4 numbers and characters (such as decimal points or slashes). What are the chances that, purely randomly, you would happen to guess the correct answer when it could be any real, non-negative number between 0 and 9999, including fractions and decimal numbers? We'll spare you the mathematical details, but it turns out that the odds are close enough to zero that there's no need to penalize you for wrong answers on the student-produced response questions on the SAT. Moral of the story: Make sure you put down an answer for every single student-produced response question on the SAT, even if it's a random guess, because it can't hurt you in any way. -10-Unauthorized copying or reuse of any part of this page is illegal. Copyright © 2008 FastForward Thinking Inc., all rights reserved. www.fastforwardthinking.com RULE #5: CALCULATE HOW MANY QUESTIONS YOU CAN AND SHOULD SKIP AHEAD OF TIME How seriously are you taking the SAT? Everyone knows that it's important to do well, but how much time have you carved out of your schedule to really guarantee that you'll do well on test day? For many people, the answer is anywhere from a few hours to 10 or 20 hours over the course of a year. Would you change your mind though if real money were on the line? Well…it is! Stop for a moment and think about what happens if you get a higher SAT score. You'll have access to a wider range of schools, perhaps schools with better and better reputations. Simply getting a college degree will translate into a higher starting salary as well as higher lifetime earnings for most careers, and getting into a better school might push these earnings even higher. Now that we've got your attention then, are you really taking the SAT seriously enough in terms of your preparation? As it turns out, one of the most valuable things you can do to boost your score is to calculate ahead of time roughly how many questions you need to answer in order to reach your SAT score goal, and then practice answering that many questions under timed conditions. Once you've fine-tuned your accuracy and timing, and have proven to yourself that you can hit your target score consistently in practice under timed testing conditions, your stress level will naturally go down as test day approaches. You'll have to remember of course to consider the fact that you'll probably miss a few questions, but most students discover that they don't need to answer every single question on the SAT in order to reach their target score. Guessing too wildly can have a detrimental effect as you might accrue too many penalty points and lower your score. So how do you calculate exactly how many questions to answer? Well, it all starts with your score goal. Don't have one of those? If you've taken the SAT before, a good goal might be to add 100 points to each of your math, critical reading, and writing scores. Haven't taken the SAT yet? Either visit us on the web at www.fastforwardthinking.com and take a free practice SAT, or just use your PSAT score. For example, if your PSAT math score was 50, simply add a zero to the end and add 100 points. Once you've got a goal in mind for each -11-Unauthorized copying or reuse of any part of this page is illegal. Copyright © 2008 FastForward Thinking Inc., all rights reserved. www.fastforwardthinking.com portion of the test, it's time to get our hands dirty and begin the calculations. You can learn more about these precise calculations in our Top 10 SAT Secrets, but we will tell you ahead of time that not knowing precisely how many questions to answer (and as a result, how many questions to skip) is like flying a plane without any radar – it's possible, but you wouldn't want to risk doing it! -12-Unauthorized copying or reuse of any part of this page is illegal. Copyright © 2008 FastForward Thinking Inc., all rights reserved. www.fastforwardthinking.com PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Here's a summary of the guessing rules that we've talked about: 1) Wrong answers will cause you to lose one-fourth of a point on your raw score for that section of the test (with the exception of student-produced response (SPR) questions), so don't ever guess randomly. 2) Only guess when you can eliminate at least 1, 2, or 3 wrong answer choices. Pick your guessing odds and then stick with them throughout the test. 3) Questions generally progress from easy to difficult within a section or subsection of the SAT (with the exception of paragraph and passage-based reading questions, as well as improving paragraphs questions). Therefore be more cautious about guessing at the end of each section and subsection. 4) There are no penalties on the student-produced response (SPR) questions, so guess at will and don't leave any of these blank. 5) Know how many questions to answer in each section before you take the SAT. Remember to follow these rules religiously and you'll be well on your way to a great score on the SAT. If you're serious about boosting your SAT score, visit us on the web at www.fastforwardthinking.com where you can: • Take a free online practice SAT and receive your score range instantly without giving any personal information • Learn about the Top 10 SAT Prep Secrets you MUST learn in order to boost your score quickly and easily • Sign up for a free account which will give you access to plenty of online tools • Learn about our personalized diagnostic SAT reports which help you to avoid costly SAT prep courses by preparing on your own • Register for at-home, online, or telephone tutoring