Should You Skip Questions on the SAT?

The SAT awards one point for each right answer, and deducts ¼ point for each wrong answer. There’s no deduction for questions you skip. Naturally the quarter-point deduction leads to a great deal of speculation about whether guessing is ever a good idea.

Philip Keller (The New Math Game Plan) tells you exactly when to guess, and when not to guess, based on your current baseline score.

Keller also explains why the quarter-point deduction means that most test takers should deliberately work too slowly to finish the test. The reason to slow down is that everyone makes more mistakes when they rush, and on the SAT mistakes are costly. Your score will be higher if you leave the hard problems blank and get 100% of the problems you can do right—you can score well above a 700 (about 740, on average) intentionally skipping one question per section if you get everything else right.

 5-Step New Math Game Plan Strategy:

1) Choose a target score 100 points higher than you achieved on your most recent test.

2) Decide which questions to skip based on your target score. Math questions appear in order of difficulty, and Keller tells you exactly which questions to answer (Answer Zone) and which to skip (Skip Zone) according to their sequence on the test.

3) Only answer questions in your Answer Zone. Any questions not in your Answer Zone are in your Skip Zone, and that’s what you do. Skip them.

4) Only guess if you’re in your “Answer Zone.” No guessing on Skip-Zone problems.

5) Grid-in strategy: answer all of the Grid-ins because there is no penalty for getting them wrong.

 

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