<p>I've heard mixed things from everyone when it comes to guessing. Some people say if you can eliminate 1, take a guess... other's say leave it blank if you don't know.</p>
<p>Here's the question:</p>
<p>Whats your personal philosophy on guessin on the SAT I and why?</p>
<p>I want to get a sense of the overall views of people here and if you want, you can post your SAT I score to see if there's some kind of trend</p>
<p>I don't get it now. </p>
<p>To guess or not to guess...</p>
<p>I have Grammatix, Rocket Review, BlueBook... </p>
<p>I'm really unsure. I just guess and feel guilty afterwards, I suppose.</p>
<p>Alwayyys Guess!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</p>
<p>Don't guess! For me, even when I eliminate all the choices but two, I always pick the wrong one. Omit unless you dont know the correct answer but can eliminate four.</p>
<p>I always eliminate all five choices :(</p>
<p>always guess. </p>
<p>each wrong answer is worth -1/5, each right is worth 1, so odds are you'll get 1/5 right simply guessing, and therefore you will break even, neither gaining nor losing points.</p>
<p>If you can eliminate anything, your chances of a right answer increase of course, but yea always guess.</p>
<p>I rarely guess at all. I may come between two answers, but I'm usually leaning towards one of them. If I decide to take the SAT again, maybe I'll try and guess on some practice tests and see how I do. On my March test.. for Critical Reading, I omitted 1, missed 8, got a 680. For Math (this is embarrassing, but at least I improved it), I missed 5, omitted 11, for a 610. And for writing, I missed 6, omitted none, with a 9 for the essay, and got a 680.</p>
<p>For the May test, on the Critical Reading, I missed 6 (I was a little unsure on one of them, but I wouldn't really call it a guess) and omitted none, for a 720; on Math, I missed 2, omitted 4, for a 700; and on Writing, I missed 4, omitted none, with a 10 on my essay, for a 730.</p>
<p>So there's your breakdown :) I've read Princeton's Review defense for guessing, but their SAT review book is definitely geared towards lower scoring students. Has there been any analysis for students who miss between 2 and 4 questions per section? Is it still beneficial to guess if "you eliminate just 1"? I would still find it hard to, because for the ones I leave blank, I usually feel like I really don't know what I'm doing, and I'd still get it wrong, even if I can eliminate an answer. Inquiring minds want to know :)</p>
<p>But what if you eliminate the -right- choice, clutch? And there is no 1/5--probability only applies if you guess randomly.</p>
<p>If you guess randomly you will on average gain 0 points.
From there if you can eliminate anything the odds are in your favor of guessing.</p>
<p>I always guess. I suppose I'm just an optimist at heart.</p>
<p>Don't guess. My D guessed on the March new SAT in Math. She left one blank, guessed on 4 questions, got them all wrong, land thus lost one whole point due to those 4 wrong, so total of 6 deducted from raw score. I would have rather she left those 4 blank and had the 1 additional raw score point. Even if you guess 2 or 3, if you get them all wrong, you are probably still down 1 raw point. If your chances of guessing a problem is only 1/4, remember that probability is multiplicative, so for every four problems you guess on, your chances of getting all 4 right is 1/4 x 1/4 X 1/4 X 1/4 = 1/256. Quite a crapshoot! I don't buy PR's sell about guessing. I would say if you could stick to learning the academics, it is worth much more to you on the test.</p>
<p>Eliminating the right choice is 1/5 (or 1/4, why can't i remember?)</p>
<p>If you're simply guessing, that will still theoreticall even out. If you're eliminating, then maybe you should practice your reasoning if you consistantly eliminate the correct answer.</p>
<p>@mel5140: of course the probability of you answering all of them right by guessing is terrible, but guessing 1/5 out of five right is very probable, and that one will take care of the other 4 incorrects. </p>
<p>That is why you should guess, the ones you get right will make up (theoretically) for the ones you get wrong, and if you can eliminate even one your score will be higher than if you had left it blank.</p>
<p>If you guess I heard it is good to put the same thing all the time...teacher said it, not me</p>
<p>only if i can bring it down to two answers where one of the answer choices i am 75 % sure it is that.</p>
<p>Some people would argue that you shouldn't guess beacuse it's impossible to guess randomly -- you're always drawn towards CB's fake answer choices which are intended to look correct. </p>
<p>This was good thinking, although I'm not sure if it's adaquate to say "don't guess at all"... Although they design fake answer choices to look correct, the correct answer choice will look correct too.... because it is!</p>
<p>On some of the vocab ones, I'd recommend leaving them blank though....</p>
<p>Reading: 4 blank, 5 wrong -- 690
Math: none blank, 1 wrong - 780
Writing: 2 blank, 3 wrong -- 670
2140</p>
<p>I don't know anything about the SAT, but on the ACT, you're NEVER supposed to leave any answer blank. When the proctor gives the five-minute call, I always go through and fill in a randon bubble for each question, then take the rest of my time to go back and try to actually answer the question. That works real well on the ACT.</p>
<p>you should guess only if you are a person who is aiming for 600's or less and if you can eliminate at least one answer choice for sure. So basically if you know that you would have to guess on many questions it would be to your advantage to guess on those where you can eliminate some of the choices. However if you are aiming for a higher score, and you know you don't have to guess very much then, do not guess, as the odds for gaining more points than you lose is slim.</p>
<p>My theory is to guess on everything (for any five questions, 4 wrong + 1 right = 0) unless I don't have time. If you have trouble figuring out which to pick and "always pick the wrong one", elimanate a few choices and pick completely blindly amoung the others.</p>
<p>Yes... it probably was the difference between a 2060 and a 2110. I scored the latter. :) People will have their own opinions, but my thing is that if you want to score high, then you will have to guess aggressively. I just happened to guess correctly on a lot of questions, and that was huge. However, guessing recklessly is obviously detrimental. So on the overall scale, it's tough to determine whether you should guess or not. Honestly, it's anyone's guess!</p>
<p>Really, follow the rule. If you can elminate MORE than one (or one and have an "intuition" about the correct answer), guess. I usually don't guess when I can only elminate one because then it breaks out even and then its just a waste of time.</p>
<p>Ofcourse, the best way, like many have said, is to just know all the info!</p>
<p>:)</p>