I heard that there are two purposes of the dummy section, one to test new material and to catch cheating. I took the November 2015 test and after taking it I realized that my dummy section was the one I had the hardest time with. My dummy was reading, and I feel as though I easily missed at least 6. But, my other reading sections I probably missed 1 or 2. Would this score be a score CB will look closely at?
I doubt you have anything to worry about. I had not heard of these sections being used to catch cheaters until pretty recently and I don’t think that was their intent. But over the last year or so, experimental sections have been easier to identify because they contain questions for the new format of the exam – questions which stick out quite clearly. So you had some students answering randomly. That’s the kind of result that they might flag. Yours sounds like a good-faith effort and nothing to raise alarms.
Are the dummy sections easy to recognize now? I mean, are they new sat sections?