<p>Grammatix says no guessing.</p>
<p>Every other book says guess.</p>
<p>What advice should I follow?</p>
<p>Employ strategic guessing methods. From silverturtle’s guide:
Omitting Questions</p>
<p>Because I lose points for incorrectly answering questions as opposed to omitting them, when should I guess on questions that I’m not sure about?</p>
<p>The oft-cited advice is that, as long as you can eliminate one or more possible answer choices, guessing is your best bet. Indeed, given the deduction of .25 points for each incorrect answer (minus 1.25 with respect to opportunity cost), one should theoretically come ahead if he or she guesses after eliminating one choice (a 25% chance). There are some exceptions to this rule, though. </p>
<p>There are some times when you should guess more liberally than that principle suggests. Very rarely do students truly have no idea about which of the choices is correct. By analyzing patterns in the answers, for example, one could probably get about 25% of Math questions right even without knowing the questions. However, this is most applicable on the SAT only if you are not aiming for a high score or on AP tests* (on which the threshold for a perfect score is relatively low); it is fine if one misses quite a few questions in those situations. </p>
<p>On the other extreme, there are some special considerations that should also result in especially liberal guessing. If you are doggedly aiming for a perfect score on Math, answer every question (missing one almost never results in 800), even if you have to blindly guess. Similarly, if you are looking for a perfect score on Critical Reading, answer every question; there are no exceptions to this rule. Why? On almost every testing administration, -2 raw points was the cutoff for 800 on CR. Because it takes three incorrect guesses to result in an actual loss of a raw point (the College Board rounds .5 in your favor and only works in integers), there is no difference between two incorrect responses and two omissions.
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<p>Guess if you can eliminate answers. (I am assuming this is for the SAT.) If you cannot, then guessing won’t give you any extra points on average.</p>
<p>If you’re going for 750-800 always guess.</p>