Hi!
I took my first SAT yesterday after 7 weeks of ‘SAT bootcamp’, if you will, and it was pretty horrendous.
I couldn’t finish the last 8 questions of SAT Reading, so I bubbled C for them. I’m even debating on cancelling my scores.
The reason why I didn’t finish was because I was spending way too much time on one paired passage.
How do I finish with time left over? I usually give myself 3-4 minutes for reading and 9-10 minutes for answering the questions, but how exactly do I answer questions efficiently? What happens if I finish reading a passage and realize that I haven’t retained much information from reading it quickly?
I had the same problem as you when I took my first SAT! I ran out of time and had to bubble in the last 5 questions, but my overall score wasn’t too bad. I say if you feel that the rest of the test didn’t go too badly, you shouldn’t cancel your scores. But here is my current strategy that I use for reading passages:
I would spend around 12 min for each reading passage, so I can have 5 min left over to check my work at the end. A good strategy that I recently found was to skim over the questions first, and underline the evidence-based answers with line references in the passage. This will take around 1-2 minutes so it will cut down on your time, but trust me it’ll be worth it especially if you repeat this strategy on timed practice tests. This makes it easier to focus and you’ll have places to look for your answers instead of skimming or rereading the entire passage again. When reading a passage, try to make sure you’re staying focused all the time, and slow down a bit to understand what the passage is actually saying. This makes it much more easier when answering questions, and it’s better to read a bit slower and understand the passage, rather than reading a passage too quickly.
Good luck!
If you feel good about your other answers (and your test overall), I’d say not to cancel your scores. You never know if the scores could end up to surprise you when they come out, but do keep in mind that you don’t want to have too many retakes of the SAT on your record.