<p>You're sitting in class, taking a multiple-choice test, and suddenly you freeze. There's one question that you think has two possible correct answers, maybe even three, but you don't know which choice to pick. What do you do? What are some, for the most part, safe techniques to guess correctly on a test? And don't say go with your first choice, cause 75-80% of the time that doesn't work for me.</p>
<p>Another problem I feel needs to be addressed: You pick one of two possible answer choices, but you get wigged out because you think that the other choice may be right, so you vacillate between the two letters for too long.</p>
<p>Dude, I am the master of guessing. I guessed my way to a 800 on critical reading on the SAT and 99 + on all my final exams this week.
Don’t waste your time on the question. Star it, including the two answer choices you think it may be, and come back. I usually go with my instinct, because usually if I’ve never heard of something and I’m being tested on what I should have learned, it’s probably not the answer.</p>
<p>While my guessing techniques are not perfect by any means - I typically put down an answer that seems reasonable, star the question, and then come back to it at the end. If I see that the answer is plausible and logical (and no other answer is any more plausible and logical than it) I leave it alone - but if I reread the question and the answers, I might pick up on something or make a connection that I hadn’t initially, thus effecting the answer I choose.</p>
<p>Preamble’s and loltired’s methods seem to be similar to what I do.</p>
<p>What about this: You eliminate everything besides two, but you have absolutely no idea of what one or both of the possible answer choices are, yet they still seem plausible. For example:</p>
<p>Correct the grammatical mistake: If I was a good guesser, then I wouldn’t be asking this question.</p>
<p>A) Correct as is.
B) Purple Chicken
C) If I were
D) Cat poop
E) 17…?</p>
<p>In this case, both A and C could work, but say this is a ESL test and the test taker has never seen this type of sentence before. What would he do then?</p>
<p>Btw, I think if I was and if I were are both accepted as grammatically correct.</p>
<p>I’m a pro at guessing. The first way to get good at it is by understanding how your teacher structures the tests by picking up patterns (like the correct answer is usually the one that is worded the longest, or doesn’t have a fraction or something). The second way to get good at this by disproving all of the possible answers and then picking the one that seems the most legit.</p>
<p>My friends found a method for the Economics tests they’ve taken (teacher doesn’t write them).</p>
<p>This method works with deadly accuracy on a lot of questions: There are 4 MC answers, 1 of them will be a throwaway and 2 of them will have distinct elements and a third answer will be like a combo of both of those distinct elements like a Venn diagram. Choose that one on such a question (which occurs very often) and the majority of the time you’ll get it right, even if you’re that person with no economics knowledge at all.</p>
<p>Coriander23- Do you go to my school?! My pre-calc teacher used to say that all the time haha.
Oh and if anyone cares, he had something called the Art of Guessing where there was an equal proportion of A, B , C, D, and E answer choices on the test. Fun.</p>
<p>If you find a typo on an answer choice and the teacher corrects it to the whole class, it’s probably right.
Honestly, as my name starts with a C (it’s not Hannah), I just pick that for every question I don’t know. If I’m divided between two and one of them is C, I still pick it. If the two choices do not include C, then I pick the one that seems to vaguely speak to me more. How much or how loud it speaks to me depends on how much sleep I had the night before or whether or not I had breakfast that morning.
I’ll see how this pays off when I get my midterm grades…</p>