<p>It is my understanding that there is at least one section on the SAT which is experimental and, therefore, does not count towards the score.</p>
<p>I was curious to see what people were saying about this, so I looked at the SAT Thread. One of the posters seems to indicate that they know which section was experimental. Is this possible?</p>
<p>There is a different experimental section in different booklets distributed on the same date. So once the exam is over, you can compare notes with other students who took the test and figure out which of your sections was experimental. Suppose you remember a reading passage about the voyage of Captain Cook, but your friend didn’t have that passage. Bingo, you now know that the section that had that passage was an experimental one. Your friend may remember a difficult math problem that you don’t remember. Now your friend knows that was his/her experimental section. I don’t know how many experimental sections are tried out in each sitting, but I think it is definitely more than a couple. By the way, there is never more than one experimental section. If you are lucky then the section you found to be the hardest was the experimental one, and so it won’t count.</p>
<p>…or you could just look on collegeboard.com after the test is over…</p>
<p>Yes, College Board reveals this scarcely more than a week after the test is given.</p>
<p>Talking to friends about it is way more fun than checking College Board, trust me.</p>
<p>Also, CB only reveals something like “for booklets that had xx distinctive mark (I forget, is it a color or a number), the experimental section was section 5”. But most people don’t tend to remember what section 5 was. They tend to think along the lines of: “the section with that annoying passage about Capt Cook was really tough and I left out 4 questions…God I hope that was experimental!”.</p>
<p>The link to the relevant CB page is [url=<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools]here.[/url</a>] …</p>
<p>The experimental sections are shown as “equating” sections … the most important use of these sections is to determine test difficulty. The web page doesn’t say what type of experimental section appeared, but it pretty easy to tell by getting 4 math sections instead of 3, e.g.</p>