Wrong answer vs. skipping the question

<p>My DD is retaking the SAT on Saturday. As you all know, its been a very busy time of year, especially for a HS junior (finals and AP tests as well as the rest of her life) and she hasn't had a lot of time for preparation. I've been reading through the xiggi method thread as well as other prep threads and am looking for some basic pointers to encourage her for Saturday. One of my questions is whether its better for her score-wise to skip a question she's not sure of, rather than get it wrong?</p>

<p>I believe that if you want to analyze the likelihood of benefit statistically, the idea is that you should guess if you can eliminate one answer choice. But you have to use your judgment. Usually I leave it blank if I can't eliminate two of the answers. If you have it down to 3, you should probably make an educated guess, or even a wild guess really. It's losing 1 point (blank) versus 1.25 points.</p>

<p>It depends on the section...Reading you should never guess unless you can elliminate. On Writing it dependss if you AT LEAST have an idea, and on math ALwaYS guess, since it's in order of difficulty. (That's how I'm doing it, at least)</p>

<p>what about math?</p>

<p>I personally always guess even if I can't eliminate any(but you can usually eliminate at least one). Think about it this way. You don't know the answer to 5 questions and can't eliminate any choices on any of them. You take a guess on all 5, with 5 choices on each the odds are that you will get one of the 5 correct and suppose you only get one right and 4 wrong. -.25 x 4=-1+1 correct= 0. You are back to where you would have been if you left them all blank. </p>

<p>Normally you will be able to eliminate at least one and even if you can't eliminate any you may have a gut instinct on one, now you are going to have a good chance of breaking even. Since many tests have a guessing penalty like thisI try and not leave any blank.</p>

<p>This depends! If it's your first time taking it, when you can eliminate choices GUESS!!! However, if it is your second time, be careful, if you skip only 1-2, that's ok (it's better to play safe)</p>