Cracking the sat with 5 practice the princeton review

Editorial
Rob Franek, VP Test Prep Books, Publisher
Mary Beth Garrick, Director of Production
Selena Coppock, Senior Editor
Calvin Cato, Editor
Kristen O’Toole, Editor
Meave Shelton, Editor
Random House Publishing Team
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The Princeton Review, Inc.
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Copyright © 2013 by The Princeton Review, Inc.
Cover art © Jonathan Pozniak
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,
Toronto.
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[Itzy]

SAT is a registered trademark of the College Board, which does not sponsor or endorse this product. The Princeton Review is not affiliated
with Princeton University.
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Practice Tests for the SAT & PSAT are available for the two most recent editions of each book title. Online Companion Tools may be
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The SAT questions throughout the book were selected from the following publications of the College Entrance Examination Board: 5 SATs,
1981; 6 SATs, 1982; 5 SATs, 1984; 10 SATs, 1983; 5 SATs, 1992. These questions, as well as test directions throughout the book, are
reprinted by permission of Educational Testing Service, the copyright owner of the sample questions. Permission to reprint the material
does not constitute review or endorsement by Educational Testing Service or the College Board of this publication as a whole or of any
other sample questions or testing information it may contain.
All other questions in the book were created by the authors.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-94588-4
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-307-94561-7
Editor: Calvin Cato
Production Editor: Lauren Helmer
Production Artist: Maurice Kessler
2014 Edition
v3.1


Acknowledgments
An SAT course is much more than clever techniques and powerful computer score reports.
The reason our results are great is that our teachers care so much about their students.
Many teachers have gone out of their way to improve the course, often going so far as to
write their own materials, some of which we have incorporated into our course manuals as
well as into this book. The list of these teachers could fill this page.
The Princeton Review would never have been founded without the advice and support of
Bob Scheller. Bob’s program, Pre-test Review, provides the best sort of competition; his
fine results make us work all the harder.
Thanks to Ed Carroll, Eric Ginsberg, and Pete Stajk for their work on previous iterations of
this title.
Thanks to Jonathan Chiu, David Stoll, and Curtis Rutherford for their hard work in reviewing
and updating this year’s edition.
Finally, we would like to thank the people who truly have taught us everything we know
about the SAT: our students.

Special thanks to Adam Robinson, who conceived of and perfected the Joe Bloggs
approach to standardized tests and many of the other successful techniques used by The
Princeton Review.


Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Foreword
So Much More Online

Part I: Orientation
1
2
3

The SAT, The Princeton Review, and You
Cracking the SAT: Basic Principles
Cracking the SAT: Advanced Principles

Part II: How to Crack the Critical Reading Section
4
5

Joe Bloggs and the Critical Reading Section
Sentence Completions
Drill 1
Drill 2

Drill 3

6

Reading Comprehension: An Open-Book Test
Drill 1

7

Reading Comprehension: Wait, There’s More!
Drill 1

8

Vocabulary

Part III: How to Crack the Math Section
9 Joe Bloggs and the Math Section
10 The Calculator
11 Fun with Fundamentals
Drill 1
Drill 2
Drill 3
Drill 4
Drill 5
12 Algebra: Cracking the System


Drill 1
13 Advanced Arithmetic

Drill 1
Drill 2
14 Geometry
15 Grid-Ins: Cracking the System
16 Putting It All Together

Part IV: How to Crack the Writing Section
17 Grammar
Drill 1
Drill 2
Drill 3
Drill 4
18 Essay

Part V: Taking the SAT
Part VI: Answer Key to Drills
Part VII: The Princeton Review SAT Practice Tests and Explanations
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26

Practice Test 1
Answers and Explanations for
Practice Test 2
Answers and Explanations for

Practice Test 3
Answers and Explanations for
Practice Test 4
Answers and Explanations for
Paying for College 101
About the Authors

Practice Test 1
Practice Test 2
Practice Test 3
Practice Test 4


Foreword
Welcome to the 2014 edition of Cracking the SAT. The SAT is not a test of
aptitude, how good of a person you are, or how successful you will be in life. The
SAT simply tests how well you take the SAT. And performing well on the SAT is a
skill, one that can be learned like any other. The Princeton Review was founded
more than 20 years ago on this very simple idea, and—as our students’ test scores
show—our approach is the one that works.
Sure, you want to do well on the SAT, but you don’t need to let the test intimidate
you. As you prepare, remember these two important things about the SAT:
It doesn’t measure the stuff that matters. It measures neither intelligence nor
the depth and breadth of what you’re learning in high school. It doesn’t
predict college grades as well as your high school grades do, and many
schools are still hesitant to use the score from your 25-minute essay in their
application decisions at all. Colleges know there is more to you as a student—
and as a person—than what you do at a single 4-hour test administration on a
random Saturday morning.
It underpredicts the college performance of women, minorities, and

disadvantaged students. Historically, women have done better than men in
college but worse on the SAT. For a test that is used to help predict
performance in college, that’s a pretty poor record.
Your preparation for the SAT starts here. We at The Princeton Review spend
millions of dollars every year improving our methods and materials. Our teachers
take each and every SAT to make sure nothing slips by us, and our books contain
the most accurate, up-to-date information available. We’re always ready for the
SAT, and we’ll get you ready too.
However, there is no magic pill: Just buying this book isn’t going to improve your
scores. Solid score improvement takes commitment and e ort from you. If you
read this book carefully and work through the problems and practice tests
included in the book, not only will you be thoroughly versed in the format of the
SAT and the concepts it tests, you will also have a sound overall strategy and a
powerful arsenal of test-taking skills that you can apply to whatever you
encounter on test day.
In addition to the thorough review in Cracking the SAT, we’ve tied the book to
drills and tests on our website—PrincetonReview.com—to make it even more
e cient at helping you to improve your scores. Before doing anything else, be
sure to register at PrincetonReview.com/cracking. When you do, you’ll gain
access to the most up-to-date information on the SAT, detailed score reports for


the tests in this book, exercises that will reinforce our techniques, and the
opportunity to have your essays scored by our LiveGraderTM service. You’ll also
nd great information on college admissions, online applications, and nancial
aid.
The more you take advantage of the resources we’ve included in this book and the
online companion tools that go with it, the better you’ll do on the test. Read the
book carefully and learn our strategies. Take full-length practice tests under
actual timed conditions. Analyze your performance and focus your e orts where

you need improvement. Perhaps even study with a friend to stay motivated.
This test is challenging, but you’re on the right track. We’ll be with you all the
way.
Good luck!
The Staff of The Princeton Review


…So Much More Online!
More Lessons…
• Step-by-step guide to solving difficult math and verbal problems
• Video tutorials that put our strategies into action

More Practice…
• Math drills on Ballparking, Geometry, and Plugging In
• Verbal drills on Sentence Completion and Diction
• Full-length practice test

More Scores…
• Automatic scoring for online tests
• Instant scoring for your book tests

• Optional essay scoring with our LiveGraderSM service
• Performance analysis to tell you which topics you need to review

More Good Stuff…
• Plan your review sessions with study plans based on your schedule—4 weeks, 8
weeks, 12 weeks

…then College!
• Detailed profiles for hundreds of colleges help you find the school that is right

for you
• Information about financial aid and scholarships
• Dozens of Top 10 ranking lists including Quality of Professors, Worst Campus
Food, Most Beautiful Campus, Party Schools, Diverse Student Population, and
tons more

Register your book now!
• Go to PrincetonReview.com/cracking
• You’ll see a Welcome page where you should register your book using the book’s
ISBN number: 9780307945884. Simply type this into the window and go on to
the next page!
• Next you will see a Sign Up/Sign In page where you will type in your e-mail
address (username) and choose a password.


• Now you’re good to go!


Part I
Orientation
1
2
3

The SAT, The Princeton Review, and You
Cracking the SAT: Basic Principles
Cracking the SAT: Advanced Principles


LET’S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!

You are about to unlock a vast repertoire of powerful strategies that have one and
only one purpose: to help you get a better score on the SAT. This book contains
the collected wisdom of The Princeton Review, which has spent more than 20
years helping students achieve higher scores on standardized tests. We’ve devoted
millions of dollars and years of our lives to cracking the SAT. It’s what we do
(twisted as it may be), and we want you to benefit from our expertise.

WHAT IS THE PRINCETON REVIEW?
The Princeton Review is the leader in test prep. Our goal is to help students
everywhere crack the SAT. Ideally, we’d like the SAT to be eliminated altogether;
we think the test is that bad. But until that happens, we’ll content ourselves with
aiding as many students as possible.
Starting from humble beginnings in 1981, The Princeton Review is now the
nation’s largest SAT preparation company. We o er courses in more than 500
locations in 12 di erent countries, as well as online; we also publish best-selling
books, like the one you’re holding, and software to get students ready for this
test.
Our techniques work. We developed them after spending countless hours
scrutinizing real SATs, analyzing them with computers, and proving our theories
in the classroom. Our methods have been widely imitated, but no one achieves
our score improvement.
Study
If you were getting ready
to take a biology test,
you’d study biology. If
you were preparing for a
basketball game, you’d
practice basketball. So, if
you’re preparing for the
SAT, study the SAT. ETS

can’t test everything (in
fact, they test very little),
so concentrate on learning
what they do test.

The Princeton Review Way
This book will show you how to crack the SAT by teaching you to


think like the test writers,
take full advantage of the limited time allowed,
find the answers to questions you don’t understand by guessing intelligently,
and
avoid the traps that the SAT has laid for you (and use those traps to your
advantage).
The test is made by Education Testing Service (ETS) and they know that our
techniques work. For years, ETS claimed that the SAT couldn’t be coached. But
we’ve proven that view wrong, and ETS has struggled to find ways of changing the
SAT so that The Princeton Review won’t be able to crack it—in e ect,
acknowledging what our students have known all along: that our techniques
really do work. The SAT has remained highly vulnerable to our techniques. And
the current version of the SAT is even more susceptible to our methods. Read this
book, work through the drills, take the practice tests, and you’ll see what we
mean.


Chapter 1
The SAT, The Princeton Review, and You
Welcome! Our job is to help you get the best possible score on the SAT. This
chapter tells you what to expect from the SAT and some speci cs about the test. It

will also explain how to make the most of all your Princeton Review materials,
including a bunch of cool stuff online.


GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE SAT
You may have bought this book because you know nothing about the SAT, or
perhaps you took the test once and want to raise your score. Either way, it’s
important to know about the test and the people who write it. Let’s take a second
to discuss some SAT facts; some of them may surprise you.

What Does the SAT Test?
Just because the SAT features math, reading, and writing questions doesn’t mean
that it re ects what you learned in school. You can ace calculus or write like
Faulkner and still struggle with the SAT. The test writers claim that the test
measures “reasoning ability,” but all the SAT really measures is how well you take
the SAT. It does not reveal how smart or how good a person you are.

Who Writes the SAT?
Even though colleges and universities make wide use of the SAT, they’re not the
ones who write the test. That’s the job of Educational Testing Service (ETS), a
nonpro t company that writes tests for college and graduate school admissions.
ETS also writes tests for groups as diverse as butchers and professional golfers
(who knew?).
Wait, Who Writes
This Test?
You may be surprised to
learn that the people
who write SAT test
questions are NOT
necessarily teachers or

college professors. The
people who write the
SAT are professional test
writers, not superhuman
geniuses, so you can beat
them at their own game.

ETS is often criticized for the SAT. Many educators have argued that the test does
not measure the skills you really need for college. In fact, several years ago the
University of California, one of the nation’s largest university systems, decided
that the SAT didn’t provide enough information for admissions. ETS scrambled to
change the test and introduced the current version of the SAT. It’s almost an hour
longer than the old SAT and—unlike the old version—tests grammar and includes
an essay.


What’s on the SAT?
The SAT runs 3 hours and 45 minutes and is divided into 10 sections. These
include
one 25-minute Essay section, requiring you to present your viewpoint on a
topic
two 25-minute Math sections, one containing multiple choice questions and
the other containing multiple choice questions and response questions (we
call these “grid-ins”)
two 25-minute Critical Reading sections, made up of sentence completions
and reading comprehension questions
one 25-minute Writing section, containing error identification questions,
improving sentences questions, and improving paragraphs questions
one 20-minute Math section, including only multiple-choice questions
one 20-minute Critical Reading section, again featuring sentence completions

and reading comprehension questions
one 10-minute Writing section, containing only improving sentences
questions
one 25-minute Experimental section, which may be Writing, Math, or Critical
Reading. There’s no way to tell which section is the Experimental, so treat
every section as if it will be scored
The Essay section on the SAT is always rst. Sections 2 through 7 are the six 25minute sections, in any order. Sections 8 and 9 are the two 20-minute sections, in
any order (Math and then Critical Reading, or Critical Reading and then Math).
Finally, the 10-minute Writing section is always section 10, the last section on the
test.
More great titles from
The Princeton Review
The Best 378 Colleges
Best Value Colleges

Scoring on the SAT
Each subject area on the SAT—Math, Writing, and Critical Reading—is scored on a
scale of 200 to 800. Some colleges look at each individual score, but others look
at the highest combined score, of all three scores added together. The combined
score ranges from 600 to 2400. The average SAT score is about 500 per section, or
1500 total.
You’ll receive your score report about two to four weeks after you take the test. It
will include your scaled score as well as your percentile rank, which tells you


how you performed relative to other people who took the same test. If your score
is in the 60th percentile, it means that you scored better than 60 percent of test
takers.
One way of thinking of your SAT score is to imagine yourself in a line with 100
other students, all waiting to be seen by an admissions o cer. However, the

o cer can’t see every student—some students won’t make it through the door. If
your SAT score is in the 50th percentile, you’d have 50 other kids in front of you.
Maybe you’ll be seen, maybe not. Wouldn’t it be nice to jump the line? If you can
boost your SAT score, even by a couple of points, you move up the line and
increase your odds of getting through the door. We can help you do that…

Score ChoiceTM
The College Board restarted a program called Score Choice. Normally, colleges get
to see every single time you take the SAT. With Score Choice, however, you can
tell the College Board which test date or dates (as many or as few as you want) to
send to colleges. At rst glance, this seems great. “Hey, colleges don’t have to see
that one bad score from the rst time I took the SAT without preparing? Great!”
But there are some major problems with it, which you may want to consider
before using Score Choice.
First and foremost is that some colleges require that you send them all scores
from all times you took the SAT. They want to know about every single time you
take the SAT, and they don’t want the College Board telling them which of your
SAT scores they’re allowed to see. For these colleges, you must submit all scores,
and Score Choice is not an option.
Second, many colleges actually just look at your highest scores either for one
sitting of a test or, in many cases, per subject across several sittings. If the college
just looks at your highest sitting, Score Choice doesn’t make any di erence, and
it’s not worth bothering with it. The college admissions o cer will just look at
your highest-scored test date and ignore the other scores. But for the colleges that
cherry pick your scores by subject, Score Choice can actually hurt you. For
instance, let’s say you take the SAT in March and get a 510 in Math, a 400 in
Reading, and a 450 in Writing. You retake the SAT in May and get a 410 in Math
(ouch), a 500 in Reading (much better), and a 470 in Writing (OK). Many schools
look at your best scores per subject and would consider your SAT score to be 510
Math, 500 Reading, and 470 Writing. But if you submitted only one score, the

colleges wouldn’t have the high points to choose from.
Whether or not you decide to use Score Choice, plan on taking the SAT two or
three times. Many colleges frown on taking the SAT four or more times.


A searchable list of colleges and their requested SAT score submission
requirements, as well as more information on Score Choice, can be found at the
College Board website at www.collegeboard.org.

WHEN IS THE SAT GIVEN?
The SAT schedule for the school year is posted on the College Board website at
www.collegeboard.org. There are two di erent ways to sign up for the test. You
can sign up online by going to www.collegeboard.org and clicking on the SAT
hyperlink directly underneath the purple “Students” link, or sign up through the
mail with an SAT registration booklet, which should be available at your school
guidance counselor’s office.
Stay on Schedule
Although you may take
the SAT early in your junior
year, most students take
it for the first time in the
spring of their junior year
and possibly retake it in
the fall of their senior year.
In addition, you may also
need to take SAT subject
tests (many competitive
colleges require them), so
don’t leave everything to
the last minute. You can’t

take SAT and SAT subject
tests on the same day. Sit
down and plan a schedule.

Try to sign up for the SAT as soon as you know when you’ll be taking the test. If
you wait until the last minute to sign up, there may not be any open spots in the
testing centers closest to your house.
If you require any special accommodations while taking the test (including, but
not limited to, extra time or assistance), www.collegeboard.org has more
information about applying for those accommodations. Make sure to apply early;
we recommend applying six months before you plan on taking the test.


Chapter 2
Cracking the SAT: Basic Principles
The rst step to cracking the SAT is to know how best to approach the test. The
SAT is not like the tests you’ve taken in school, so you need to learn to look at it
in a di erent way. This chapter will show test-taking strategies that immediately
improve your score. Make sure you fully understand these concepts before moving
on to Chapter 3. Good luck!


What ETS Is Good At
The folks at ETS have been writing standardized tests for more than 80 years, and
they write tests for all sorts of programs. They have administered the test so many
times that they know exactly how you will approach it. They know how you’ll
attack certain questions, what sort of mistakes you’ll probably make, and even
what answer you’ll be most likely to pick. Kinda freaky, isn’t it?
However, ETS’s strength is also a weakness. Because the test is standardized, the
SAT has to ask the same type of questions over and over again. Sure, the numbers

or the words might change, but the basics don’t. With enough practice, you can
learn to think like ETS. But try to use your powers for good, okay?

The SAT Isn’t School
Our job isn’t to teach you math or English—leave that to your supersmart school
teachers. Instead, we’re going to teach you the SAT. You’ll soon see that the SAT
involves a very different skill set.
Be warned that some of the approaches we’re going to show you will seem weird
or unnatural. Some of these strategies may be very di erent than how you
learned to approach similar questions in school, but trust us! Try tackling the
problems using our techniques, and keep practicing until they become easier.
You’ll see a real improvement in your score.
How the Test Is Scored
The SAT is scored in an unusual way. For every question you answer correctly
you receive 1 raw point. For every question you answer incorrectly you lose
of a point. For every question you leave blank you get 0 points.
Your raw score is the combination of these raw points for each section
category: Math, Critical Reading, and Writing. Each of your three raw scores
is then scaled to a 200–800 score for each subject.
Let’s take a look at the questions.

Cracking Multiple-Choice Questions
What’s the capital of Azerbaijan?


Give up?
Unless you spend your spare time studying an atlas, you may not even know that
Azerbaijan is a real country, much less what its capital is. If this question came up
on a test, you’d have to skip it, wouldn’t you? Well, maybe not. Let’s turn this
question into a multiple-choice question—just like all the questions on the SAT

Critical Reading and Grammar sections, and the majority of questions you’ll nd
on the SAT Math section—and see if you can figure out the answer anyway.
1. The capital of Azerbaijan is
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
(E)

Washington, D.C.
Paris
Tokyo
London
Baku

The question doesn’t seem that hard anymore, does it? Of course, we made our
example extremely easy. (By the way, there won’t actually be any questions about
geography on the SAT.) But you’d be surprised by how many people give up on
SAT questions that aren’t much more di cult than this one just because they
don’t know the correct answer right o the top of their heads. “Capital of
Azerbaijan? Oh, no! I’ve never heard of Azerbaijan!”
These students don’t stop to think that they might be able to nd the correct
answer simply by eliminating all of the answer choices they know are wrong.

You Already Know Almost All of the Answers
All but a handful of the questions on the SAT are multiple-choice questions, and
every multiple-choice question has ve answer choices. One of those choices, and
only one, will be the correct answer to the question. You don’t have to come up
with the answer from scratch. You must simply identify it.
How will you do that?

Look for the Wrong Answers Instead of the Right Ones
Why? Because wrong answers are usually easier to nd. After all, there are more
of them! Remember the question about Azerbaijan? Even though you didn’t know
the answer o the top of your head, you easily gured it out by eliminating the
four obviously incorrect choices. You looked for wrong answers first.


It’s Not About Circling the Right Answer
Physically marking in your test booklet what you think of certain answers
can help you narrow down choices, take the best possible guess, and save
time! Try using the following notations:
Put a check mark next to an answer you like.
Put a squiggle next to an answer you kinda like.
Put a question mark next to an answer you don’t understand.
A Cross out the letter of any answer choice you KNOW is wrong.
You can always come up with your own system. The key is consistency.
In other words, you used the Process of Elimination, which we’ll call POE for
short. This is an extremely important concept, one we’ll come back to again and
again. It’s one of the keys to improving your SAT score. When you nish reading
this book, you will be able to use POE to answer many questions that you don’t
understand.
The great artist Michelangelo once said that when he looked at a block of marble,
he could see a statue inside. All he had to do to make a sculpture was to chip
away everything that wasn’t part of it. You should approach di cult SAT
multiple-choice questions in the same way, by chipping away everything that’s
not correct. By rst eliminating the most obviously incorrect choices on di cult
questions, you will be able to focus your attention on the few choices that
remain.

PROCESS OF ELIMINATION (POE)
There won’t be many questions on the SAT in which incorrect choices will be as
easy to eliminate as they were on the Azerbaijan question. But if you read this
book carefully, you’ll learn how to eliminate at least one choice on almost any
SAT multiple-choice question, if not two, three, or even four choices.
What good is it to eliminate just one or two choices on a
question?

ve-choice SAT

Plenty. In fact, for most students, it’s an important key to earning higher scores.
Here’s another example:
2. The capital of Qatar is


(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
(E)

Paris
Dukhan
Tokyo
Doha
London

On this question you’ll almost certainly be able to eliminate three of the ve
choices by using POE. That means you’re still not sure of the answer. You know
that the capital of Qatar has to be either Doha or Dukhan, but you don’t know

which.
Need More
Help?
For video
instruction, go to
www.princetonreview.com/cracking.

Should you skip the question and go on? Or should you guess?

Close Your Eyes and Point
You’ve probably heard a lot of di erent advice about guessing on multiple-choice
questions on the SAT. Some teachers and guidance counselors tell their students
never to guess and to mark an answer only if they’re absolutely certain that it’s
correct. Others tell their students not to guess unless they are able to eliminate
two or three of the choices.
Both of these pieces of advice are incorrect.
Even ETS is misleading about guessing. Although it tells you that you can guess, it
doesn’t tell you that you should. In fact, if you can eliminate even one incorrect
choice on an SAT multiple-choice question, guessing from among the remaining
choices will usually improve your score. And if you can eliminate two or three
choices, you’ll be even more likely to improve your score by guessing.

The Big Bad Guessing Penalty
Your raw score on the SAT is the number of questions you got right, minus a
fraction of the number you got wrong (except on the grid-ins, which are scored a
little di erently). Every time you answer an SAT question correctly, you get 1 raw
point. Every time you leave an SAT question blank, you get 0 raw points. Every


time you answer an SAT question incorrectly, ETS subtracts

of a raw point if

the question has five answer choices, or nothing if it is a grid-in.
Many people refer to the subtracted fraction as the “guessing penalty.” The
penalty is supposed to discourage students from guessing on multiple-choice
questions (and getting the right answer out of luck). However, let’s take a closer
look at how the penalty works.
Raw scores can be a little confusing, so let’s think in terms of money instead. For
every question you answer correctly on the SAT, ETS will give you a dollar. For
every multiple-choice question you leave blank, ETS will give you nothing. For
every multiple-choice question you get wrong, you will have to give 25 cents back
to ETS. That’s exactly the way raw scores work.
What happens to your score if you select the correct answer on one question and
incorrect choices on four questions? Remember what we said about money: ETS
gives you a dollar for the one answer you got right; you give ETS a quarter for
each of the four questions you missed. Four quarters equal a dollar, so you end up
exactly where you started, with nothing—which is the same thing that would
have happened if you had left all ve questions blank. Now, what happens if you
guess on four questions, but—for each of those questions—you can eliminate one
incorrect answer choice? Random odds say you will get one question right—get a
dollar—and miss the other three questions—give back 75 cents. You’ve just
gained a quarter! So, guessing can work in your favor.

TO GUESS OR NOT TO GUESS: THAT IS THE QUESTION
If you are con dent that you know the answer to a question or that you know
how to solve it, just go ahead and select an answer. If you are uncertain about
either the answer to a question or how to solve it, see if you can eliminate any
wrong answers. We’re going to give you lots of tools to eliminate wrong answers,
so you’ll probably be able to eliminate answers even on the hardest questions.

But, should you guess on every question? Well, that depends. In the next chapter,
we’re going to show you how to set a pacing goal for each section. The pacing
goal will tell you how many questions you need to answer for each section. Your
goal is to answer that number of questions. If you can get to your pacing goal
without guessing, that’s great. But most students will need to guess on at least a
few questions to reach their pacing goals. When you get to a question you’re not
sure of, ask yourself, “Can I reach my pacing goal without this question?”


Finally, guess only if you can eliminate at least one answer choice. If you can’t
eliminate one, leave that question blank.

Credit for Partial Information
Earning points for a guess probably seems a little bit like cheating or stealing:
You get something you want, but you didn’t do anything to earn it.
Want more practice?
Check out
11 Practice Tests for the
SAT and PSAT

This is not a useful way to think about the SAT. It’s also not true. Look at the
following example:
3. The Sun is
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
(E)

a main-sequence star

a meteor
an asteroid
a white dwarf star
a planet

If you’ve paid any attention at all in school for the past ten years or so, you
probably know that the Sun is a star. You can easily tell, therefore, that the
answer to this question must be either A or D. You can tell this not only because
it seems clear from the context that “white dwarf” and “main-sequence” are kinds
of stars—as they are—but also because you know for a fact that the Sun is not a
planet, a meteor, or an asteroid. Still, you aren’t sure which of the two possible
choices is correct.

Heads, You Win a Dollar; Tails, You Lose a Quarter
By using POE you’ve narrowed down your choice to two possibilities. If you guess
randomly you’ll have a fty- fty chance of being correct, like ipping a coin—
heads you win a dollar, tails you lose a quarter. Those are extremely good odds on
the SAT. So go ahead and guess!
(The answer, by the way, is A. And don’t worry, there won’t be any questions
about astronomy on the SAT.)


ALWAYS PUT PENCIL TO PAPER
At school you probably aren’t allowed to write in your textbooks, unless your
school requires you to buy them. You probably even feel a little peculiar about
writing in the books you own. Books are supposed to be read, you’ve been told,
and you’re not supposed to scrawl all over them.
Write Now
Feel free to write all over
this book too. You need to

get in the habit of making
the SAT booklet your own.
Do NOT do things in your
head. Start now by writing
the names of the colleges
you really want to attend
in the margin below.

Because you’ve been told this so many times, you may be reluctant to write in
your test booklet when you take the SAT. Your proctor will tell you that you are
supposed to write in it—the booklet is the only scratch paper you’ll be allowed to
use; it says so right in the instructions from ETS—but you may still feel bad about
marking it up.

Don’t Be Ridiculous!
Your test booklet is just going to be thrown away when you’re finished with it. No
one is going to read what you wrote in it and decide that you’re stupid because
you couldn’t remember what 2 + 2 is without writing it down. Your SAT score
won’t be any higher if you don’t make any marks in your booklet. In fact, if you
don’t, your score will probably be lower than it should be.

Own Your Test Booklet
You paid for your test booklet; act as though you own it. Scratch work is
extremely important on the SAT. Don’t be embarrassed about it. After all, writing
in your test booklet will help you keep your mind on what you’re doing.
When you work on a geometry problem that provides a diagram, don’t
hesitate to write all over it. What if there’s no diagram? Draw one yourself—
don’t simply try to imagine it. Keep track of your work directly on the
diagram to avoid making careless mistakes.
On sentence completion questions, you will often need to come up with your

own word or two to help you answer a question. Write it down! Trying to
retain information in your head leads to confusion and errors. Your test
booklet is your scratch paper—use it.