Читать книгу SAT Math For Dummies with Online Practice - Mark Zegarelli - Страница 23

The short answer is, no, you don’t have to answer every SAT math question to get a good score.

In fact, depending on your current performance level on practice tests, it may very well be to your benefit not to answer all the questions.

This piece of strategy definitely goes against a lot of your training as a high school student. After all, in most of your classes, you can’t get an A or even a B on a test without answering just about all the questions. If you only answer 75 percent and skip the rest, even if you answer perfectly, probably the best you can hope for is a C.

However, the situation with the SAT is entirely different.

On the SAT, you can get a 500 math score by answering only about 55 percent of the questions on the test correctly.

I dive more deeply into this aspect of strategy later in this section, when I ask you to consider your own personal starting point, path, and goal for the SAT.

For now — and this goes double if you’re a perfectionist — simply let go of the compulsive need to answer all 58 math questions on the SAT. Until you’re already scoring 740+ on your practice tests, answering all the questions would be a poor allocation of your time. If you’re answering all the questions, you’re probably rushing through questions that are within your reach, and losing points you should be getting.