Last night I was briefly watching the news, and they interviewed Susan Hansen as a “test prep expert” talking about the new SAT. She made a comment that the 1/4 point penalty for a wrong answer doesn’t reward guessing.
Actually, it’s a little more complicated than this and the penalty for wrong answers is quite interesting. If you can cross out a couple of obviously wrong answers, then you should just guess between the remaining choices. Let’s take a look at the College Board SAT Question Of The Day ** for today:
“Troy was ——- when he wasn’t elected class president: his spirits were so low that there was nothing we could say or do to cheer him up.”
- (A) unctuous
- (B) disconsolate
- (C) ebullient
- (D) inscrutable
- (E) tenacious
Now, suppose you don’t know the correct answer, but you do know what “tenacious” and “inscrutable” mean. Cross these two off the list and pick one of the remaining three answers at random. One third of the time you’ll be correct and get one point, two thirds of the time you’ll be wrong and lose a quarter point.
Expected score = (1/3 * 1) – (2/3 * 1/4) = 1/6
So, the expectation is positive, so you’re better off guessing between the three remaining options than leaving it blank. If you can narrow it down to two possible answers, then:
Expected score = (1/2 * 1) – (1/2 * 1/4) = 3/8
So you get 3/8 point by guessing. The system rewards you for what you do know, even if you don’t have the exact answer.
I tested out of a third of my undergraduate degree, via the CLEP exams. In every test that had multiple choice answers, I used this strategy. It works!
** http://sat.collegeboard.org/practice/answered-question-of-the-day
