By now, you know that the SAT is a multiple-choice test. What you may not know is how the multiple-choice structure should affect your approach to answering the questions. Lucky for you, we’re going to explain how.

A machine, not a person, will score your SAT. The scoring machine does not care how you came to your answers; it cares only whether your answers are correct and readable in little oval form. The test booklet in which you worked out your answers gets thrown in the garbage, or, if your proctor is conscientious, into a recycling bin.

The SAT has no partial credit, and no one looks at your work. If you get a question right, it doesn’t matter if you did pristine work. In fact, it doesn’t even matter whether you knew the answer or guessed. The multiple-choice structure of the test is a message to you from ETS: we only care about your answers. Remember, the SAT is your tool to get into college, so treat it as a tool. It wants right answers. Give it right answers, as many as possible, using whatever strategies you can.

Because the SAT is a timed test, and since your work doesn’t matter, there’s no reason to do more work than necessary to solve a problem. Speed matters on the SAT, so don’t try to impress the test with excellent work. Do only what you have to do to ensure that you get the right answer and aren’t working carelessly.

Here’s an example of a simple multiple-choice math problem:

It’s immediately obvious that this is a bad question: all of the answers are wrong. You will never see a question like this on the SAT. Every SAT multiple-choice question will have exactly one correct answer. Again, obvious, but let’s look at the implications of this fact.

When you look at any SAT multiple-choice question, the answer is already right there in front of you. Of course, ETS doesn’t just give you the correct answer; they hide it among a bunch of incorrect answer choices. Your job on each question is to find the right answer. The important thing to realize is that a multiple-choice question is vulnerable to two separate methods :

Both methods have their advantages: you are better off using one in some situations. In a perfect scenario, when you are sure how to answer a question, the first method is clearly better than the second. Coming to a conclusion about a problem and then picking the single correct choice is a much simpler process than going through every answer choice and discarding the four that are wrong. However, when you are unsure how to solve the problem, the second method becomes more attractive: you should focus on eliminating the incorrect answer choices rather than trying to pick out the right answer.

You might be able to use the answer choices to lead you in the right direction, or to solve the problem through trial and error. You also might be able to eliminate answer choices through a variety of strategies (these strategies vary by question type; we’ll cover them in the chapters dedicated to each specific type of question). In some cases, you might be able to eliminate all the wrong answers. In others, you might be able to eliminate only one, which will still improve your odds when you attempt to guess.

Part of your task in preparing for the SAT will be to get some sense of when to use the correct strategy. Using the right strategy can increase your speed without affecting your accuracy, giving you more time to work on and answer as many questions as possible.

Should you guess on the SAT? We’ll begin to answer this question by posing another SAT question:

Okay, this isn’t really an SAT question, and the answer choices aren’t that important, though the answer is ¹/₅. But the question does precisely describe the situation you’re in when you guess blindly on any SAT question with five answer choices. If you were to guess on five multiple-choice questions with five answer choices, you would probably get one question right for every five guesses you made.

ETS took these probabilities into account when devising its system to calculate raw scores. As described in the introduction, for every right answer on the SAT, you get one point added to your raw score. For each answer left blank, you get zero points. For each incorrect multiple-choice answer you lose some fraction of a point:

It’s easy to figure out why ETS chose the wrong-answer penalties that it did. Let’s look at each type of question and examine what its penalty value means.

If you guess blindly on these questions, probability dictates that you will get one question right for every four wrong. Since you get 1 point for your right answer and lose ¹ /₄ point for each wrong answer, you’re left with points. Guessing blindly for five-choice questions is a waste of time.

If you guess blindly on these questions, probability says that you will get one question right for every three wrong. Since you get 1 point for your right answer, and lose ¹ /₃ point for each wrong answer, you’re left with points. Guessing blindly for four-choice questions is, once again, a waste of time.

These are not multiple-choice questions. There are so many possible answers that guessing the answer is immensely improbable. If you have even a vague idea of what the answer might be, you might as well guess, though, since there’s no penalty.

The numbers above show that the wrong-answer penalty renders any sort of blind guessing pointless. But what if your guessing isn’t blind? Let’s say you’re answering the following sentence completion question:

It seems likely that you don’t know the meanings of the words anthropomorphic, protean, sesquipedalian, or sanguinary since we purposely chose words that were more obscure than the vocabulary that appears on the SAT. But you probably do know the meaning of delicious, and can tell immediately that it does not fit correctly into the sentence (a delicious dog?). Once you’ve eliminated delicious as a possible answer, you only have to guess between four rather than five choices. Is it now worth it to guess? If you guess among four choices, you will get one question right for every three you get wrong. For that one correct answer you’ll get 1 point, and for the three incorrect answers you’ll lose a total of ³ /₄ of a point. , meaning that if you can eliminate one answer, then the odds of guessing turn in your favor: you become more likely to gain points than lose points.

The rule for guessing, therefore, is simple: if you can eliminate even one answer choice on a question, you should definitely guess. The only time you should ever leave a question blank is if you cannot eliminate any of the answer choices.

Some students feel that guessing correctly should not be rewarded with full credit. But instead of looking at guessing as an attempt to gain undeserved points, you should look at it as a form of partial credit. Let’s use the example of the sentence completion about the dog guarding Hades. Most people taking the test will only know the word delicious, and will only be able to throw out that word as a possible answer, leaving them with a 1 in 4 chance of guessing correctly. But let’s say that you knew that protean means “able to change shape,” and that the dog guarding Hades was not protean. When you look at this question, you can throw out both “delicious” and “protean” as answer choices, leaving you with a 1 in 3 chance of getting the question right if you guess. Your extra knowledge gives you better odds of getting this question right.