2012-01-10 19:52:09

If your goal is to break 600 or 700 on the Critical Reading or Math sections of the SAT, you should probably know how many questions you can reasonably miss. Not only will this information help you determine how many and which questions to omit, but it will also help you understand the amount of prep you need to reach your goal.

Warning: These numbers are estimations only. Actual SAT administrations are individually curved, which may affect the scaled value of each raw point.

 

Tip: When you practice, pay attention to your scoring patterns. Of the questions you answer, how many do you typically get correct? How frequently are your wrong answers due to blind guesses? Use this information to help decide how many questions you can afford to guess on, and how many you should really omit.

700:

Critical Reading ~ 57/67 raw points
This means you can omit 10 questions and still break 700, if you get everything else right. Remember that while there is no penalty for omitted questions, you will lose 1/4 point for every attempted question gone wrong. Thus:

5 omitted questions + 5 wrong questions = 55.75 Raw points -- 680!

Although only 10 questions were missed, the wrong point penalty stole our 700! On the other hand, if you answer every question, you can afford to get a maximum of 9  questions wrong. If you're aiming super high on any SAT section, you'll need to keep such nuances in mind.

Math ~ 48/54 raw points
Either omit the toughest 6, or ensure no more than 5 questions are wrong on your fully completed test. Don't forget that there is no point penalty for incorrect grid-ins. Wrong answers here count for omitted questions.

600:

Critical Reading ~ 46/67 raw points
You may have missed 21 points, but you're still scoring in the 80th percentile! If you attempt every question, you must get no more than 17 questions wrong.

Math ~ 37/54 raw points
Omit 17 questions, or miss no more than 14 if you answer everything on the test. More realistically, if you omit 8 and get 7 wrong, you will get a raw score of 37.25 -- just breaking 600! Just tailor these numbers to suit your particular scoring patterns.

 

If you're uncertain how to calculate your raw score based on the number of questions you get wrong, leave a comment on this blog entry. I am more than happy to explain!

 

Note: Because the Writing section includes the (dreaded) Essay, it's a bit more difficult to say precisely how many questions one can afford to get wrong and still reach his/her goal. I will tackle this topic in an upcoming blog entry.

Glossary:
These key SAT words are expertly identified by Sentia tutors

Nuance: A slight degree of difference