You’re going to hear a lot of mixed opinions about what you should bubble or whether you should bubble
at all. Let’s clear up a few misconceptions about guessing.
FALSE: Don’t answer a question unless you’re absolutely sure of the answer.
You will almost certainly have teachers and guidance counselors who tell you this. Don’t listen to
them! The SAT does not penalize you for wrong answers. Put something down for every question:
You might get a freebie.FALSE: If you have to guess, guess (C).
This is a weird misconception, and obviously it’s not true. As a general rule, if someone says
something really weird-sounding about the SAT, it’s usually safest not to believe that person.FALSE: Always pick the [fill in the blank].
Be careful with directives that tell you that this or that answer or type of answer is always right. It’s
much safer to learn the rules and to have a solid guessing strategy in place.As far as guessing is concerned, we do have a small piece of advice. First and foremost, make sure
of one thing:Answer every question on the SAT. There’s no penalty.LETTER OF THE DAY (LOTD)
Sometimes you won’t be able to eliminate any answers, and other times there are questions that you won’t
have time to look at. For those, we have a simple solution. Pick a “letter of the day,” or LOTD (from A to
D) and use that letter for all the questions from which you weren’t able to eliminate any choices.
This is a quick and easy way to make sure that you’ve bubbled everything. It also has some potential
statistical advantages. If all the answers show up about a fourth of the time and you guess the same answer
every time you have to guess, you’re likely to get a couple of freebies.
LOTD should absolutely be an afterthought; it’s far more important and helpful to your score to eliminate
answer choices. But for those questions you don’t know at all, LOTD is better than full-on random
guessing or no strategy at all.
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