Cracking The SAT Premium

,   you can either  grid    in   or .5. It  doesn’t matter  to  ETS because     equals  .5; the computer    will    credit

either form of the answer. That means you actually have a choice. If you like fractions, grid in your

answers in fraction form. If you like decimals, you can grid in the decimal. If you have a fraction that

doesn’t fit in the grid, you can simply convert it to a decimal on your calculator or on paper and grid in

the decimal.

Here’s the bottom line: When gridding in fractions or decimals, use whichever form is easier and least
likely to cause careless mistakes.

Decimal Places and Rounding

When you have a decimal answer of a value less than 1, such as .45 or .678, many teachers ask you to
write a zero before the decimal point (for example, 0.45 or 0.678). On Grid-In questions, however, ETS
doesn’t want you to worry about the zero. In fact, there is no 0 in the first column of the grid. If your
answer is a decimal less than 1, just write the decimal point in the first column of the grid and then
continue from there.

Lop

Why do  extra   work?

After   all,    it  won’t   give

you extra   points. If  your

decimal doesn’t fit

in  the grid,   lop off the

extra   digits  and grid    in

what    does    fit.

You should also notice that if you put the decimal point in the first column of the grid, you have only three
places left to write in numbers. But what if your decimal is longer than three places, such as .87689? In
these cases, you will get credit if you round off the decimal so that it fits in the grid. But you’ll also get
credit if you just enter as much of the decimal as will fit.

For example, if you had to grid in .87689, you could just write .876 (which is all that will fit) and then
stop. You need to grid in only whatever is necessary to receive credit for your answer. Don’t bother with
extra unnecessary steps. You don’t have to round off decimals, so don’t bother.

If you have a long or repeating decimal, however, be sure to fill up all the spaces in the grid. If your
decimal is .666666, you must grid in .666. Just gridding in .6 or .66 is not good enough.

Note: Very long decimal answers are somewhat rare. Your answer should usually be integers or simple
fractions.

Reducing Fractions

If you decide to grid in a fraction, ETS doesn’t care if you reduce the fraction or not. For example, if your