1. Focus.
2. Mark an answer.
3. Circle the question if you want to go back to it
later.
4. Then, move on to the next question.
Hopefully you will be able to answer the first sev-
eral easier questions in much less than a minute. This
will give you extra time to spend on the more difficult
questions at the end of the section. But remember:
Easier questions are worth the same as the more diffi-
cult questions. It’s better to get all the easier questions
right and all the more difficult questions wrong than to
get a lot of the easier questions wrong because you
were too worried about the more difficult questions.
Don’t Be Afraid to Write in Your Test Booklet The test scorers will not evaluate your test booklet, so
feel free to write in it in any way that will help you dur-
ing the exam. For example, mark each question that
you don’t answer so that you can go back to it later.
Then, if you have extra time at the end of the section,
you can easily find the questions that need extra atten-
tion. It is also helpful to cross out the answer choices
that you have eliminated as you answer each question.
On Some Questions, It May Be Best to Substitute in an Answer Choice Sometimes it is quicker to pick an answer choice and
check to see if it works as a solution then to try to find
the solution and then choose an answer choice.
Example The average of 8, 12, 7, and
a is 10. What is the
value of
a? a. 10
b. 13
c. 19
d. 20
e. 27
One way to solve this question is with algebra.
Because the average of four numbers is determined by
the sum of the four numbers divided by 4, you could
write the following equation and solve for
a :
