In this video we're gonna talk about something that's kind of controversial on the SAT, and that is guessing. Many people have said, oh man, don't guess no matter what cuz you'll get penalized and it's horrible. And so whenever you don't know for sure the answer to a question or even if you're only 80% sure you decide to skip it because guessing is bad on the SAT.

That is actually incorrect. It's actually, things are a little bit more complex than that. So, let's take a look here. First we have the idea that it is okay to guess, depending. Depending on what? Well, first chew on this.

For every question that you guess incorrectly on, you will have one-fourth points deducted. And so now you're thinking, well, that's horrible! What do you mean, depending? Don't guess! I don't want a fourth of a point taken off.

Fair enough. But, it's all about playing the odds. What do I mean by that? Well, let's play the odds. Here is our mock question, meaning it's not an actual SAT question, for a couple of reasons.

But, it allows me to show something. And what is that? Well, let's read the sentence. Months of long preparation finally paid off and Dexter received a blank score. Well, this is easy it, long study paid off. So he received a good score, okay.

Now let's go to the answer choices. Aah! Probably don't know that word. Probably don't know that word. Definitely don't know that word. Probably don't know that word.

Fact, these are words that are so random, so esoteric and obscure that they would never, ever show up on the SAT. But I'm using them to demonstrate something. Everyone, from the drooling first-grader, all the way up to the smartest high school student, obviously, knows what answer choice C means. And they all know, that it definitely does not work.

Whatever the answer is, it's not C. It's gotta be A, B, D or E. At this point, you guess. You have a one in four chance of guessing correctly. So, let's imagine that you can eliminate on 100 questions, one answer choice, the rest you have no idea and you guess, so it's one out of four.

So, if you have 100 questions and you have a one out of four chance of guessing correctly, that means you're gonna get 25 questions right. Pretty easy math, hopefully. That means that 78 questions, or 75 questions rather, you are going to miss. Oh no, and we're gonna divide by four. Why? Cuz that one fourth penalty point.

And so we do the quick maths, or basically I'll do the quick math, don't worry about it. This rounded up becomes 19, and we get 25 minus 19 equals 6. And now you're thinking, gosh, you are crazy. What you mean depending? I just got 6 out of 100, that's like a super F, F minus.

But wait a second. If you didn't guess on any of those 100, you would've gotten what? A big fat zero. So you're actually giving yourself a few more points by guessing if you can just eliminate one. It's not a lot.

Six out of a total of 100 questions and I'm guessing on the SAT you're probably gonna be able to answer, you know, a fair number of questions, so you don't have 100 left over, where you can only eliminate one. But it shows that, guessing if you can eliminate one, actually has a positive effect. Now, let's take a look at another mock question.

And you're gonna say, hey wait a second. I, I've seen that before, yeah. We just went through that one, and it's the same thing. We, Mr. Dexter here, received a good score. But, good news is, we know it wasn't sudden. We definitely know it's not horrible.

Local doesn't make sense, and great, we can eliminate three of the answer choices leaving us with two. The crazy thing is, I know many students who at this point will say, I don't know, I'm scared, I'm not gonna guess, I'm gonna move on. And that is very dangerous for your score. Why?

Same drill. 100 questions let's say. You can eliminate three of the answer choices making it a 50/50. So, you're likely to get 50 questions right. At least 50 questions that you get wrong. And then here, we can simply divide by four and that gives us 12. Five round up, and you get 50, minus 13, and you get 37.

37 extra points out of 100. That is amazing. Now on the, an actual SAT test, there are probably gonna be 10 questions such as this one, so, basically, it's like getting 3.7, or around 4 points. And you're like, well, 10 questions, four points more, whoop-de-do. Well, think of it this way, on the SAT scales, just one point can sometimes be ten or even 20 points.

And so, instead of getting 570 on critical reading, you're now getting 610. Instead of getting 480 on math, maybe you're getting 520, just from these extra four points pushing it up that much so that those two sections both go up. And that's the major thing. Especially when a college sees the difference between 500 and something, and 600 and something.

So, you're probably asking, well come on, what sort of score did Dexter receive? Fair enough. Mephitic means sulfur, stinky, like a skunk. Not the answer. So, eximious clearly is the answer. But again, you'll never have the word eximious, which means excellent or great because it's too obscure, but again we were showing the point of guessing when you can eliminate.

At least one pays off and that is exactly what the golden rule of guessing is. If you can eliminate one answer choice, always guess. And if you can elim, eliminate more than one answer choice, in fact, three answer choices, and if you don't guess, well, you're crazy cuz you're losing out.