- Welcome to the pacing overview. Pacing is one of those things that can make or break your score, not because the questions get harder, but because running out of time means leaving points on the table.

In this lesson, you'll get a clear, practical system for managing your time across every module. Let's start with the foundation: the Two-Pass System. The goal in every module is simple: Get as many raw points as possible before time runs out. To do that, you're going to use a Two-Pass System.

On the first pass, do all of the questions that are easier for you. Move through the module and answer everything you can confidently and efficiently. Don't stop and grind through a hard question. On the second pass, return to the harder or more time-consuming ones.

And when there's about one minute left in the module, stop working and guess on anything that's still unanswered. Remember, there is no guessing penalty, so leaving a question blank is always the wrong move. Now, let's talk about how to actually sort questions as you move through them.

Think of the questions as fitting into one of the following categories: You've got now questions, you've got later questions, and you also have never questions. As you hit each question, you're making a quick judgment call.

Is this a now, a later, or a never? Here's how these map to your two passes. On your first pass, that's when you're doing your now questions. You know these. You can answer confidently and quickly.

These are your points to collect. Do them, move on, and don't second guess yourself. On your second pass, you're tackling your later questions. Ugh, these are the ones that gave you pause. It might be unfamiliar concepts, high text complexity, questions that are just going to take more time.

Use the built-in mark feature to flag them on your first pass, and return to attempt them on your second pass. That's exactly what the second pass is for. Now, what about those never questions? These fall into a special category.

Never questions can pop up either on your first or second pass. It kinda depends on how well you know yourself as a test-taker. If you have no idea what the question is asking or you've never seen the concept or the word before, that means the questions might be genuinely outside your current knowledge.

Working through them is unlikely to get you the point. One option, use the built-in mark feature to flag them and return to them on your second pass if you wanna give them a go. But here's the other option: Just make a guess quickly on your first pass.

A fast guess and a move-on is often smarter than flagging and spending second-pass time on something you're unlikely to crack. Let's talk about a situation that happens to everyone: getting stuck. You start a question, you're working on it, and then you get stuck.

Progress has stalled. Once you recognize you're stuck, flag the question and move on. Don't sit there spinning. When you're stuck, that question now becomes a second-pass question.

You're not giving up on it entirely. You're gonna come back when you have fresh eyes. A brief break from a question you're stuck on can make a real difference. You'll often see something on the second look that you missed the first time.

And be sure to keep any scratch work to avoid a complete redo. When you come back, something you overlooked or a small error might jump right out at you. Don't erase your work, use it.

Now, let's look at the tool you'll use to manage your second pass: the review screen. When your second pass starts, use the review feature to return to the questions you flagged. You launch the review by clicking the question number at the bottom of the screen, right here, the question counter at the bottom.

Click it to open the review panel. And this is what it looks like when it opens. You can see your question numbers, which ones are unanswered, and which ones are marked for review. Click any question number to jump directly to it.

You might be wondering why there are only eight questions. Well, this screenshot was taken from one of the shorter, try it out tests that the College Board offers. There's one more pacing tool worth understanding, and that's Process of Elimination, or POE, is a powerful pacing tool in its own right.

It helps keep you engaged with a question and on track to finish in the allotted time. Working through answer choices actively keeps you moving. You're making decisions instead of rereading the question indefinitely. How does POE work on the SAT specifically?

That built-in POE tool. On the right side of each answer choice, you'll see small letter buttons. You can click those to cross out the answer choices you've eliminated right on the screen. Use this tool.

It keeps your thinking organized, helps you avoid rereading choices you've already ruled out, and speeds up your decision-making. Let's bring it all together. Use the built-in tools to help with pacing. Mark for review, the review screen, and the POE elimination tool are all there for you.

Get comfortable with them before test day. Get to know yourself as a test-taker. That means practicing with a timer, paying attention to where you slow down, and figuring out which types of questions tend to be your now versus your later and maybe even figure out if you have never questions.

Figuring out which questions are now, which are later, and which are never, that categorization is the core of the Two-Pass System. And making those calls quickly is a skill you build through practice. Figuring out your best pacing plan is an essential part of prep.

It's not an afterthought. It is a strategy. The better your pacing, the more your actual knowledge and skill show up in your score.