<p>My D took a SAT prep course and then went right into taking the march test and did HORRIBLY. It turns out that the test prep course told her to fill in every bubble on the answer grid. She told me that she just filled in the answer grid whether she got to look at the question or not. Was the test prep wrong? Please help.</p>
<p>Well there is a guessing penalty. I heard that march sat curves were kinda harsh though. But really the prep course should not be blamed for a diminutive of study.</p>
<p>Well, if they told her to just guess, then yes, they’re wrong. There is definitely a penalty. But did she do more prep than just attend a prep course? The moment you look through any decent prep book they’ll tell you about the guessing penalty.</p>
<p>I don’t think she gave it the proper study effort but if she just ran through and filled in those bubbles because she thought there was no penalty thats my issue</p>
<p>“fill in every bubble on the answer grid.” is not the same as
“just filled in the answer grid whether she got to look at the question or not.”</p>
<p>No offense, but the 1/4 point penalty is on the front page of every prep book in existance. The impression I got from your post is that your daughter didn’t really care to study or even worse, does not have the logical capacity to question absurd testing advice(if the test prep really did tell her to fill in every bubble even if she didn’t look at the question).</p>
<p>Again, not trying to offend so don’t take this personally</p>
<p>I think sh was under the impression that if she attended a test prep course that would be enough and that mentality coupled with a fair amount of just plain being lazy equals not a good score. She knew of the 1/4 point penalty and when she came to me at the beginning of the class and said they told her to fill in every bubble and told them that this was there best chance to get a good score is misleading.</p>
<p>You wrote: "I think she was under the impression that if she attended a test prep course that would be enough . . . "</p>
<p>That to me is the biggest problem with test prep right there. :)</p>
<p>And, just to point out, students (lazy or otherwise) don’t always “hear” what they’re being told. </p>
<p>It’s entirely possible (for example, not saying this actually happened) that the teacher said this in a very particular context. For example, “Filling in every bubble with an answer you’re confident in is your best chance at getting a good score, SO that’s why we’re going to focus on answering questions quickly and strategies of elimination so that you can get to as many questions as possible.”</p>
<p>The above statement is very different from saying, as one would for the ACT, that you should never ever leave a question blank. And, the above would certainly not be an endorsement of blindly bubbling answers, merely an acknowledgment that the more questions you CAN answer, the better chance of a good score.</p>
<p>Since you’ve admitted there’s an aspect of laziness at play, it wouldn’t be too surprising if something like that actually happened.</p>
<p>If you really want to follow this up, ask to see your daughter’s notes or handouts from the material. If this were a strategy they were advocating, it should be in their material somewhere.</p>
<p>I have her materials in my room as we speak and I have not seen that yet and I just started going through it.</p>
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<p>That is a huge problem. The test-taker still has to be “on” and active during the test. The idea is to look for the best answer for each question, actively, not just follow a no-brainer rule of thumb.</p>
<p>According to Princeton Review, always answer the question if you can eliminate one answer choice. </p>
<p>The logic is; in 4 questions which you’ve eliminated a choice, you should answer one correct. 1 correct and three wrong is plus .25.</p>
<p>She told me that she can do every math problem and her problem was time. So when her time ran short she just had to fill in bubbles of some questions that she did not even get the chance to really look at.</p>
<p>I found this on a test prep company’s website that might help explain this:</p>
<p>"Question: I hear a lot about the guessing penalty on the SAT. I’m confused. Should I guess, or not?</p>
<p>Bottom line: always guess, and always guess quickly. The SAT has a so-called guessing penalty, but it is really a guessing CORRECTIVE. It only deducts the points you got when you guessed right. It’s based on a simple statistic: there are 5 choices, so you will randomly guess one right for every 4 you guess wrong. The SAT deducts a quarter point for each error you make. So, with 4 errors you lose one point, the point you got when you guessed right. Pretty simple.</p>
<p>It means it can’t hurt you to guess, especially because you rarely guess randomly. You usually guess intelligently by eliminating clearly wrong or unlikely choices. So your odds go up, and so do your points. So you should be aggressive on the SAT and guess, but guess quickly, so you don’t waste time. "</p>
<p>I have to admit, I’ve never heard of this strategy being advocated before because it does not INCREASE your chances of scoring well (when you guess just to fill in bubbles). The explanation of the penalty as a correction factor is true; the guessing penalty is meant to NEGATE the advantage of guessing. So in theory, with every blank answer guessed, one should come out neither ahead nor behind.</p>
<p>The implicit assumption in the explanation above is that more than zero of your guesses will be non-randomly guessed, and that compensates for the ones that are stabs in the dark. Well, in fact, to take advantage of probability you actually SHOULD be guessing randomly… once you’ve eliminated answer choices. I don’t think people have had the problem of guessing <em>too</em> randomly – they’ve often been fooled by compelling (but false) answer choices. You need to understand your student before you can be confident recommending that they “go with their gut.” Some students have great instincts; some, not so much.</p>
<p>But, I still question why someone would advocate a strategy that “has no effect” on your score vs. one that gives you a systematic, albeit small, edge.</p>