When the Educational Testing Service created the “grid-in” questions they faced a new dilemma. While every other question on the math, reading and writing sections was a 5-choice question carrying a ¼ point penalty for a wrong response, what should the penalty be for an incorrect answer to a grid-in question? The penalty for a wrong answer is a deterrent to guessing. What would a student’s chances be of randomly guessing the answer to a grid-in question? With no choices to select from, the probability of guessing the right answer is virtually zero. Thus, it was decided that there is no penalty for an incorrect answer to a grid-in question. Of course, if a student gets a question wrong, he doesn’t get the one point he would have gotten for answering it correctly. However, if a student can’t determine the answer, absolutely go ahead and guess freely, since there is truly no penalty. The grid-ins are scored by just counting how many of these 10 questions you get right and no deduction for the wrong ones. Furthermore, even if you don’t get to finish the last, toughest grid-ins like #17 and #18, just fill in your favorite number. In fact, even if the proctor says to stop working on that section, while you can’t go back and solve the problems later, you can at any time fill in your favorite guess for any grid-in problem that you hadn’t gotten to before being told to put your pencil down.

Tags: SAT Math, SAT Prep, SAT Preparation, SAT Test