Should You Guess or Solve Hard SAT and ACT Math Questions?

Not all questions are created equally – but they all count the same!                                                                                                        

In the math sections, there is a mix of easy, medium, and hard questions, but every question is worth the same when it comes to your score.

You can predict where the hard questions will be

The questions go from easy to hard on the math portion of the tests (on the SAT the multiple choice section goes from easy to hard and the grid-in section goes from easy to hard – in both the calculator and no calculator sections).

There is no penalty for guessing

There is no guessing penalty! This means you have a 20% chance of guessing correctly on the ACT math section and a 25% chance for the SAT multiple choice questions (you aren’t likely to guess correctly on the grid-in section, however).   

Should you guess?

For students who consistently get the hardest questions wrong, it makes more sense to skip those and bubble in a guess. For harder questions, random guessing is often better than “educated” guessing – this is because the test designs the wrong answers to look appealing, so if you don’t know how to solve a problem, the wrong answers are more likely to catch your eye.

So if you are struggling with timing on a certain section and also performing poorly on the hardest questions, it may be a good strategy to choose to skip the hardest questions and bubble in random guesses instead.