Now that you know a little about the SAT Subject Tests, it’s time to let you in on a few basic test taking skills and strategies that can improve your performance on them. You should practice these skills and strategies as you prepare for the SAT Subject Test.
The SAT Subject Tests are different from the tests that you’re used to taking. On your high school tests, you probably go through the questions in order. You probably spend more time on hard questions than on easy ones, since hard questions are generally worth more points. And you often show your work, since your teachers tell you that how you approach questions is as important as getting the right answers.
None of this applies to the SAT Subject Tests. You can benefit from moving around within the tests, hard questions are worth the same as easy ones, and it doesn’t matter how you answer the questions—only what your answers are.
The SAT Subject Tests are highly predictable. Because the format and directions of the SAT Subject Tests remain unchanged from test to test, you can learn the setup of each test in advance. On Test Day, the various question types on each test shouldn’t be new to you.
One of the easiest things you can do to help your performance on the SAT Subject Tests is to understand the directions before taking the test. Since the instructions are always the same, there’s no reason to waste a lot of time on Test Day reading them. Learn them beforehand as you work through this book and the College Board publications.
Not all of the questions on the SAT Subject Tests are equally difficult. The questions often get harder as you work through different parts of a test. This pattern can work to your benefit. Try to be aware of where you are in a test.
When working on more basic problems, you can generally trust your first impulse—the obvious answer is likely to be correct. As you get to the end of a test section, you need to be a bit more suspicious. Now the answers probably won’t come as quickly and easily—if they do, look again because the obvious answers may be wrong. Watch out for answers that just “look right.” They may be distracters—wrong answer choices deliberately meant to entice you.
There’s no mandatory order to the questions on the SAT Subject Test. You’re allowed to skip around on the SAT Subject Tests. High scorers know this fact. They move through the tests efficiently. They don’t dwell on any one question, even a hard one, until they’ve tried every question at least once.
When you run into questions that look tough, circle them in your test booklet and skip them for the time being. Go back and try again after you’ve answered the easier ones if you’ve got time. After a second look, troublesome questions can turn out to be remarkably simple.
If you’ve started to answer a question but get confused, quit and go on to the next question. Persistence might pay off in high school, but it usually hurts your SAT Subject Test scores. Don’t spend so much time answering one hard question that you use up three or four questions’ worth of time. That’ll cost you points, especially if you don’t even get the hard question right.
You can use the so-called guessing penalty to your advantage. You might have heard it said that the SAT Subject Test has a “guessing penalty.” That’s a misnomer. It’s really a wrong-answer penalty. If you guess wrong, you get a small penalty. If you guess right, you get full credit.
The fact is, if you can eliminate one or more answer choices as definitely wrong, you’ll turn the odds in your favor and actually come out ahead by guessing. The fractional points that you lose are meant to offset the points you might get “accidentally” by guessing the correct answer. With practice, however, you’ll see that it’s often easy to eliminate several answer choices on some of the questions.
The answer grid has no heart. It sounds simple, but it’s extremely important: Don’t make mistakes filling out your answer grid. When time is short, it’s easy to get confused going back and forth between your test booklet and your grid. If you know the answers, but misgrid, you won’t get the points. Here’s how to avoid mistakes.
Always circle the questions you skip. Put a big circle in your test booklet around any question numbers that you skip. When you go back, these questions will be easy to relocate. Also, if you accidentally skip a box on the grid, you’ll be able to check your grid against your booklet to see where you went wrong.
Always circle the answers you choose. Circling your answers in the test booklet makes it easier to check your grid against your booklet.
Grid five or more answers at once. Don’t transfer your answers to the grid after every question. Transfer them after every five questions. That way, you won’t keep breaking your concentration to mark the grid. You’ll save time and gain accuracy.
Apart from knowing the setup of the SAT Subject Tests that you’ll be taking, you’ve got to have a system for attacking the questions. You wouldn’t travel around an unfamiliar city without a map, and you shouldn’t approach the SAT Subject Test without a plan. What follows is the best method for approaching SAT Subject Test questions systematically.
Think about the questions before you look at the answers. The test makers love to put distracters among the answer choices. Distracters are answers that look like they’re correct but aren’t. If you jump right into the answer choices without thinking first about what you’re looking for, you’re much more likely to fall for one of these traps.
Guess—when you can eliminate at least one answer choice. You already know that the “guessing penalty” can work in your favor. Don’t simply skip questions that you can’t answer. Spend some time with them in order to see whether you can eliminate any of the answer choices. If you can, it pays for you to guess.
Pace yourself. The SAT Subject Tests give you a lot of questions in a short period of time. To get through the tests, you can’t spend too much time on any single question. Keep moving through the tests at a good speed. If you run into a hard question, circle it in your test booklet, skip it, and come back to it later if you have time.
You don’t have to spend the same amount of time on every question. Ideally, you should be able to work through the easier questions at a brisk, steady clip, and use a little more time on the harder questions. One caution: Don’t rush through basic questions just to save time for the harder ones. The basic questions are points in your pocket, and you’re better off not getting to some harder questions if it means losing easy points because of careless mistakes. Remember, you don’t earn any extra credit for answering hard questions.
Locate quick points if you’re running out of time. Some questions can be done more quickly than others because they require less work or because choices can be eliminated more easily. If you start to run out of time, look for these quicker questions.
When you take the SAT Subject Test: Chemistry, you have one clear objective in mind: to score as many points as you can. It’s that simple. The rest of this book is dedicated to helping you to do just that.