Chapter 1 Introduction

Who Writes the PSAT?

The PSAT is written and administered by Educational Testing Service (ETS), under contract by the College Board. You might think that the people at ETS are educators, professors of education, or teachers. They are not. The people who work for ETS are average people who just happen to make a living writing tests. In fact, they write hundreds of tests, for all kinds of organizations. They are a group of “testers-for-hire” who will write a test for anyone who asks.

The folks at ETS are not paid to educate; they are paid to write and administer tests. Furthermore, even though you will be paying ETS to take the PSAT, you are not their customer. The actual customers ETS caters to are the colleges, who get the information they want at no cost. This means that you should take everything that ETS says with a grain of salt and realize that its testing “advice” is not always the best advice. (Getting testing advice from ETS is a bit like getting baseball advice from the opposing team.)

Every test reflects the interests of the people who write it. If you know who writes the test, you will know a lot more about what kinds of answers will be considered “correct” answers on that test.

What Is The Princeton Review?

The Princeton Review is the nation’s leading test-preparation company. In just a few years, we became the nation’s leader in SAT preparation, primarily because our techniques work. We offer courses and private tutoring for all of the major standardized tests, and we publish a series of books to help in your search for the right school. If you would like more information about how The Princeton Review can help you, go to PrincetonReview.com or call 800-2-Review.

How to Use this Book

This book is divided into three main parts. The first part of the book is a practice test that will give you an idea of your strengths and weaknesses, both of which can be sources of improvement. If you’re already good at something, additional practice can make you great at it; if you’re not so good at something, what you should do about it depends on how important it is.

The second part of the book contains the different sections of a full-length PSAT so that you can practice on timing or content or both! Focus on the problems that gave you trouble in the first test in this book. If you ultimately decide that you would like more practice, our Cracking the PSAT edition can give the additional work that you seek.

The third part of the book contains two additional full-length PSATs for you to use for evaluative purposes.

When You Take a Practice Test

Here are some guidelines for taking these tests:

Time yourself strictly. Use a timer, watch, or stopwatch that will ring, and do not allow yourself to go over time for any section. If you try to do so at the real test, your scores will likely be canceled.
Take a practice test in one sitting, allowing yourself breaks of no more than two minutes between sections. You need to build up your endurance for the real test, and you also need an accurate picture of how well you will do.
Always take a practice test using an answer sheet with bubbles to fill in, just as you will for the real test. For the practice tests in the book, use the attached answer sheets. You need to be comfortable transferring answers to the separate sheet because you will be skipping around a bit.
Each bubble you choose should be filled in thoroughly, and no other marks should be made in the answer area.
As you fill in the bubble for a question, check to be sure you are on the correct number on the answer sheet. If you fill in the wrong bubble on the answer sheet, it will not matter if you worked out the problem correctly in the test booklet. All that matters to the machine scoring the test is the No. 2 pencil mark.