Most of these “strategies” are common sense, and many of them youalready know. The funny thing about high-pressure situations, though,is that common sense often goes out the window. If you review anythingin the minutes before taking the test, review these strategies. Ofcourse, that doesn't mean you should skip this section now. It's fullof very useful hints, some of which might be new to you.
General Hint 1: Be Calm
The best way to do poorly on a test is topsych yourself out. If your mind starts thrashing about wildly, it willhave a hard time settling on the right answers. There are a number ofpreventative measures you can take, beginning weeks or even monthsbefore you take the test. Buying this book was a good start: It'sreassuring to see all the information you'll need to ace the test in acompact, manageable form. But there are a number of other things youought to keep in mind:
- Study in advance. If you've studied at regular intervalsleading up to the test rather than cramming the night before, theinformation will sit more easily in your mind.
- Be well rested. Get a good night's sleep on the twonights leading up to the test. If you're frazzled or wired, you'regoing to have a harder time buckling down and concentrating when itreally counts.
- Come up for air. Don't assume that the best way totake an hour-long test is to spend the full hour nose to nose with thetest questions. If it feels natural for you to take breathers, don't beafraid to do so. Lift your head occasionally, look about you, and takea deep breath—you may return to the test with a clearer mind.
General Hint 2: Grid Your Answers Carefully
No kidding. People make mistakes while enteringtheir answers onto the grid and it can cost them big-time. This slipupoccurs most frequently if you skip a question. If you left question 43blank and then unthinkingly put the answer to question 44 into row 43,you could be starting a long, painful chain of wrong answers. Don't doit.
You can avoid this by filling in your answersheet five questions at a time rather than one at a time, but if youfeel that's too complicated, just be careful to check the number of theanswer sheet against the question number each time.
General Hint 3: Pace Yourself
At the very least, aim to
look at everyquestion on the test. You can't afford to lose points because youdidn't even get to a question you could have easily answered correctly.While you can spend an average of 42 seconds on each question, you'llprobably breeze through some in 10 seconds and dwell on others for twominutes. Knowing how to pace yourself is a critical skill:
- Don’t dwell on any one question for too long. If you'vespent a couple of minutes laboring over the question, you might justwant to circle it and move on. If you feel the answer is on the tip ofyour tongue, it might come more easily if you revisit it later. Notonly is it demoralizing to spend five minutes on a single question, italso eats up precious time in which you might have answered a number ofeasier questions.
- Nail the easy questions. As we said in the previouschapter, the questions will generally get progressively harder as yougo through the test. Nonetheless, some tough ones will be thrown inright at the start, and hopefully you'll be finding ones that seem likea cinch right up until the end. Remember: you get as many points forcorrectly answering an easy question as a difficult one.
- Skip the unfamiliar. If you encounter a question youcan't make heads or tails of, just circle it and move on. Don't worktoo hard trying to sort out what's going on. If you have time at theend, you can come back to it and see if you can make an educated guess.Your first priority should be to get all the easy questions, and yoursecond priority should be to get through the questions you can solvewith some work. Unfamiliar material should be at the bottom of yourlist of priorities.
General Hint 4: Set a Target Score
You can make the job of pacing yourself mucheasier if you go into the test knowing how many questions you have toanswer correctly to earn the score you want. What score do you want toget? Ideally, your answer should be an 800, but be realistic: Considerhow much you know about chemistry and how well you generally do onthese types of tests. You should also do a little research—talk to theadmissions offices of the colleges you might want to attend, look incollege guidebooks, or talk to your guidance counselor. Find out theaverage score of a student admitted to the schools of your choice, andset your target score above it. Then take a look at the chart we showedyou before. You can score
- 800 if you answered 80 right and left 5 blank
- 750 if you answered 75 right, 4 wrong, and left 6 blank
- 700 if you answered 62 right, 8 wrong, and left 15 blank
- 650 if you answered 56 right, 20 wrong, and left 9 blank
- 600 if you answered 48 right, 24 wrong, and left 13 blank
Suppose the average score on the
SAT IIChemistry test for the school you're interested in is 650. Set yourtarget at about 700. To get that score, you need to get 62 questionsright, while giving yourself room to get eight wrong and leave 15blank. As long as you have some idea of how many questions you need toanswer, bearing in mind that you'll probably get some questions wrong,you can pace yourself accordingly. Taking practice tests is the bestway to work on your pacing. See how many questions you can leave blankand still get the score you want, and you'll have a better sense ofwhat to aim at on the big day.
If you find yourself effortlessly hittingyour target score when you take the practice tests, don't just patyourself on the back. Set a higher target score and start gunning forthat one. The purpose of buying this book and studying for the test isto improve your score as much as possible, so be sure to push yourlimits.
General Hint 5: Know What You’re Being Asked
You can't know the answer until you know thequestion. This might sound painfully obvious, but many a point has beenlost by the careless student who seizes an answer choice hastily beforeproperly understanding the question. Take the following example:
|
| | 6. | Three cylinders labeled A, B, C, are all at the same temperature. The volumes of the containers are 2.0 L, 4.0 L, and 6.0 L, respectively. Cylinder A contains 0.679 grams of neon gas at a pressure of 120 mmHg, cylinder B contains 2.45 grams of nitrogen gas at a pressure of 210 mmHg, and cylinder C is completely empty at the start. If the contents of A and B were completely transferred to C (assuming ideal conditions), what would the pressure become in cylinder C? |
| (A) | 0.25 atm |
| (B) | 180 mmHg |
| (C) | 330 mmHg |
| (D) | 675 mmHg |
| (E) | 1980 mmHg |
|
This is a fairly difficult question, butperhaps more importantly, the question is long and complicated looking.By the time the hasty student finishes reading it, he or she might haveforgotten the beginning of the question and decided to simply add thepressures together and choose an incorrect answer,
C.
To avoid situations like this, take a moment to truly
understandthe question before answering it. Read the question and then vocalizeto yourself what the question is asking and what the pertinentinformation they give you is. Then go ahead and answer the question orsolve the problem before you even look at the answer choices. This willhelp ensure that you aren’t seduced by any of the incorrect answerchoices listed. By the way, the correct answer to this question is
B.
General Hint 6: Know How to Guess
ETS doesn't take off 1 /4of a point for each wrong answer to punish you for guessing—they do itso you won't get a reward for guessing blindly. Suppose that withouteven glancing at any of the questions, you just randomly enteredresponses in the first 20 spaces on your answer sheet. Because you havea 20% chance of guessing correctly on any given question, odds are youwould guess right for four questions and wrong for 16 questions. Yourraw score for those 20 questions would then be
(4
1) - (16
1/4) = 0
As you can see, you'd be no better or worse off blindly guessing than if you'd left those 20 spaces blank.
Now suppose that in each of the first 20questions you are able to eliminate just one possible answer choice, sothat you guess with a 25% chance of being right. Odds are, you’d getfive questions right and 15 questions wrong, giving you a raw score of
(5
1) - (15
1/4) = 1.25
All of a sudden, you're over a point up. Itisn't much, but every little bit helps. Here's a list of yourpriorities when you come to each question on this test.
| First priority: | Answer the question correctly. |
| Second priority: | If you don't know the answer, try to eliminate answer choices and then guess. |
| Third priority: | If you can't eliminate any answer choices, circle the question andmove on to the next one. You might have time to come back to it whenyou've finished the other questions. |
The lesson to be learned here is that blindguessing doesn't help, but educated guessing does. If you can eliminateeven one of the five possible answer choices,
you must guess. We'll discuss how to eliminate answer choices on certain special kinds of questions in Chemistry Hint 5.
Guessing as Partial Credit
Some students feel that guessing is similarto cheating—that guessing correctly means getting credit where none isdue. But instead of looking at guessing as an attempt to gainundeserved points, you should see it as a form of partial credit. Forexample, suppose you're stumped on the question above that asks abouttotal pressure after different gases are mixed into a new container.And suppose you're pretty sure that the answer isn't simply adding thepressures given, even though you know Dalton's law of partialpressures. You do know many gas laws but are a little unsure as to howto answer this question. You do know that the pressure will be less orat least close to the other two pressures because you have someknowledge of Boyle’s law. Don't you deserve something for that extraknowledge? Well, you do get something: when you look at this question,you can throw out answer choices
C and
E, which leavesyou with a one-in-three chance of getting the question right if youguess. Your extra knowledge gives you better odds of getting thisquestion right, exactly as extra knowledge should.
