Don’t dwell on any one question for too long.

 

    If you’ve spent a couple minutes laboring over the question, you might just want to make a note of it and move on. If you feel the answer is on the tip of your tongue, it might come more easily if you just let it rest and come back to it later. Not only is it demoralizing to spend five minutes on a single question, but it also eats up precious time in which you might have answered a number of easier questions.

 

    Nail the easy questions.

 

    As we said in the previous chapter, the test questions get progressively harder as you go along. Nonetheless, there will be some tough ones thrown in right at the start, and you’ll find giveaways right up until the end. If you dwell too long on tough questions, you jeopardize your chances of looking at every question and gaining points for the easy ones. Remember: you get as many points for answering an easy question as a difficult one, and you get a lot more points for five quickly answered easy questions than for one hard-earned victory.

 

    Skip the unfamiliar.

 

    If you encounter a question you can’t make heads or tails of, just skip it. Don’t sweat too hard trying to sort out what’s going on. If you have time at the end, 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 your second priority should be to work through the questions you can solve with some difficulty. Unfamiliar material should be at the bottom of your list of priorities.

 

 

    You can make the job of pacing yourself much easier if you go into the test knowing how many questions you have to answer correctly in order to earn the score you want. So, what score do you want? Obviously, you should strive for the best score possible, but also be realistic: consider how much you know about physics and how well you do, generally, on SAT-type tests. You should also do a little research and find out what counts as a good score for the colleges you’re applying to: is it a 620? a 680? Talk to the admissions offices of the colleges you might want to attend, do a little research in college guidebooks, or talk to your guidance counselor. Find out the average score of students admitted to the schools of your choice, and set your target score above it (you want to be above average, right?). Then take a look at the chart we showed you before. You can score:

 

800 if you answered 68 right, 7 wrong, and left 0 blank

750 if you answered 58 right, 12 wrong, and left 5 blank

700 if you answered 51 right, 13 wrong, and left 11 blank

650 if you answered 43 right, 16 wrong, and left 16 blank

600 if you answered 36 right, 19 wrong, and left 20 blank

 

    Suppose the average score on SAT II Physics for the school you’re interested in is 650. Set your target at about 700. To get that score, you need to get 51 questions right, which leaves you room to get 13 wrong and leave 11 blank. In other words, you can leave a number of tough questions blank, get a bunch more wrong, and still get the score you want. As long as you have some idea of how many questions you need to answer—bearing in mind that you’ll likely get some questions wrong—you can pace yourself accordingly. Taking practice tests is the best way to work on your pacing.