If you’re a Junior in high school—or even a Sophomore or Senior!—and are preparing for an upcoming Digital SAT or ACT, you may have some fundamental questions about the format of the tests, and the best strategies for moving through them. In fact, one of the most common opening questions I hear from students who’ve just walked through the (real or virtual) door to a test prep tutoring session with me is:
should I Guess on the ACT and SAT?
After all, it’s not uncommon for a student not to have enough time to fully answer some of the questions on a given test day. And even if you’re a speed demon when it comes to moving through the test, you might still encounter questions don’t know how to answer.
So that’s where this post comes in: I’m going to answer many of your most pressing FAQs about guessing on the ACT and SAT…as well as let you in on the types of questions you’re better off guessing on…and HOW to do so.
(And yes, I cover how guessing works on the new version of the ACT that comes out later this year!)
So let’s get to it!
ARTICLE CONTENTS
1. Video version of this article
2. Will I Lose Points for Guessing Wrong on the ACT and Digital SAT?
3. Should I Guess Answers on the ACT and DSAT?
B. When You Have No Time (or No Clue)
iii. On the future ACT
C. Student-Produced Responses (SAT Math)
D. ACT Reading Guessing Method
5. Conclusion
Watch this article as a video:
Will I lose points for guessing wrong on the ACT and Digital SAT?
No! If you get a question incorrect on either the ACT or the DSAT, you will NOT be penalized. Granted, you also won’t get that question RIGHT…which means your score will not be as high as it would have been had you gotten it correct. But you won’t have any points knocked off for being wrong.
If you’re a parent reading this, and you took the SAT back in your day (or you have an older son or daughter who took the test in 2015 or earlier), this might be news to you.
After all, students who took the test prior to January 2016, DID have their raw score docked a quarter of a point for each wrong answer they bubbled in. Thus, every time you weren’t 100% certain of an answer, you had to make this really quite tricky decision: do I make an educated guess to try to win another point, knowing that I might be wrong and risk not only NOT getting the point BUT ALSO being deducted 0.25 of a raw score point? Or do I simply not risk anything, NOT get deducted any points, but risk that I might have actually known the answer and didn’t get it? It was a sticky wicket for most of my pre-2016 students, to say the least!
However, now, that conundrum is a thing of the past! You will NOT be penalized for a wrong answer on either the current SAT or the current or future ACT.
Which brings me to our next question…
Should I guess Answers on the ACT and DSAT?
Please do! In fact, you are walking away from potential points if you leave a question blank, my friend.
That said, there are different strategies for doing so. The strategy you should pursue depends on WHY you need to guess in the first place. Thus, you need to give yourself a bit of time while you’re taking the test to understand which situation you’re in and act accordingly.
#1: Educated Guessing on Standardized Tests
Let’s say you’re working your way through a section of the ACT or a module of the Digital SAT, and you stumble across a question that you theoretically could answer. However, maybe you’re drawing a temporary blank about proper comma usage in the ACT English or DSAT Reading + Writing section. Or perhaps you work through a fractions problem on the Math section and none of the answer choices match what you just calculated.
In any of these cases, you’re going to do what I call “Educated Guessing”—which is to eliminate the answer choices that you KNOW are wrong, and just pick whichever answer choice seems “best” out of the ones that are left over.
Note that in the ACT Reading Section and Digital SAT’s Reading + Writing module, the directions even TELL you to pick the answer that is “best”—not “right.” So if the answer you’re thinking of in your head doesn’t 100% match the possible answers provided, this is how you’ll move forward: eliminate answer choices that have something definitely WRONG about them, and pick the lesser evil out of what’s left.
#2: No idea what to guess (or time is running out)
What if you simply don’t have time to properly read or think about the answer to a question? Or worse, you look at it and feel like you’re reading Greek (and unlike yours truly, you’re NOT Greek)?
If you can’t eliminate anything or don’t have time to even try the question, my biggest piece of advice to you is to BE CONSISTENT in your guessing. In other words, pick your “answer choice of the day”—and stick with it.
On the Digital SAT
On the Digital SAT, your multiple-choice options are A, B, C, and D. So if you have four questions at the end of a module that you don’t have time to do, bubble in the SAME answer choice for all of them: B, B, B, B, or D, D, D, D, etc.
On the current ACT
If you’re taking the ACT, things are a little different. And because a new version of the ACT is dropping this year (in April or September, depending on whether you take the test with a computer or with paper and pencil), I’m going to give you the skinny on how to guess for both versions (the current/“old” ACT, and the one that will replace it later in 2025).
First, let’s talk today’s version. On the January 2025 version of the ACT, you’ll remember that the answer choices alternate between A/B/C/D/E and F/G/H/J/K on the Math section and between A/B/C/D to F/G/H/J on the other (English, Reading and Science) sections. So just keep the column consistent! In this case, if you have four questions at the end of the section that you don’t have time to do, bubble in the SAME answer column for all of them: B, G, B, G, or D, J, D, J, or E, K, E, K, etc.
On the new ACT
Now let’s tackle the new version of the ACT—the one that people will take online beginning in April of 2025, or in September of 2025 if you’re using a pencil and paper.
So far, the ACT powers that be have only given us a practice test for the online version of the test; that means I can only speak confidently about that one. At least in the digital format, the answer options do NOT alternate letters. You’re just given A, B, C, D for every question. There is no F, G, H, J.
So for those of you taking the updated version of the test, follow the strategy I spelled out for the SAT: just pick one letter of the day and apply it to each question where you’re forced to use no-clue/no-time guessing.
#3: How to guess student-produced responses on the SAT
If you are a Digital SAT person, you will know that Math on the test is composed of two different modules.
Each of those modules has 22 questions, giving the test a total of 44 Math questions. However, a fourth of those questions—11 out of the 44—do not offer you multiple-choice answers. Instead, the test gives you a blank and you type in—i.e. you self-produce—your answer. (These used to be called "grid-ins," but now that it's digital, they’re known as “student-produced responses” or "self-produced responses.")
Keep in mind that each of those four character spaces you’re given can contain actual digits, a fraction line and/or a decimal point. If the number is negative, you can then use a fifth character space for the negative sign.
Think about that for a second. There are at least 10,000 different possible combinations of those integers/lines/decimal points…and those are just the POSTIVIE numbers! Add a negative sign, now you’ve got over 20,000 different combos you could type in.
What do you think your odds are of getting that right if you were truly randomly guessing?
Right. Super low. WAY lower than your 25% odds of correctly guessing a multiple-choice with only four options—an A, B, C, or D.
1. Try to avoid guessing on these types of question!
So the very first thing I have to say about guessing on the student-produced math questions on the SAT is this: if you can avoid it, don’t put yourself in a position where you have to guess on this type of question.
On the old, paper-and-pencil SAT, we knew ahead of time where “grid-in” questions would be grouped in the sequence of the test. However, on the new, Digital SAT, there’s no predicting which 11 questions are going to be self-produced. They are instead interspersed randomly throughout your modules.
So if you know you’re the type of student who tends to run out of time on those last few math questions, then about halfway through your module, you're going to do a quick scan and hunt for self-produced questions in the remaining Qs. If you find one (or more), you're going to skip ahead to them and actually solve them.
THEN, once you’ve solved them (if you know how), you’re going to return to where you were in the module and answer the remaining questions from there.
This way, if you run out of time, you run out of time on a multiple-choice question…which means you can simply pick your letter of the day and accept your decent (25%) chances of getting it right.
B) If you DO have to Guess on a self-produced question, guess a single digit from 0 to 9.
If you DO still have to guess on an SAT Student-Produced Math question—either because you just have no clue how to solve it, or you ended up running out of time anyways—try guessing a single digit from zero to nine.
Though the odds of guessing right on this type of question are against you (unless it’s an “educated guess”), I’ve noticed that integers from zero through nine tend to be answers to a handful of questions on each test. So type in “2” or “7” or whatever single-digit number you’re feeling, and your odds of getting it right are slightly better!
#4: ACT Reading: Guessing Method
If you’re not a Digital SAT person, but an ACT one, you may have noticed that you need to move especially quickly through the test’s Reading section.
In fact, most students I know face this challenge. Even after we write up their personalized ACT Reading strategy together, they might still be down to mere seconds as they bubble in their last answer…or might have to guess on a question or two because time ran out.
If this is YOU—i.e. you’ve determined that the ACT is the test that best shows off your talents overall, but you’re always rushing through the Reading section and often have to guess on a handful of final questions—I have a strategy that will maximize the number of questions you can get to, and answer correctly.
If you're taking the existing/“old” version of the ACT and you're a regular time test taker, you have 8 minutes 45 seconds to read a whole passage and answer the accompanying 10 questions.
When the ACT switches over to its new version (in February for computer test-takers or in September for paper test-takers), the mad rush through Reading will become a little less intense. You’ll now have 10 minutes to read a long passage and answer 9 questions about it. Nonetheless, I'm sure a lot of students will still feel the squeeze, time-wise.
So your strategy in both cases is going to be simple:
don’t answer the “EXCEPT” Questions…instead, guess your “letter of the day” and move on!
What is an “EXCEPT” Question,” you ask? It’s a question for which THREE correct answers are provided…but YOU’VE been tasked with finding the one incorrect answer choice. For example, “All of the following insects can be found in Ben’s terrarium EXCEPT:” is what I refer to as an “EXCEPT” Question.
These questions are a drag because you have to do THREE TIMES THE WORK as you do in any other ACT Reading question type!
In our example, I’d have to go over the passage with a fine-toothed comb to locate THREE DIFFERENT INSECTS in Ben’s terrarium—say, ants, scorpions, and spiders—so that I can then identify the correct answer—i.e., the answer choice with the one bug I didn’t find in the passage (poor beetles!).
So, because “EXCEPT” questions are worth the same number of points as any other—but take three times the work to answer correctly—I say skip them if you’re consistently running short on time! Or rather, skip doing the WORK of them but bubble in your “answer of the day” so that you have a shot at getting it right!
Conclusion
You may have realized, in reading this post, that there’s a LOT more to guessing on the Digital SAT and ACT than you previously thought! There’s strategy involved—both in HOW you guess as well as WHEN you guess and on WHAT TYPE of questions you even guess ON.
The good news is that once you understand little strategies like these, your confidence will begin to build…and you’ll start to consistently score higher and higher on the Digital SAT and ACT.
And if you like learning pro tips and strategies like these, do you know how you can get BTS access to a whole lot MORE of them? By working with me to drastically raise your DSAT and ACT test scores, of course! I’ve been helping students all over the world do just that for over a dozen years, and I still have a few spots left for private tutoring students. (You can contact me here!)
