[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
The more general point is that if ETS is using a technique for
correction that assumes guessing is truly blind then you improve
your chances by choosing answers when you have some knowledge.
This is part of what we tell students (we being the private test prep company
I've worked for.) But we caution them against blind guessing as a rule,
because the odds are not in their favor. We encourage them to leave those
items blank, which does tend to have the effect of raising their scores.
Now, maybe I missed something earlier in the thread. I was responding to the
maxim "It can't hurt to guess" by pointing out that in some situations it
certainly can hurt. Let's take a student who is relatively new to speaking
English, who might not have mastered some of the more elevated words of this
language, the kind that appear among the last 1/3 of many of the Verbal SAT
items. That person may very well get every one or almost every one of those
questions wrong. In this case, the correction factor deductions begin to add
up, and some serious pointage can be lost. We can of course hope that the
admissions committee will glean from the application materials that the
student is not a native English speaker, but the effect on score is still
notable.
Again, my point was to the claim that guessing doesn't hurt. Reading the
response posts it seems that folks are saying "In certain situations,
guessing doesn't hurt." Then we are in agreement. If I missed something
earlier, or didn't process it correctly, I apologize for misunderstanding.
Nancy M.
