SAT CRITICAL READING

PART 2

SELF-ASSESSMENT

Analysis of Test Results

I. Check your answers against the answer key.

II. Fill in the following chart.

III. Interpret your results.

You can get a rough idea of which areas you most need to work on by comparing your sentence completion and passage-based reading scores.

The College Board uses a guessing formula to compensate for the effect of wild guesses on people’s scores. The formula is

In calculating your raw score,* do not count any questions you left blank as incorrect.

Raw scores of 60 to 67 (Critical Reading) are excellent.

Raw scores of 46 to 59 (Critical Reading) are very good.

Raw scores of 35 to 45 (Critical Reading) are above average.

Raw scores of 23 to 34 (Critical Reading) are below average to average.

If your raw score differs from your total number of correct answers by more than 3 points, you should be very cautious about guessing on this test. Guess intelligently. Guess only when you can eliminate one or more of the five answer choices to the question.

IV. List any unfamiliar words you came across. Then look the words up in a dictionary and write down their definitions.

V. Read the answer explanations and think about your performance.

Go over the questions you omitted as well as the ones you got wrong. Did you mark any answers in the wrong spot? Did you run out of time and have to leave out questions you could have answered correctly? Did you misread any questions, overlooking key words such as “except” and “best”? Were you too cautious about guessing, omitting questions that you had a chance of getting right if you had guessed? If necessary, reread the relevant sections in Part I. Then get to work on mastering the different question types.

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*A very precise formula is used to convert raw scores to scaled scores for the SAT, and the results may vary slightly from test to test. This book uses a broad-range approximation to give you a ballpark estimate of how you will perform on an actual SAT.