3 Tricks for SAT Math Problems with Student-Produced Responses

Even if you’ve reviewed the SAT math tips in Merrick, NY tutor Justin L.‘s previous article, the SAT math problems that require a student-produced response can cause a whole new level of anxiety. Read on to learn a few helpful tricks…

It’s very rare to see something on the SAT break a student’s stride and morale worse than the Student-Produced Response (SPR) questions. Everything about them goes outside what you’ve expected on the test. They are not multiple choice, the answers aren’t there, there’s no way to check if you’ve done it right, and they always seem harder. But if you can keep three simple things in mind, you can overcome this stigma and approach these SAT math problems as if they were any other question.

Question Order

There’s only one section of your test that will have these and the SPR questions will always begin at question nine. This is important because the difficulty of this section is structured as if it’s two mini-sections. All the multiple choice math problems will go from easy to hard, and then it resets and the SPR questions go from easy to hard again. A lot of students will just go from start to end, which isn’t really the best approach. Think about it: you get to questions seven and eight of the multiple choice and they tend to be pretty tough. These questions take a lot of the time and effort that could be spent on other questions. People tend to get burnt out with these two and rush through the SPRs, and make countless careless mistakes.

I’ve always been a firm believer of focusing on the easy questions first. The best thing to do would be to do the first three (or so) multiple choice, and then jump right into the SPRs. You’ll notice that questions one and two tend to be just as easy as nine and 10. At the same time, questions seven and eight will be just as difficult as the final two SPRs of the section. So pick out all the easy ones first. Don’t get stuck at the end of the multiple choice questions when you have easier questions waiting for you.

Incorrect Answers

For every multiple choice question that you get wrong, the SAT folks will take a quarter of a point that you’ve already earned away from you. This doesn’t apply with the SPRs. If you get one of these incorrect, your points aren’t touched like with the multiple choice questions. If you get it right, then you earn the point. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have to do them, this means you should do them! Even if you guess one of these questions wrong, you don’t get any points deducted.