Test Strategy

• Do a think-aloud sprint of 8 to 10 Science items, shown one at a time on screen with their table, graph, or short text
• For each item, name the passage type (Data Representation, Research Summaries, or Conflicting Viewpoints), the question type, and the first move within about 10 seconds, without fully solving
• Practice the first move of going to the figure or table before the text on data passages, and reading the text carefully on Conflicting Viewpoints
• Check your pacing against the real section: 40 questions in 40 minutes, about a minute per question, moving faster on data passages to bank time for Conflicting Viewpoints
• Then take the full timed Science drill in the practice area

Science facts: the section is optional, has 40 questions in 40 minutes across about 7 passages (one of them usually Conflicting Viewpoints, about 6 questions), allows no calculator, and does not affect the composite, which is the average of English, Math, and Reading. Take it only if a target college requires or recommends it, or to strengthen a STEM-focused application. There are exactly three passage types: Data Representation, Research Summaries, and Conflicting Viewpoints. Do not name any other type. Type cues and first moves: read a value, find the figure and check the axis labels and units. Trend, say whether the variables rise together or move oppositely. Interpolate or extrapolate, extend the pattern between or beyond the plotted points. Two figures, find the value in the first and carry it to the second. Experimental design, name what was changed, what was measured, and what was held constant. Conflicting Viewpoints, summarize each viewpoint in one sentence before answering. On Data Representation and Research Summaries passages the answers are almost always in the figures and tables, so skip the long text, but take about 15 seconds on the figure first: name the two variables and the direction of the trend, then go to the questions. That brief setup is chosen over jumping straight in because it turns most questions into quick look-ups and lets you eliminate choices that contradict the trend. Read the text only when a question needs it. Conflicting Viewpoints is the exception: it has little data (at most a diagram or a small table), so read the text carefully. Passage order by visuals: clean graphs first, dense tables and text-heavy passages later. Pace in two tiers: move briskly through the data passages so there is extra time for the reading-heavy Conflicting Viewpoints passage, and leave your hardest passage for last.

• Train yourself to look at the data first: what is on each axis, what is the trend, what is the relationship?
• For Science, wrong answers often reference the correct figure but the wrong data point. Check labels carefully.
• If you are not taking Science on test day, skip this lesson and spend the time on your weakest scored section.