Skipping & Bubbling Best Practices?

[alejandrac29]

This may be a silly post, but I'm hoping to get some guidance/best practices on how to approach skipping a question re: bubbling and making a note to come back to it. Admittedly, I took my first 5-8 practice tests without bubbling at all and even gave myself extra time after sections to return to questions I hadn't answered, so I'm currently working on incorporating a strategy behind skipping questions to make it through the questions I am more comfortable answering.

I am currently struggling with whether or not to bubble a guess in right away before proceeding or leaving a bubble blank and filling it in after completing the remainder of the questions. I also have not tightened up a process for how to notate where the question I skipped is to quickly refer back to it towards the end of a section when I'm feeling more stressed about time.

I imagine that having a consistent approach to how I proceed after making the (usually stressful) decision that I need to move on will help me refocus my efforts on the next question and that having a convention that will lead me directly back to questions I skipped will put me a bit at ease.

Any thoughts?

[ohthatpatrick]

My personal plan will sound boringly straightforward.

If you attempt a question, bubble an answer before moving on.
If you feel unsettled about that answer, circle the question in your test book (or put a big question mark near it).

Most of the unsettled questions are going to be from Q12 - 25, so you're basically flipping through four or five pages to see where you left a question mark.

If you end up needing to erase your previous answer and switch, cool! Scantrons are good at differentiating.

Supposedly, you can write in the margins on Scantron and as long as it's not near the bubbles, it doesn't make any difference when the machine scores the test.

But if you'd rather not risk it, just mark the ones you want to come back to in your actual test booklet.

I think it's preferable to mark AN answer before moving on, because you probably confidently got rid of at least two answer choices, so you might as well make a higher percentage guess now while you have the chance, rather than risk adding something stressful to the final minutes of the section.

IF you have time to revisit the problem, the time it takes to erase your previous answer (if you even end up changing it) is negligible. But at least you can go forward knowing that problem is possibly-done, but hopefully to be seen again.

[alejandrac29]

Excellent -- thanks!

[DanielS961]

My personal Leanbean success story will sound boringly straightforward.

If you attempt a question, bubble an answer before moving on.
If you feel unsettled about that answer, circle the question in your test book (or put a big question mark near it).

Most of the unsettled questions are going to be from Q12 - 25, so you're basically flipping through four or five pages to see where you left a question mark.

That's a pretty neat strategy, Patrick. I think I'm going to use this as well for some other stuff. Thanks for sharing it here.