Using the 80/20 Rule on Your Test
The Pareto Principle, applied to standardized tests, states that 80% of the results you get come from 20% of the work you do. If we use the SAT as an example, this can be applied to much of the test. On the essay, for example, the actual writing may take the most time, but the ideas behind the essay form the foundation of your score, and they typically come together in the first few minutes of the section. Within the Critical Reading sections, students tend to spend most of their time on a few really hard questions.
And the 80/20 rule can be applied to most of the math questions on the test, too. Here’s a sample math SAT question:
- A train traveling 60 miles per hour for 1 hour covers the same distance as a train traveling 45 miles per hour for how many hours?
- A) 2
- B) 1 1/3
- C) 1
- D) 1/2
- E) 1/3
This problem may be easy for you, and it may be hard. But either way, you can get most of the way to the right answer with just a quick question: is the slower train going to take more or less time than the faster train? Once you’re convinced that it will take the slower train longer to go the same distance, you can immediately eliminate answer choices C, D, and E. From there you can either “guesstimate” the answer (recommended), or set up a proportion and do the problem “the right way” (fine, but it may take you longer).
But however you get the right answer, you went from five possible answers to two in a matter of seconds just by asking a simple question. That’s a lot of result for a little work.
Sure, you may not be able to do this on every single math problem on the test, but you can use it most of the time (there’s that 80/20 rule again). And every time you do it, you improve your guessing odds and/or save time that you can use on harder problems that you really do have to do all the work for.