I’ve covered this before at length, but it’s important to remember that, in general, you’ll increase your score more by making fewer silly mistakes than you will by getting more of the hardest questions right.  I’ve always left the actual calculations and decision making in your court, though.

Well, the decision making is still in your court, but I’ve made the calculations a little easier for you. I went ahead and aggregated the scoring tables of a bunch of old tests, averaged the scaled scores, rounded them down to the nearest 10, and made a nifty little spreadsheet that you might find useful:

Based on multiple scoring tables…your particular scoring table obviously might vary a bit.

The bold rows are the rows that represent skipping the same number of questions per section. (For example, for a score of about 690, you can skip 6 questions, or two per section. If you just want to break 600, you can skip FIVE QUESTIONS PER SECTION if you get all the rest of the questions right. Seriously.)

This is not about limiting your scores; it’s about maximizing them. Questions on the SAT are arranged in order of difficulty, so you can predict very easily where the toughest ones will be. Take your time on the simple ones, make sure you collect all the easy points, and only then worry about the tough ones. If you run out of time and have to leave a few blank at the end, don’t worry about it. If you’re perfect (or almost perfect) on the ones you answer, leaving a few blank won’t hurt you much.