The Math section of the PSAT consists of two 25-minute sections with a total of 38 questions. These questions consist of 28 multiple-choice math questions and 10 student-produced answer questions. Each question will fall under one of four math categories: Numbers and Operation; Algebra and Functions; Geometry and Measurement; and Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability.
The critical reading section also features two 25-minute sections, but contains a total of 48 questions. Thirteen of those questions are sentence completions, where students are asked to fill in the blank with appropriate words. The other 35 questions are multiple choice questions in which students must respond after reading a passage between 450 and 850 words long.
The writing section of the PSAT is 30 minutes long and contains 39 questions. Fourteen of these questions ask test takers to identify sentence errors. Twenty questions ask for sentence improvements, in which students are given several options to create the most effectively written sentence possible. Five questions are paragraph-improving questions, in which test takers are asked to make adjustments to a full paragraph for effectiveness.
The PSAT is only practice while the SAT scores are sent to colleges for assessment. The PSAT is scored from 240 points while the SAT is scored out of 2,400. The SAT also is significantly longer than the PSAT; the SAT is a four-hour test and the PSAT is two hours long. The SAT requires takers to write an essay, while the PSAT does not.