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A dumb question: how perfectly do we need to fill in the bubbles on our sheet?

iluvcandy07iluvcandy07 Member
edited September 2018 in General 50 karma

Lol, it's dumb but I'm actually seriously wondering.

Can we get away with imperfect bubbling? When taking practice tests, I avoid bubbling outside the circle, but I don't prioritize completely filling in the bubbles - many are mostly filled, but not completely filled. Is that ok?

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Comments

  • _oshun1__oshun1_ Alum Member
    3652 karma

    lol this honestly is something I thought about a lot!!
    I think if it's like, 95% filled it's fine. I never took the time to 100% fill it in all the way to the border and I never filled in super dark.
    I dont know if anyone would really have a true answer to this as I doubt anyone would want to experiment to see the minimum amount of bubbling one can get away with.

  • Regis_Phalange63Regis_Phalange63 Alum Member
    1058 karma

    I legit think this is not a dumb Q at all. My take on this is that the machine detects any lead in the center of each bubble. I dont completely fill the circles like artwork but I do blacken the center yet the teeny tiny edge of the circles is slightly not filled in.

  • mynameisjeffmynameisjeff Member
    519 karma

    great question/post! I'm also curious!

  • NotMyNameNotMyName Alum Member Sage ⭐
    5320 karma

    @Regis_Phalange90

    I legit think this is not a dumb Q at all. My take on this is that the machine detects any lead in the center of each bubble. I dont completely fill the circles like artwork but I do blacken the center yet the teeny tiny edge of the circles is slightly not filled in.

    I sat for June (disclosed) and they provided a scanned copy of my answer sheet which was pretty cool. The scanned copy included markings on bubbles I had filled-in and later erased so I think the machine chooses the darkest bubble for a given question as your answer to some degree. I don't know what happens when two bubbles for a given question resemble each other's darkness.

    Personally, I liked to sharpen my pencil then grind the tip down so that it provided more surface area when bubbling.

  • iluvcandy07iluvcandy07 Member
    edited September 2018 50 karma

    Lol thanks for validating my thoughts @"surfy surf" @Regis_Phalange90 @mynameisjeff
    @NotMyName

    I read up on this a little more and found that you can get LSAC to personally hand score your scantron, but I'm not entirely sure what their criteria is (or if they even have one) re: accepting/not accepting partial bubbles

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