General Advice

This guide covers seven question types on the SAT—Words in Context, Purpose/Structure/Ideas/Details, Cross-Text Connections, Command of Evidence, Logical Completion, Transitions, and Research Notes. They look different and are different. But the work you do is mostly the same: read carefully, identify the evidence the question turns on, predict when useful, and evaluate each choice against the evidence and the task.

This chapter covers the habits you'll use throughout the guide. Later chapters show how to apply them to each question type and introduce strategies that are specific to that type.

Read the Question First

Before you read the passage, glance at the question—the stem—and identify the question type. Some stems tell you the specific job; others are boilerplate.

• Purpose, Structure, Ideas, and Details; Cross-Text Connections; and Command of Evidence — the stem changes and tells you exactly what the question is asking. Read it carefully.
• Words in Context, Transitions, and Logical Completion (and Standard English grammar questions) — the stem is essentially the same every time. Once you recognize the question type, move on.
• Research Notes — read only the first sentence, the goal. The second sentence is the same every time. Skip it.

Read Carefully

For questions with a passage, read the whole passage—don’t skim or skip ahead. The answer may depend on a detail near the end or on how two parts connect.

You don't need to understand every technical term. Focus on the relationships between ideas: who claims what, what supports what, and what contrasts with what. Before choosing an answer, make sure you understand the part of the passage the question turns on.

If a sentence is hard to follow, put it into simpler words. The language is often harder than the underlying idea. Keep track of who or what is being compared and what happened when. You can shorten researchers’ names in your notes, but preserve differences between their groups, findings, and dates when those differences matter.

Predict When Useful

Before looking at the choices, take a few seconds to form your own expectation based on the passage. This can keep you grounded in the text instead of being pulled toward an attractive-sounding wrong answer.

Some questions are easier to predict than others. If nothing comes to you, don't force it—move to the choices and evaluate them directly.

Evaluating Answer Choices

Answers are Not Subjective

We're used to the idea that interpretation of texts is subjective.

But SAT Reading questions can't work like that.

The test has to be 100% objective, otherwise you'll have 50,000 parents calling the SAT customer service line arguing that their kid's answers were actually right.

How does the SAT deal with this?

The passage itself may allow for more than one interpretation. But for the question being asked, one choice is correct, and each wrong choice has a specific problem you can identify.

The correct answer must:

1. Fit the evidence and reasoning the question requires
2. Answer the question being posed

If an answer fails either test, it's wrong.

Process of Elimination

Read the whole answer and make sure you understand its claim. A familiar word or one accurate part does not make the whole answer correct.

Don't just read the answers and wait for one to "feel right." Be systematic:

1. Read the passage carefully (twice if needed); for Research Notes, start with the goal.
2. Go answer by answer with laser focus on ONE at a time
3. For each answer, decide: yes or no? And specifically why yes or no?
4. If the first answer seems wrong, keep going—check ALL four before deciding
5. Don't jump around—work through A, B, C, D in order

This discipline prevents you from latching onto a "pretty good" answer while missing the correct one.

Think Like a Prosecutor

When evaluating answer choices, think of yourself as a prosecutor trying to convict each wrong answer—not a defense attorney trying to make answers work.

When an answer makes a claim about the passage, find the part it refers to. Compare what the passage says with what the answer says. Then ask:

• "What's the evidence that this answer is guilty of being wrong?"
• "Can I point to a specific word or phrase that doesn't match the text?"
• “Is there anything in this answer I cannot support with the passage?”

If the question tells you to assume a finding is true, judge whether it supports or weakens the claim; you do not need to prove the finding from the passage. For data questions, check both whether the choice describes the data accurately and whether those data answer the question.

A wrong answer may misstate the evidence, add an unsupported claim, or fail to do what the question asks. Identify the specific problem before you eliminate it.

Strong words require strong evidence. If a choice describes the passage using always, never, only, primary, or most important, check that the passage supports a claim that strong.

When You're Stuck Between Two

Stop trying to decide which choice seems “more right”. Instead, check every part of each answer. Is there a word or idea the passage doesn't support? Does the choice actually answer the question? If any part fails, eliminate it.

Practice: Find the Flaws

Think like a prosecutor, not a defense attorney. Your job is not to explain how an answer could work. Look for the exact word or idea that disqualifies it. One flaw is enough.