Two answer choices both seem right on the SAT® — how do I choose?
Stop trying to prove that your favourite is right. Look for the one word that makes the other one wrong. On the SAT, exactly one choice is fully supported; the second-best choice almost always fails on a single word.
Why you get stuck
When two options survive your first pass, the natural move is to reread them and ask which one you like more. That turns the decision into a matter of taste, and taste changes with time pressure. The test is written so that the second-best option is attractive: it shares most of its content with the correct one. What separates them is usually small and precise — a verb, a quantifier, a scope — and you only find it if you look for it.
One example
The text says that a small study of one school found that students who slept more tended to have higher test scores.
Choice B: “The study suggests a relationship between sleep and test scores.”
Choice C: “The study proves that more sleep improves test scores.”
Both mention sleep, scores and the study. Both feel like a summary. But C says proves and improves: it claims certainty and a cause. The text described one small study and a tendency. The words “proves” and “improves” are the ones that break C. B only claims what the text supports: a relationship, suggested.
The procedure
When two choices remain, do this every time:
- Put them side by side and find the words that are different. Ignore what they share.
- For each difference, ask: does the text support this exact word? Not the idea — the word.
- The choice with an unsupported word is gone, even if everything else in it is perfect. One wrong word is enough.
The words that break choices most often are absolute ones (always, never, only, proves, all), causal ones (causes, leads to, because) and scope changes (from “some students” to “students”, from “one region” to “the country”).
What not to do
Don’t choose the longer option because it seems more complete, and don’t choose the one that repeats more words from the text. Both habits favour the trap. And don’t go back and forth more than once: if the procedure doesn’t decide it in thirty seconds, mark the question, choose, and return at the end with fresh eyes.
With practice the procedure becomes fast. Most students who use it for two weeks stop seeing “two right answers” at all: they start noticing the breaking word on the first read, before the doubt has time to appear.
This happens to a lot of people. What you don't know yet is whether it happens to you, and with which one. Sixteen questions will tell you.
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