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 Nov 03, 2021
Avoidable SAT Mistakes- Not Checking All 4 Choices

Check your choices—avoid mistakes by giving every answer a chance!

We understand that when you take your SAT, time is of the essence! This means you can’t dwell on each question too long, or you risk not getting through the entire test in time. However, you also don’t want to commit to an answer too early even if you feel supremely confident that the first answer you look at seems good. This is especially important in the Reading and Writing sections of the SAT, and on certain Math questions where you are having to directly evaluate choices. It is always a good idea to double-check the rest of the answer choices to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

Let’s say you are working on a question:

You check out answer “A”, and that one doesn’t look good, so you mark it off. You look at answer “B” and it immediately jumps out as the correct answer. The temptation will be to select that answer and move on to the next question, but we urge you to pause for just a moment and check answers “C” and “D”. You might find that those two answers are incorrect and can then be extra confident in choosing answer “B”. However, perhaps answer “D” is also a viable option, and it might even be a better option than answer “B”. Maybe you misread something about answer “B” the first time, or you might find that answer “D” is just really the best answer.

By looking at each answer choice and not just going with the first option that seems good, you can avoid lots of silly mistakes. There will still need to be a balance between evaluating each answer choice and making sure you are leaving enough time to adequately work through each question. The beauty of this tip, though, is that you don’t need to heavily investigate each answer choice, but rather give each choice a look to verify that you have picked the soundest answer before you move forward to your next question.