How To Get A Great Score On The College SAT Passage Based Reading Section

What's the secret to getting a great score on the SAT passage-based reading section?

You want to the read the passage quickly but answer the questions slowly. Now obviously answering the questions slowly doesn't mean filling in the ovals on the answer sheet very, very slowly. It actually means going back and rereading the important parts of the paragraph. In other words, when you get a question you want to read the question stem itself very carefully. Then you want to go back into the passage and find the section that deals with question. Then you want to read that section again carefully and in detail and basically answer the question to yourself first. Then you want to look at the answer choices and then find the choice that's basically a paraphrase of the information you found in the passage. If you can't find the right answer you want to aggressively get rid of bad answers. You want to eliminate any answer choice that's not mentioned in the passage. You want to eliminate any answer choice that contradicts what's mentioned in the passage. I think you also want to eliminate any answer choice that's to extreme. There's never going to be anything extremely negative on this test. So if one of the answer choices is incredibly hostile it's just not going to be the right answer. There are lots of ways to eliminate bad answer choices and if you can get rid one or two I would suggest taking a guess and moving on to the next question.