Solve Bullet Point Problems Without Wasting Time

Bullet Point Problems are the problems at the end of the SAT Reading section, and there are often about 3 of them per section, although this will vary from test to test.

Since they are all in the exact same format, it is worthwhile to consider how to optimize our speed and accuracy on these problems.

After analyzing a bunch of them, here's the big takeaway: You usually don't need to read the actual bullet points.

Read the question, and read the answers. At least half the time, that will be enough to confidently get the answer.

Don't take my word for it:

Without reading any of the bullet points, we will skip ahead to the question:

The student wants to identify the setting of Cather's novel My Antonia....

Please note that every bullet-point problem question ends with "Which choice most effectively..." and it's therefore not worth reading.

So in plain English, the question tells us that Cather is the name of an author and we are meant to explain where her book, My Antonia, is set.

Looking through the 4 answer choices the only one that does that is Choice A.

You may argue with me that Choice D also does, but a careful reading of that answer choice shows that while it mentions where the author went to school and that some of her novels are set in Nebraska, it doesn't specifically mention My Antonia, which is what the question asks us to do.

So with only one viable answer choice, we can circle it and move on. No need to ever read the bullet points. There is absolutely no chance that any of the other answers can be right, so there is no point in validating our answer. This is process of elimination to the extreme, and although it may feel uncomfortable at first, you will learn to love it!

I can list many more examples of this occurring, but I'm not here to waste your time - only to help you achieve a top score on the SAT.

Your time would be better spent putting this into practice and committing it to habit.

So here is the strategy laid out:

1. When facing bullet point problems, ready the first sentence of the question and then read each answer, eliminating ones that don't answer the question.

2. If you are left with only 1 answer choice that actually answers the question, click it and never look back

3. If you can only narrow it down to 2 or 3 possible answers (this occurs more often on the harder problems), go back and read the bullet points. It's likely that one or more of the answers are factually inaccurate!