Aggressive Elimination: How to score higher

Aggressive elimination is a way of thinking about process of elimination and multiple choice tests. The goal with any elimination method is to know what you are looking for and how to find it. Today, we are going to identify the major causes of wrong answers and a solution you might not have heard before. It’s called aggressive elimination. It’s like process of elimination, as mentioned in all the prep books, but, you know, more aggressive.

Does This Sound Familiar?

You are pretty good about getting it down to two answer choices, but you ALWAYS seem to pick the wrong answer. You think you have the right answer, but you still get the question wrong. You work really hard, do your math, or reading, or grammar, and get a solution that is in the answer choices, only to find out you are wrong. It’s so freakin’ annoying!

I like to teach aggressive elimination in my SAT classes and pretty much without fail will have students telling me that they always get it down to two and always pick the wrong answer.

Other times, students get the right answer for the wrong question. For example, if you see a problem like this:

If the three interior angles of a triangle are x, 2x, and 3y, what is x in terms of y?

Before students even start to attempt this problem, they flip out, run away, or otherwise find an excuse to avoid dealing with it. Are you one of those people?

Do you see difficult questions and either immediately draw a triangle or immediately say, “Nope. Not a chance. Cannot and will not do this.”

If so, it’s because you are missing a key point. Let me explain.

You are Asking The Wrong Questions

I know you are smart. But sometimes, you are a little too smart. In that, I mean you do not always answer the correct questions. It’s because you refuse to use an aggressive elimination strategy.

How can that be?

Well, it’s pretty simple, really. The SAT answer choices are not random. That would be silly. Instead, each answer choice is the correct answer to the wrong question. And once you can start to focus on WHAT that wrong question is, you’ll be able to recognize wrong-question patterns throughout the test.

The SAT does not have to be hard, but it is tricky. And the trickiness almost exclusively comes from misunderstood questions.

The best way to overcome picking wrong answers, and thus, increasing your score, is to pursue aggressive elimination throughout the test.

Aggressive Elimination Takes The POE and Hulk-Smashes It!

Aggressive elimination is like the process of elimination techniques your text books talk abouts.

That means, in essence, that I want you to be even more aggressive about figuring out why you are eliminating answer choices. If you take the time to understand why a question is wrong, you’ll start to figure out SAT patterns. The solution to your “I always pick the wrong answer” problem is to understand what makes wrong answers wrong. That means, ultimately, that your new goal is to ignore right answers and instead focus on wrong answers.

That might sound counter-intuitive, but let me explain. You know that 80% of the answer choices on the SAT are wrong, right?

And you know that 20% of the answer choices on the SAT are right, right?

And you know that it’s easier to hit in the 80% than in the 20%, right?

So, You should focus your efforts on finding wrong answers. By shifting your focus to wrong answers, two things will happen:

1. 1) You will become focused on crossing answers out, thus increasing your % correct because you know for a fact that the answer is right, and
2. 2) You will start to recognize patterns in wrong answers, thus creating anchors in my massive brain that ensures right answers moving forward.

Those SAT tricksters cannot keep owning you.

Great, But How Do I Use Aggressive Elimination?

As is the case with most things in life, it’s more effective to show instead of tell, so please watch this short video breaking down the process.

Have you noticed any “wrong answer” patterns? Leave your observations in the comments so we can compile an exhaustive “pattern” list and help many students.