Free SAT Course > Critical Reasoning > Conclusions > Most Strongly Supported

Most Strongly Supported (MSS) SAT questions are similar to Must Be True (MBT) questions. The answer could be the main idea, a secondary conclusion, or a premise.

CHALLENGE: Find Supported Answer Choices

Most Strongly Supported (MSS) questions are focused on finding a strongly supported statement and are easily identifiable. These questions are often not arguments but just a series of premises. Common phrasings:

  • Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the information above?
  • The manager’s statements, if true, most strongly support which one of the following?
  • Which one of the following conclusions is most strongly supported by the information above?
  • Which one of the following is most reasonably supported by the information above?

How to solve

  1. Read and understand the passage: Be very precise in what each sentence means and what it doesn’t mean. Also, try to see how the sentences are inter-related. You can’t really “predict the correct answer choice” before you get there.
  2. Try diagramming the passage.
  3. This is a particularly challenging question because the answer could be any of three things: a main idea, a secondary conclusion, or a premise.  You need to go through the answer choices to get to the bottom of it.
  4. The correct answer sometimes just restates two sentences in the stimulus (the answer might just be a premise).
  5. The wrong choices will have no support or little support. The correct answer choice will have some support. The support isn’t necessarily that strong in many cases. So these questions lend themselves to the process of elimination perhaps more than any other question type. Work down the incorrect choices. What’s left is correct.
  6. Avoid trap choices: wrong answer choices will not be strongly supported by the stimulus.

Video Quiz

Most Strongly Supported

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