Cracking Up the SAT: Humor Edition

Is your October SAT date coming around, but you haven’t studied at all? Do you try to study, but instantly get smacked with a pair of 14th-century argumentative essays about why rats are good pets or a math question that asks you to find the square root of 65 without a calculator? Well, you’re in luck! The Stuyvesant Spectator has stolen some top secret questions and strategies from the College Board’s 2069 SAT exam that will surely aid in your preparation!

REEDING

Contrary to popular belief, your best strategy for this section is to not read the passage at all, as it will just distract you from the questions waiting for you. Now, onto some practice questions. No context is needed to answer these questions, but the source text can be found on page 36 of The Spectator, Volume 112, Issue 16.

As used in line 69, “cope” most nearly means…

deal with.

mad cuz bad.

copium.

Co-Ed Physical Education.

Answer: The answer to this type of question is rarely the most common definition, so you can eliminate (A). As far as I’m concerned, copium is a substance that the SAT probably shouldn’t promote. (D) can also be eliminated because while “Co-Ed Physical Education” can be abbreviated to “cope,” it can also be abbreviated to “Co-Ed People Eating.” Avoid unclear answer choices on the SAT. Thus, through the process of elimination, the correct answer is (B). Onward!

The situation in lines 12-13 (“the formation of a cult dedicated to repeatedly whacking themselves on the head with glowsticks”) is most analogous to which of the following?

People putting up posters on the sixth floor, promising free food for anyone who joins their club (binding).

A kid gets dragged off the street and is repeatedly bullied into joining a gang of Tetris nerds.

A group of YouTubers decide that it would be a funny idea to play Valorant.

A student is exhausted by their workload and decides to buy coffee for the first time. It does not end well.

Answer: The author (me) clearly has a positive opinion of Flow. Eliminate (A), (B), (C), and (D) because they do not match the positive opinion. Leave the question blank, it’s free points!

WRITEING/GRAMMER

While the writing portion of the SAT will no longer test your knowledge of obscure and needlessly complicated words, don’t throw out your piles of flashcards just yet! Studies have shown that your head is 56 percent clearer after you rip up some flashcards during the SAT test, and who knows—you might even find the answer hidden among these tattered scraps of paper!

Subways are so stupid, they’re always late!

NO CHANGE

[REDACTED] pieces of [REDACTED] [REDACTED]

like the average stuy student

so stoopid

Answer: (A) contains a misspelled word, so it can be eliminated—the correct spelling is ‘stoopid.’ (B) can be eliminated because it is too long and hides too much information. (C) makes an accurate comparison between Stuy students and always being late. Therefore, it is more precise than (D) and is the correct answer.

Which of the following provides the most accurate interpretation of the graph (not shown)?

Brooklyn Tech is objectively worse than Stuyvesant.

Stuyvesant is objectively worse than Brooklyn Tech.

Bronx Science is better than both Brooklyn Tech and Stuyvesant.

Specialized high schools are a lost cause; PS 12678 is the real deal!

Answer: Since the graph is not shown, go with the answer that is most likely to be correct. (C) is wrong because a total of about 16 people live in the Bronx (including the animals in the Bronx Zoo). (D) might seem tempting after you look at your depressing Intro CS grades, but don’t be fooled! We need to get the facts straight—there aren’t 12,678 public schools in New York City, so (D) can be safely eliminated. That leaves (A) and (B). I mean, come on. What do you think is the correct answer? It’s obviously (B).

METH

Before you start this section, you should throw your calculator away. It won’t be useful. Besides, when your parents find out that you even touched a calculator, they’ll be sure to make you regret your existence. Or worse yet, they’ll go for the far more traumatic emotional damage, which I won’t provide examples of here.

Marry has 17 Genshin wishes. She spends 19 of them and still fails to get a five-star character. How much money did she steal from her parents’ wallets?

How the [REDACTED] does she know how to use credit cards?

$0—her parents keep all their money in the bank after she stole $100 for a limited edition skin.

Clearly, she didn’t know what the pity system is, or she would’ve gotten it sooner smh.

Entirely too much!

Answer: No cursing! Eliminate (A). (B) is incorrect because while stealing money for useless items is implied from the fact that they play Genshin, it is not explicitly stated in the question and can be eliminated. (C) is incorrect because the pity system only increases the chances of getting one five-star character, not the featured five-star character. Chances are that Marry has wasted enough time on the game to get all but a few five-star characters, which means that the pity system won’t be helping her here! (Please note that I am by no means an expert on Genshin mechanics. If you take my word on this, you probably deserve whatever happens to you.) (D) is half right, because even though we do know that she stole a lot of money, we aren’t given a definition for “too much.” The correct answer is (D/2).

Erica is trying to “find” her friend Ryan for unknown reasons. She has $80 of lunch money, and a choice of buying plastic knives for $12 or buying plastic forks for $1 each. Which expression represents the total number of times that Ryan will have to escape?

0—She spent all her money getting scammed by the school vending machines.

1—Due to Erica’s vastly greater “sneak” skill from being as short as everyone else (and thus, a greater ability to blend into the crowd), she will be able to sneak-attack and capture him easily.

1—Due to Ryan’s vastly greater “sight” skill from having an elevated view of his environment, he will be able to spot the incoming menace and disarm her.

1(knife) + 4(fork), because a knife only has one blade whereas a fork has four prongs.

Answer: (A) seems quite realistic—it seems that Stuy students never learn from their repeated blunders at the cafeteria vending machines. Maybe they’re hoping that one day it’ll dispense two bags of chips. Sorry to burst your bubble if you’re one of these people, but it ain’t gonna happen. (B) is incorrect because it inaccurately portrays the power dynamic that exists between Ryan and Erica. While Erica does have a heightened sneak ability, it is not enough to offset Ryan’s sight bonus. (C) portrays Ryan as having a strategic advantage, so keep it. (D) is incorrect because while a fork does have four prongs, those prongs are much easier to snap off than the blade of a knife. All you need to break a plastic fork is some decently solidified cafeteria food, like frozen fruit cups or pizza! At this point, only (A) and (C) are left, so we can flip a die to determine which one is correct (die not included).

The average Stuy student’s grades can be represented using the equation y = 40 - 10g, where h is the number of hours spent cramming per night and g is the number of hours spent procrastinating per night. How many hours should a student cram per night to get the best grades?

Bro there’s not even an h in the equation?

Now may I ask why the graph has a maximum of 40?

What is this, the AMC 6?? This is too hard!

But my average is above 40…

Answer: The question asks what value of h will yield the highest value for y. (B) is incorrect because the answer to that question is fairly obvious—Stuy students are too sleep-deprived to do any better. (A) and (C) are incorrect because you should not complain on the test. Otherwise, they will invalidate your score. (D) is incorrect because nobody cares about your 105 that you got in AP Euro. This is one of the rare questions in which the answer is the question itself. Go ahead and select (7)!

A recent survey was conducted among the 11th grade students at Stuy, and found that 12 percent of the students were alive. Is this survey an accurate representation of the Stuyvesant student body?

Yes, because it is common knowledge that all Stuy students are dead inside.

No—the actual percentage is 100 percent, because everyone has been dead at least twice in their life: once when they were rejected by their childhood crush and once when they got into Stuy.

Yes, because the Humor Department forcibly removed all of the News writers for trying to steal their spotlight, thus resulting in some juniors dying more than once.

Disagree with (C), because Humor writers would never condone violence.

Answer: The correct answer is yes, so (D) can be eliminated immediately. (A) is correct because being a freshman is easily the leading cause for a second death. The school is composed of about 25 percent freshmen, so 12 percent is well within that range. (B) may seem tempting after your traumatizing elementary and middle school experiences, but you have to remember that the people at Stuy are antisocial, and many of them didn’t have a childhood crush to get rejected by! (C) is also correct because as part of the Humor department’s never-ending quest to rule over The Spectator with an iron fist, we were forced to overthrow the current government, also known as News. Watch out, Opinions—we’re coming for you next! The correct answer is (AC), or (Air Conditioning).

So, how did you do? Don’t worry if you got a low score! As you work through more and more practice problems, you will see your brain cell count steadily decrease and your brain slowly turn to mush. But that’s part of the SAT prep process, and you should embrace it! You wouldn’t want to be left as the only senior with brain cells, would you? Additional practice problems may be found at the following link: https://tinyurl.com/3c2tcprw.