So how obsessive do you have to be about filling in the circles? As it turns
out, optical scanning machines are far more advanced than anyone could have
possibly imagined. Advances mandated by Congress after the 2000 Florida
election fiasco have created machines capable of reading people’s minds before
they even select an answer. One such machine narrowly missed being elected
president of Bolivia. The machines used to grade SATs employ a similar
technology. They scan through your answers and search for a pattern—for
instance, if you decide to fill in only the left half of every circle, the machine
will recognize this pattern and realize that it is your way of marking an answer.
As long as you are consistent, you could draw a phallic picture in every little
circle and the machine would not give it a second thought. Still, doing so
probably isn’t time efficient, so we wouldn’t recommend it.
Whatever you do, avoid the following time-wasting methods of high school
students who are not familiar with our groundbreaking research:
Vertical Lines MethodHorizontal Lines MethodOut-to-In Circle MethodArtist Cross-Hatching MethodUnfocused Method