4.
A) NO CHANGE
B) Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
C) Harvard, Yale, and, Princeton.
D) Harvard Yale and Princeton.Here’s How to Crack It
First, check what’s changing in the answer choices. It looks like the commas in this list are changing.
Because there’s not any obvious STOP or HALF-STOP punctuation, the Vertical Line Test won’t do us
much good.
Then, it will help to know that the rule on the SAT is to place a comma after every item in a series. Think
of it this way. There’s a potential misunderstanding in this sentence:
I went to the park with my parents, my cat Violet and my dog Stuart.Without a comma, it sure sounds like this guy has some interesting parents. If there’s no comma, how do
we know that this sentence isn’t supposed to say his parents are my cat Violet and my dog Stuart? The
only way to remove the ambiguity would be to add a comma like this:
I went to the park with my parents, my cat Violet, and my dog Stuart.Keep that in mind as we try to crack number 4. In this problem, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton form a list,
so they should be set off by commas as they are in (B).
Let’s try another.
5 Jonah, everyone seemed fairly certain, was going to get into one of those schools.5.
A) NO CHANGE
B) Jonah everyone seemed fairly certain
C) Jonah, everyone seemed fairly certain
D) Jonah everyone seemed fairly certain,Here’s How to Crack It
First, check what’s changing in the answer choices. Just commas. And those commas seem to be circling
around the words everyone seemed fairly certain. When you’ve got a few commas circling around a
word, phrase, or clause like this, the question is usually testing necessary vs. unnecessary information.