Struggling with MSS Question Types

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• 6 Likes

  seriously Alum Member

  July 2020 199 karma

  Yes, I also struggle with these! I think the things that help me the most are:

  1. Move from wrong to right. Find answers that are totally unsupported/actively refuted by the text, and eliminate them immediately.
  2. Stick to "provable" language. Strong words like "must" or "always," etc. are hard to prove, and should therefore be red flags.

  Hope this is helpful!
• sydney59 Core Member

  July 2020 66 karma

  Thank you!
• 5 Likes

  FindingSage Alum Member ⭐

  July 2020 2042 karma

  The best advice I heard on MSS was to treat them like a soft must be true question. Look for soft, provable language like “could”, “possibly” “sometimes” as a few examples. In addition to that, avoid answer choices with superlatives like “the best” “the primary way” “the worst way” ect. The correct answers are often boring and and may sometimes even feel like a re statement of something already said. If you are going to drill most strongly supported I would recommend also adding some must be true and must be false questions to the problem set.
• 1 Like

  sydney59 Core Member

  July 2020 66 karma

  @FindingSage said:
  The best advice I heard on MSS was to treat them like a soft must be true question. Look for soft, provable language like “could”, “possibly” “sometimes” as a few examples. In addition to that, avoid answer choices with superlatives like “the best” “the primary way” “the worst way” ect. The correct answers are often boring and and may sometimes even feel like a re statement of something already said. If you are going to drill most strongly supported I would recommend also adding some must be true and must be false questions to the problem set.

  That is super helpful! Thanks!
• 3 Likes

  SaulGoodman Member

  July 2020 111 karma

  My advice is that if you are stuck between two answer choices, always go with the one that is more general ("Some dairy farmers in the Midwest will occasionally use this tool" as opposed to "Dairy farmers must use this tool to succeed")
  Also, remember that sometimes the MSS answer will be supported by only one statement in the stimulus, and that statement could be hidden in the middle. This isn't always the case, but there is a chance that this one particular sentence is the only sentence offering support for the MSS answer choice. So don't get caught up in trying to use the WHOLE stimulus to push out an answer.
• LawHokage Yearly Member

  July 2020 129 karma

  For me I realized that a lot of MSS questions have answer choices that have words that "indicate" some extreme condition you can't really prove. They use common words like "Never", "Cannot", or introduces a new idea that was not stated in the stimulant. MSS are always supported in the text, so I think things like "Is there evidence in the text to support this statement?"