A “great SAT essay” and a “great essay” are not the same thing. Truly great essays take hours or even days to plan, research, and write. The SAT essay can’t take more than 25 minutes. That means you’ve got to write an essay that convinces your grader of your genius in less time than it takes to watch The Simpsons, right? Wrong.

The SAT knows that 25 minutes isn’t enough time for anyone, anywhere, to write a genius essay. Forget genius. Forget about trying to write an essay that changes the world. When the SAT says to you, “Here’s 25 minutes, write an essay,” what they’re saying between the lines is: “Write a standard essay that does exactly what we want.”

To give the SAT what it wants, you need to have a very firm essay-writing strategy in place before you sit down to take the test. You then need to apply that strategy to whatever question the SAT essay poses. In this chapter, we teach you a strategy for writing a great SAT essay that works every time, on any topic. It all starts with fast food.