You can spend a lot of time trying to absorb all of the information in a word problem on the Math section of the SAT, but if you don't have a way to organize all that information from the beginning, you'll quickly lose track and might get overwhelmed. To cut the information down to the essentials, start at the end. Identify the question, and then as precisely as you can, determine what information you would need in order to answer that question. If that information isn't given to you directly, how will you get it?