Today I finished reading your Essay Guide (which was very helpful thank you!). I have a quick question on the body paragraphs of an essay. From my understanding, it seems as if a body paragraph for the SAT includes a mini-thesis, and details germane to the thesis follow. Now I’ve been taught that a general body paragraph structure should be topic sentence, evidence, commentary, evidence commentary. Would you say that, for an SAT essay, this structure should be ignored?

Sounds more to me like those are different ways of saying the same thing! Mini-thesis = topic sentence, etc.