ALP EXAM for Columbia GS

Got accepted to Columbia GS and have to travel all the way to NY from LA to take the ALP exam. Did anyone take that exam?How should I prepare for it? I’ve never taken an essay test so I’m a little scared.

I’m taking it on the 24 and what some people that took it recommended me is to transcribe an article from The Economist, New York Times or any grammatically reliable source(The person got a 10 out of 10) Mainly because since we often do essays on computers (I’m a little dependable of Grammarly) we are not that used typing them and to help with any grammatical mistakes or worst case scenario you can always double check the reading they are going to give us or find any synonym if you are in doubt about the word (Of course with cautious seeing as the exam is 2 hours long).

I’ve been doing that method for a couple of months every day (I set up an alarm at a random free time with random articles so that It became second nature not only for the exam but for the lit courses) and it has helped me a lot (My handwriting is not the best but it has improved and since you don’t know what will be the subject of the article, from Politics to Chemistry, it is always interesting.

Regarding the Exam itself, it is an old school pencil based exam and the main advice is to keep it simple, they are testing how we can handle academic writing so having the basic concept of an essay structure (Introduction to the thesis, arguments, and conclusion) is a good starting point, of course, there are a lot more of ways but for me this is the simple one.

Hope this helps and good luck in the ALP!!!