<p>Hi, my SAT is in one week and I am doing some final preparation by working on my essay(25 minutes timed). I am trying to get a 12/12 (two 6/6's) and was wondering if anyone could grade my essay. I feel like my examples do not address the prompt directly enough so I was wondering what your guys's opinions were? Also, are my examples too political(They may influence my grader)? Thanks.</p>
<p>PROMPT: "It seems that we are always ready to justify our own actions and overlook our own errors. Why, then, are we so unwilling to judge others in the same way? We tend to hold others to very high, even unrealistic standards, expecting them to be always right, always honest, or always conscientious. All of us have personal flaws and shortcomings that we are quite willing to excuse. Surely we should be more willing to excuse such shortcomings in others."</p>
<p>ESSAY:</p>
<pre><code> As history shows, individuals have a known tendency to overlook their personal shortcomings while demanding others to flawlessly abide by unrealistic standards. Although this self-centered behavior is a natural bi-product of our primitive origins and competitiveness that propelled us to become the dominant species on Earth, our race is at the point where we need to advance morally before we advance to far in science and destroy ourselves. Hitler’s actions in WWII and the conflict of the Cold War are both prime examples of how inconsideration towards fellow humans can lead to an enormous loss of blood, and potentially, humanities end.
Hitler’s main reason for going to war was his want to gain “living space” for the German (Aryan) people who he thought were superior to all other races. He viewed minorities such as Jews, and queers as unfit to be human and should be exterminated, fueling the most brutal annihilation of a race to history – the Holocaust. Hitler’s aggressive actions, most notably the three day taking of Poland, started an unstoppable series of events that led to WWII and the loss of over fifty million lives across the globe. This example is relevant because the reason Hitler went to war is because he viewed his race as perfect, with no shortcoming or flaws, while viewing other groups as being an embarrassment to humanity because they did not meet Hitler’s standards of perfection. This shows that if humans are not considerate to others and do not acknowledge their own personal flaws, conflicts will arise and will lead to countless deaths of innocent people.
The Cold War, although nearly deathless, was one of the most tense conflicts in the history of mankind. The cause was simple, two alternate political systems on opposite ends of the globe viewed each other as a threat… without ever having an inkling of being hostile towards each other. During WWI the U.S. and the Soviet Union were allies, but as soon as WWI ended, the two countries rapidly started cutting off relations simply because of a difference in political systems. I am not writing in defense of either communism or democracy, but what is true, is that neither party was willing to admit their flaws while believing in ones superiority over the other. This led to what we now know as the Cold War, a war with no guns, instead replaced with the constant threat of thermo-nuclear war.
When working on the Manhattan Project, Albert Einstein said “ I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but I know that WW IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” I agree with this quote because if humanity does not learn to be accepting of each other, learn its flaws, and take on them with an enthusiastic desire to perfect itself, science will advance faster than we are morally able to use it properly, and will lead to the destruction of our race as a whole.
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