<p>I'm taking the November 2nd SAT, and I've got to say that the essay is the SAT topic that I have prepared for the least and I'm quite worried about it. I'm only getting around to working on the essay part now, and I was hoping somebody could let me know how I'm doing on the one that I've just done, and score it as well. Feel free to openly criticize it, I think honest feedback will really help. </p>
<p>Topic: "Is memory central to our progress?"</p>
<p>Memory is central to the progress of living things because memory is a key part of remembering our past experiences, and living beings learn from past experiences. Several examples from literature and world history clearly illustrate that memory is necessary for creatures to learn and grow.</p>
<p>During the first World War, several nations fought at a global level as a race to conquer more territories and gain more power. The war ended by the intervention of the United Sates, and many peace treaties were then formulated to check that imperialistic notions didn't rise again. Along with this, it was recognized that a peace keeping deliberative body would be required to maintain peace throughout the world. This led to the formation of the League of Nations, which was not a strong organization and could not act in accordance with its goal. Eventually, hostility between nations emerged again, and the differences in governance between capitalist and communist countries led to the second World War. This war ended by the releasing of two nuclear bombs on Japan by the United Sates, which led to major physical and economic destruction. Understanding the devastation that war could bring, the leaders of the winning nations formed another more sturdy, stable peace keeping organization called the United Nations Organization. This body is still functioning smoothly today.</p>
<p>Your intro is pretty good, but you need a lot more work to support your thesis. Your example in the second paragraph is long and probably makes a point, but its not clear that the point is that memory is central to progress. Stay much more focused. Also, add in at least one more example and end with a strong conclusion which refers to your thesis and how the examples support it. Finally, make sure that you come close to filling up the two pages on the answer sheet.</p>
<p>I think there are different opinions on the benefits of a template. But either way, you need to be more cognizant of the appropriate structure and focus necessary to get a high score. I agree with Jeremy that it would be useful to rewrite and resubmit.</p>
<p>Woops I don’t think the whole thing submitted the first time I posted this. My bad. Here’s the whole thing:</p>
<p>Memory is central to the progress of living things because memory is a key part of remembering our past experiences, and living beings learn from past experiences. Several examples from literature and world history clearly illustrate that memory is necessary for humans to learn and grow.</p>
<p>During the first World War, several nations fought at a global level as a race to conquer more territories and gain more power. The war ended by the intervention of the United Sates, and many peace treaties were then formulated to check that imperialistic notions didn’t rise again. Along with this, it was recognized that a peace keeping deliberative body would be required to maintain peace throughout the world. This led to the formation of the League of Nations, which was not a strong organization and could not act in accordance with its goal. Eventually, hostility between nations emerged again, and the differences in governance between capitalist and communist countries led to the second World War. This war ended by the releasing of two nuclear bombs on Japan by the United Sates, which led to major physical and economic destruction. Understanding the devastation that war could bring, the leaders of the winning nations formed another more sturdy, stable peace keeping organization called the United Nations Organization. This body is still functioning smoothly today, and proved to be useful when it prevented the Cold War between the United States and the USSR from turning into a full-fledged battle.</p>
<p>Just as the warring nations of the world learnt from their previous mistakes and past experiences to improve future conditions by forming the UNO, Victor Frankenstein from the book “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley also portrays how memory can lead to progress. In the novel, Frankenstein ( a mad scientist ) creates a monster that kills his wife, Elizabeth Levenza, his younger brother, his younger sister, and his best friend. When the monster begs Frankenstein to create another monster as a companion for the existing one, Frankenstein refuses because he knows creating another one will only mean more terror and destruction.</p>
<p>As a careful analysis of the World Wars and “Frankenstein”, I believe memory is indeed central to the progress of man-kind. Without memory, the world would constantly be remaking the mistakes of its past and people would never evolve. By using our power of memory, we as human beings can learn and progress infinitely to become the best version of our species that we can possibly be.</p>
<p>And yes I did use a template to write this. Do you guys think that the template actually helps people score higher? Or do you guys find that writing without one is more useful?</p>
<p>I think the template can be helpful. However, you need to focus more on providing evidence for your thesis. There is no clear direct evidence in your first example, and the evidence in your second example does not seem to me to really directly address memory - it seems to me to be more learning from your mistakes. Try to find some high scoring essays and use them to help understand how the examples should better support the thesis. That’s the area which will most help you improve.</p>
<p>Templates are like memorizing pick-up lines. People that need to memorize pickup lines are horrible messes to start with so of course the result is going to be a train wreck. </p>
<p>The only people who take the advice to sprinkle in a helping of SAT vocabulary are the last people who should be using SAT vocabulary. </p>
<p>And if you cant write a decent essay to start with should you spend you time memorizing a template or learning to write at least 4 decent paragraphs? </p>
<p>My opinion is the only template you should use is TREES.</p>
<p>I agree that great writers don’t need templates and that templates are not usually helpful for writing in the real world. But many people on this site have claimed to have benefited significantly from templates that take into account SAT Essay grading protocol. I take those people at their word.</p>
<p>Argy, you seem to offer great advice, but I doubt your approach is the only one that can work.</p>
<p>Most people here are already gifted students. They’re gonna be earning double-digit scores no matter what. In other words, such a kid earns a high score in spite of the template, not because of it.</p>
<p>Jeremy - you seem very sure of yourself on this issue. You might benefit from being more openminded about it, especially since its very hard to prove a negative.</p>
<p>I concur about the people here, but many of those gifted people have attributed high essay scores to the use of templates. As I said, I take them at their word.</p>
<p>Anyway, I’ve said all I choose to on this topic and am happy to agree to disagree.</p>
<p>Definitely not. But my inclination is to think most cases the people who could use the advice correctly are the ones who dont need it, and the ones who take the advice are the ones who are most likely to be harmed by it. </p>
<p>For instance, most of the essays that are 2’s that we see here are ones that ‘benefited’ from canned advice. Vocabulary used completely out of context, elaborate memorized transitions and canned examples (Frederick Douglas anyone?) shoehorned in without regard to the prompt.</p>
<p>Most of the people posting are Juniors or Seniors. Call me naive, but I have to believe that by that point in high school they have written a lot of papers and <em>must</em> have some idea how to put together 4 paragraphs. Left to their own devices I’d like to believe that they’d produce a better essay. </p>
<p>Even if you arent a native English speaker you still know how to construct a logical argument in your own language. Use that knowledge. You’ve read books in your school- you dont need to use Anne Frank or Steve Jobs as examples. </p>
<p>Occasionally you see people who want to use a fresh format to the essay instead of TREES and they do well. But those are usually the AP English kids who are writing an essay a week anyway. If you are someone who didnt know where to start in the first place, trying to ‘game’ the grader by giving them something fresh is an Hail Mary that is not likely to work out.</p>
<p>The exceptions are kids who are being taught rigid formats in high school.</p>
<p>As we know, an essay must be organized and coherent. However, I’ve fought many a fight with teachers who insist on “topic sentence-for example-blah-blah-in addition” etc.</p>
<p>You guys bring up really good points that are starting to make me wonder whether I would be able to write a better essay without using the detailed template that I’ve been using. As long as I include a couple of examples that are relevant to the topic given, I should be fine if I deviate from the template a bit, right? What is it that essay examiners look for in particular?</p>
<p>They are looking for a well-reasoned essay with relevant examples that can be constructed in 25 minutes. That is your goal. </p>
<p>Try it both ways and see which allows you to best produce an essay quickly. I agree with most of what satman says as advice (esp RELATE TO YOUR THESIS). My specific objection is when the student’s only take away for preparing for the essay is to make up examples.</p>