<p>I'm very interested in Columbia and will most likely be applying come fall, so I was just wondering if Columbia uses the essay from the SAT I when analyzing an applicant. After some research, I found that some schools don't use it at all, some use it for admissions, and some use it to determine the authenticity of personal statements.</p>
<p>I got 80/80 on the MC of the writing section, but scored a whopping 8 on my essay. Was a very off day.</p>
<p>I'm also a bit worried that admissions officers will think my 8 is incongruous with the quality of my supplemental essays, and therefore get suspicious about their validity.</p>
<p>No, 8/80 is a 770, which is more than enough (got the same score).</p>
<p>I’m worried about this too. My essay is atrocious. My grades aren’t great and a lot is riding on my SAT scores here, so I’m worried they will see my essay and think that the high score is fluke. Not talking about Columbia specifically here.</p>
<p>my grades are terrible and i was counting on my sat scores too, my writing score was a 7 (i nearly died…writing is my STRONG point!!).
i’m not a urm or 1st gen college goer either, i’m asian (not math/science inclined AT ALL unfortunately).</p>
<p>so i guess you can never tell lol
i think a good application essay and useful ec’s (mine was music) will be really helpful. i’m pretty sure those were the only reasons they took me, since the admissions officer personally wrote me a note saying so…</p>
<p>seriously, don’t worry. how well you write your application essay will matter WAYYYYY more than your sat essay writing score. the sat essay is a joke. it’s super formulaic. before i took it, i basically practiced doing the following, over and over:</p>
<p>come up with a stance on the question (yes or no). 15 seconds.
think up 3 supporting examples, each one from a different category of knowledge (eg science, art, history, sports, etc). 5 minutes.
write a thesis statement. 1-2 minutes.
make a quick outline. 2 minutes.
write the thing. 15 minutes. done.</p>
<p>i got an easy 12, despite writing the least inspired 5-paragraph essay in my life. the prompt was something like ‘is loyalty good’ and i said yes, because 1) lance armstrong’s teammates were loyal to him which helped him win, 2) benedict arnold was not loyal and he was bad, and 3) a ‘chinese proverb’ about loyalty that i actually made up. seriously, it was an idiotically uninteresting essay, from an actual writing standpoint. did it have flair? no. was it captivating? no. but did it meet the rubric’s criteria? yes. </p>
<p>the writing score really tells you very little about someone’s actual writing ability, and admissions officers are familiar with the sat enough to understand this. this is why i say don’t worry too much. write a killer essay with substance, style, and passion for your actual application, and that’ll matter a hundred times more than getting an 8 on your SAT essay score (which isn’t even that bad).</p>