<p>
[quote]
In a recent article in the New York Times, an MIT professor Les Perelman was able to plot essay length versus essay score on the new SAT. The correlation found between them was strikingly high. He argued that he was able to hold up an essay just far enough away to be illegible, and guess what the score of the essay was from the length and shape of it. He was correct 90% of the time.
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I also posted this on the SAT forum. Although this is about the SAT essay in particular, it's starting to seem very likely that this is also true for the ACT essay too. (Perhaps both tests send the essays to be scored by the same grading company?)</p>
<p>Essentially, what this seems to suggest is that essay length is by far the predominant factor in essay scores. Should this be taken to mean that the essay graders care little about anything other than length of the essay? Or should this be construed as meaning that those who have the fastest hand writing also happen to be the best at composing excellent essays?</p>
<p>I vaguely remember reading that article as well. Yes, it's true that length is probably the most important thing when it comes to the essay. Just as with the rest of the ACT, they are most concerned with speed.</p>
<p>With this knowledge, you should hopefully be able to conquer the dreaded essay. I did, and I got an 11 by simply writing a long, formulaic essay.</p>
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[quote]
Correlation is not causation, but it DOES show a relationship.
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Correlation does NOT show a relationship.
In this case, of course there's a relationship: On this type of thing, the better you are at writing, the more you will write; and the more you write, the better your essay will most likely be. Many things that make for a bad essay--lack of transitions, failure to explain assertions or the connections between them, cursory treatment of the topic, absence of introduction or conclusion--are very likely to make it shorter. Often shorter is better, sure; but when you have so little time, it's hard to write too much.</p>
<p>Correlation does NOT show a relationship? Where do you get this idea from? We spent an entire quarter in statistics going over how correlation is not causation, but it shows a relationship.</p>
<p>I suppose correlation IS in itself a relationship, but it does not by itself indicate any relationship beyond itself--the kind of meaningful relationship that would be worth mentioning. Just because two things are highly correlated does not mean that they are related except by coincidence.</p>
[quote]
He was stunned by how complete the correlation was between length and score. "I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one," he said. "If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you'd be right over 90 percent of the time." The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade.
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</p>
<p>
[quote]
How to prepare for such an essay? "I would advise writing as long as possible," said Dr. Perelman, "and include lots of facts, even if they're made up." This, of course, is not what he teaches his M.I.T. students. "It's exactly what we don't want to teach our kids," he said.
<p>I should also mention that I received my June ACT essay scores in the mail today. A brief summary compared to my April ACT essay:</p>
<p>April: Planned out ahead and wrote as I would for any school essay, making sure everything fit nicely together and was in proper essay form, very cohesive. I was confident with the essay, but due to the pre-planning and my slow handwriting, I only finished with a little over 1 page. Score given: 5/12, 4% percentile. Considering that i've always gotten straight A's in English and on school essays, I found this odd to say the least - especially in contrast to my 36 English ACT score.</p>
<p>June: Learning from my mistake on the April essay, I did no pre-planning and simply wrote my head off. It was sloppy and very disorganized as essays go for me, and I was not at all confident with it. Due to no pre-planning though, I managed to double the length of the essay to 2 solid pages compared to my first. Score given: 8/12, 70% percentile.</p>
<p>This would seem to support my theory even more that length is basically all the matters to the ACT essay graders, putting anyone who is a slow writer or not familiar with the odd grading habits of the essay graders at a severe disadvantage. A jump from the 4% percentile to 70% percentile when nothing was changed in tactics other than the amount written is interesting...</p>
<p>mo: The essay graders can't read your "pre-"planning. And when you have to do essay tests in college--which will be more difficult to finish in the allotted time, believe me--your planning won't count then, either.</p>
<p>The fact that score is highly correlated with length should be neither surprising nor concerning. If you are a bad writer, you will probably either stop writing early or be too slow to get much on paper. If you are a good writer, you need to fill a few pages to demonstrate that. A relatively short essay among essays that are already necessarily short is highly likely to be missing essential elements of a good essay. A complete essay with a lot of mistakes is better than a perfect partial essay.</p>
<p>I don't believe that a truly bad essay is going to get a good score no matter how long it is, and there are many good, short essays that get good scores.</p>
<p>A couple notes on the article: First of all, this guy's findings were based on a very small set of SAMPLE essays--which I believe are written by the College Board as examples of essays at each score point--not real essays with real scores.</p>
<p>Second, I can't believe they fault the College Board for their (dubious) claim that the way the essay is scored pushes schools to teach "formulaic" and otherwise poor writing habits; any educator should be appalled by the idea that schools would betray their students by teaching bad writing skills in order to crack a writing test--even if that sort of thing is commonplace.</p>
<p>And one more thing:
[quote]
Dr. Perelman contacted the College Board and was surprised to learn that on the new SAT essay, students are not penalized for incorrect facts.
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The essay test isn't about recalling facts--it's about writing. You don't have access to any reference materials like you normally would for an essay written in school, so of course they don't penalize you for factual errors.</p>
<p>Mrs Ferguson: I'm not going to argue about this any further after this post. I have no real facts or studies to back up my argument - merely experiences from others and myself that seem to support it and the article mentioned above which seems to also. You have no facts or experiences to cite on the matter period, rather than wishful thinking... or do you? I would love to be proven wrong by some facts if you have them.</p>
<p>I've put my case on the table. You say that the essay is about writing, and yes, it is. But if facts in the essay don't matter, by your own and the graders' admissions, then that goes to say that content also matters very little. And when essay form, structure, and style also do not matter, as evidenced by my own experience, tell me then: what is primarily left for the essay to be graded on? The answer is simple: length.</p>
<p>I'm pleased with my ACT composite scores as well as my acceptable essay score gotten by "playing the system" so to speak, so I will never be taking the test again. For those who plan to take the ACT essay in the future, you can decide for yourselves which approach to take. I'm just offering advice in light of my own experience with the essay.</p>
<p>This is the biggest bullcrap I have ever heard.</p>
<p>Technically, if I wrote 3 pages of "**** you" I should get a 12?</p>
<p>People with longer essays tend to get better grades because they elaborated more on the topic with more information and thus further developed a better essay.</p>
<p>Thus they get higher grades due to a simply more elaborate and logical essay .... Not because they wrote more.</p>
<p>I wrote 1.5 pages on fast food BTW and got a 12.</p>