<p>I agree with the points made in the posts above and would just add a few thoughts that might help the OP. </p>
<p>In my opinion, there are four pertinent points related to a fictional essay.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Your essay is being graded based on criteria related to your ability to write. Your grades in history, political science, biology, psychology etc. will be reflected in the subject area tests. Your essay reader is not likely to be proficient in those areas and will not have the time to fact-check your writing. Nor would they want to. The SAT essay graders don’t desire to deal with issues like that for all 1.5 million different essays they’ll read each year, and couldn’t if they did. Experienced essay readers will know there is a strong possibility that your essay evidence is fake, but they are unlikely to make an issue of it.</p></li>
<li><p>What essay readers WILL be looking for is your understanding of the requirements of a good essay. First, they will be looking for your understanding and insight into the issues raised by the essay prompt. Can you analyze those issues? Are your points and sub-points significant and relevant, or are they superficial, obvious and elementary? You can fake the evidence, but you can’t fake the analysis. You have to think to do analysis. This involves two things. The first is logic. Logic is logic. It is objective. (If you haven’t learned it already, you should know that the rules of formal logic are about HOW you think about propositions, not about whether or not those propositions are actually true.) The second is you, your experience and understanding of the world and the different kinds of issues and people in it. Does your awareness extend beyond yourself to the larger world around you? The answer to that will show in your analysis.</p></li>
<li><p>Your analysis leads to your major points and sub-points. Your evidence and explanation of those points come next. Here again, the reader is looking for the quality of your thinking. Are the explanations of your ideas clear and complete? Is your evidence adequate? Again, adequate doesn’t mean factual. It means relevant, significant, tied logically to the conclusions you intended the evidence to support. IF the evidence were true, would it be good evidence, logically presented?</p></li>
<li><p>After the analysis of the issues and the development of your points and evidence, comes the organization, structure and coherence of your writing. Actually, the three elements cited are all aspects of the same thing. They make your writing flow smoothly and logically through your points as the essay proceeds. Introductions, conclusions, transitions, summaries, proportion (the amount of time you spend on each point according to its importance) and unity (everything is related and fits into a single clear idea) are all important here.</p></li>
<li><p>Finally, the reader checks your writing style. Word choice, sentence structure, grammar and usage, and punctuation are all relevant here.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I hope you can see that factual evidence is not really a requirement for executing a high quality essay. The CB and your reader know that, and can evaluate the essay whether the evidence is true or not.</p>
<p>So, what’s the downside to faking evidence? The downside is that experienced people can usually spot it. </p>
<p>Just watch yourself when you fake your evidence. If you over-do it, you are telling the reader you think they are an idiot. Some might take that as an insult. They are trained to be objective, but they might be motivated to take one more look at your essay to see whether or not they overlooked a few too many errors in grammar etc.</p>
<p>Finally, I can ask how you would feel knowing that you had your best ever scores in Math and CR and a writing section that included a great essay with detectably fake evidence?</p>