How? On the May SAT I only missed ONE multiple choice question on writing, but I got a 7 on my essay, causing my score to drop down to a 730.
Perhaps I can help, even though if you saw my score you would laugh, I killed the essay. Ended up getting an 11, if I were to give any one piece of advice, it would be to spend absolutely no time dabbling. Once you see your prompt, think of the best topic you can and run with it. I cracked out almost a full two pages with 5 minutes to spare, mostly because I just tend to write fast. Make sure to write concisely and capture all of your points, vary syntax and use broad diction, they eat that shit up. Make connections between your points and work especially hard on the conclusion, I’m almost positive thats where I lost the one point from getting a 12. Other than that, read much, read often, and write about what you read, sounds tedious, but it really does help
I only had two points or body paragraphs in my essay, and I wrote about school and Martin Luther King, two of the most hackneyed examples in SAT essays. Could that have been a factor in my low score? But the fact is, I knew beforehand that I should use more varied examples, but since you only get 25 minutes to write the freakin essay and I couldn’t deal with the time constraint, I just wrote whatever came to my mind first, and when I left the testing room, I remembered that I messed up.
Also I don’t really consider myself a bad writer, as I was AFAIK the only person to get a 9- on an AP Lang-esque timed writing this year in 10th Honors Literature.
I suppose the cliché topics like those could’ve been a factor, I actually know two others who wrote about school and both of them got 8s. I don’t think it could’ve been the sole factor though, perhaps more content if possible, I ended up having 4 body paragraphs, but I just tend to write really fast, whatever the case may be, try to lengthen your essay next time, and use examples that aren’t too cliché. Best of luck
Thanks fam