The prompt was “Should people make more of an effort to keep things private?”
This is the first practice SAT I took in which I wrote an essay, and I used the write a 12 essay in 10 days guide on CC.
Privacy is a valuable virtue, and people should make an effort to keep personal matters private. Several examples from history and literary works demonstrate the importance of privacy.
As demonstrate by the novel "A Brave New World," sharing everything and anything just convulutes our minds with an unstoppable sea of trivial information. In the novel, so much information is accessible to the public that they become complacent and egotistic with their own ideas. This even occurs today, since the invention of the internet means there's a copious amount of information readily accessible at any given time, leading to our egoism. For example, there is a strong correlation between the number of people that havbe been killed by being crushed between two objects and the number of women on Harvard Law Review in the past 10 years. Someone who truly believes that these two relate to each other can easily "prove" this by going online and looking for this information. This has caused or society to become more opinionated and less willing to listen to other people's opinions.
Also, the DeLome Letter exemplifies the importance of privacy. It was a letter written by a Spanish ambassador about what he thought of the current United States president, President Mckinley. It was leaked to the American public and caused an outrage because of its negative views. This outrage, also fueled by excessively exaggerated headlines of the newspapers that reported on the letter, helped turn public opinion toward favoring going to war against Spain over Cuba. The war caused many Cuban, Spanish, and American lives to be lost, and influenced the U.S. to also capture the Phillipines. The unneccessary war was simply influenced by a lack of privacy.
Finally, "The Scarlet Letter" serves to highlight how valuable privacy is. Hester Prynne, an adultress, was forced to wear a scarlet letter on her bosom after her town discovered her act of adultery. Yet, she refused to tell anyone who she cheated with. Thus, her husband devotes his life to finding out who the man is, yet is unsuccessful for many years. Through her act of protecting his name, she also protected his life, demonstrating the importance of privacy.
After analysis of "A Brave New World," the DeLome Letter, and "The Scarlet Letter," we can see that privacy is indeed extremely important in our everyday lives. Something as simple as a leaked letter can cause thousands of people to die, greatly exemplifying how people should make a tremendous effort to keep some things private. Our world depends on it.
The automatic scorer gave me a 10, what do you guys think?
Thanks
For example, there is a strong correlation between the number of people that havbe been killed by being crushed between two objects and the number of women on Harvard Law Review in the past 10 years.
What the actual… Am I allowed to swear on here?
This has caused or society
*our
to become more opinionated and less willing to listen to other people’s opinions.
…Or they have more resources to see if their opinion is actually right. This is a pretty bad example. You think having a wealth of information at our fingertips makes people less intelligent?? You think having access to any knowledge we could ever need or want to know makes people more opinionated?? People have always been stupidly opinionated. At least now you can use easily accessible info to back yourself up or to realize you’re wrong.
Furthermore, now that I think about it, how does the availability of knowledge really relate to privacy? If you were complaining about people’s dirty laundry being aired on FB or something, sure, that’d be cliche but doable. But you’re arguing that the sharing of facts is a privacy violation?
Furthermore AGAIN, what did Brave New World have to do with anything? Sounds like you started out with a literary example and then realized you didn’t have enough info to float it.
Mckinley.
*McKinley.
After analysis
That’s a bit of a strong word for merely name-dropping Brave New World??
Overall, it’s not badly written. It has a few typos – easily fixed, but pay attention to what you’re doing. Your grammar has no mistakes that I can see. I think the main issue I have is content.
Introduction is short and not noteworthy. Beef it up. Make it count for something.
Your first example is the weakest, I think. You said very little about Brave New World (and then said you had analyzed it??). In addition, the modern-day part of the example doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Do you really feel that being able to access knowledge is a detriment to society? Would you rather live in North Korea or China or somewhere where they restrict what you can read or see on the Internet?
Second example is okay. Third one is okay as well, if a bit short on analysis.
Never ever say “We can see” or “As we have seen” or “My opinion is” or “I think” or “I believe” or “That’s my essay.” They’re all in the same boat: not formal enough for essay writing. They come off as juvenile.
Anyway, I’d probably say like 7 or 8. It’s not great, as far as argumentative writing goes, but it’s technically solid and has a good grasp of higher vocab.
Okay thanks, I’m getting consistent 2180-2200 but I need to work on critical reading and improving my essay. (SAT is on March 14th and I’m shooting for 2300, I’m kind of running out of time)
And haha yes about Brave New World, I did start out with that literary example but realized I didn’t have enough time to continue with the analysis.
I’ll try to improve the example choice and analysis and definitely fix the dumb typos.