Grade my Practice SAT I Essay

Test Preparation
1

<p>The topic is: Does being ethical make it hard to be successful?</p>

<p>I'm practicing the essay from the March 2009 SAT examination.</p>

<p>Here's my essay:</p>

<pre><code>Being ethical and successful concurrently is nearly impossible in today's society in which the “me” mentality exists and where altruism is virtually nonexistent. No matter how great a politician is or even how admirable a hero is, an iota of depravity can always be traced. This is evidenced by the election of politicians into office and by heros who capitalize immorally their heroic capacity.

During a presidential election, candidates are judged by the people on whether the candidate has the capacity to deliver change based on ostensibly inspiring applause lines. An honest candidate that tells the American people that the education system is abominable, the Iraq war should end immediately, and the soldiers have died in vain will lose the appeal of the majority of the electorate. Instead, it is expedient that politicians use palliatives and inspiring platitudes such as the usage of the word “hope” which contains no real solution for progressive change. Politicians, like normal human beings, are worried about their jobs, worried about their contributing an income for their families, and most of all, worried about their political party's demise. This makes politics unaltrusic and therefore somewhat unethical in the eyes of the citizens who elect politicians to be representative of the electorate, not themselves.

In addition, even heros can be accused of immoral behaviors. It is quite plausible, for example, that a hero who saves a plane and its demise by landing it safetly on the ocean will accrue significant media attention. The media will invariably propagate that the hero acted in a courageous, noble and altrusic manner. Nevertheless, a dichotomy can arise in which the hero capitalizes this heroic event and decides to get paid millions to create a movie in which the majority of the profits will go to to the hero himself.

Unfortunately, the inherent nature of humans to be unaltrusic causes ethics and success to be in dilemma with each other as evidenced by political elections and the hypothetic example of the hero.
</code></pre>

<p>Thank you for those who will grade my essay</p>

2

<p>I’d think if I were a grader, I’d say between a 4 and 5. It’s pretty good, and your vocabulary is strong, but it would be much better if you used concrete examples. ie: Talking specifically about one president’s campaign, rather than just the oversimplified “candidates,” or how exactly a hero in real life has used the media for attention (who (s)he is, what they did with the attention, etc), rather than generalizing.</p>

3

<p>Try using three examples if you can…its much more favored. And spread them out over a variety of domains, like: literature, history personal…because that helps convince the grader that your point is applicable to society…</p>

4

<p>The essay was pretty decent overall. It seems that you have mastered writing in an entertaining style, with varied sentence structures (which is a key component of what a grader is looking for). However, there were also some spelling errors (such as “heros,” not sure if that is a typo). The main problem I had with this is that the examples were not specific enough, and only described hypothetical situations. It focuses too much on rationale rather than supporting facts. I’d give this an 9 or 10 still (out of 12), because the essay still did its job.</p>