Grade my SAT Essay?

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>I would be extremely grateful if you could grade this and give me some feedback. I'm taking the SAT next Saturday and I'm really starting to stress out.</p>

<p>To change is to risk something, making us feel insecure. Not to change is a bigger risk, though we seldom feel that way. There is no choice but to change. People, however, cannot be motivated to change from the outside. All of our motivation comes from within.</p>

<p>What motivates people to change? </p>

<hr>

<p>Without change, everything would always remain the same. Change is brought on, encouraged by the external world, but it is also our own interior consciences which really put change into action. There is only so much we can be influenced by. Nowadays, healthy teenage middle class girls are falling into a deathly disease know as anorexia and changing their appearances.</p>

<p>Healthy girls, not too thin, not too fat, are being influenced by today's media into thinking they are too fat - that the only real way to be acceptable in society is to look - and weigh - like the emaciated models walking down the catwalk. Inspired by magazines, ads, and 0-sized clothing, girls turn to their diets and the gym to lose weight, to look good, to change.</p>

<p>However, the media can only go so far. Not every girl is being inspired by the waif image idyll. Many are fine staying the way they are. Changing your body to an extreme requires a certain amount of personal motivation - you have to have an intense desire to change yourself. Thus, girls suffering from the disease must feel a certain amount of self-hatred, and have relatively low self-esteem, to really want to go out and warp their bodies. Change thus comes from the inside, from peoples' thoughts and feelings of being inadequate or unsuitable, and needing to be different from how they currently are.</p>

<p>Though change may seem to stem from outside forces acting upon us beyond our control, it really is a combination of exterior and interior factors. The real, essential source of change is our own desire to be different from how we are.</p>

2

<p>It’s a decent effort with a good example, but your essay is unfocused, and I’m left wondering what your point really is. You seem to be arguing that we’re influenced by both internal and external factors (and you should be using the terms internal and external, rather than interior and exterior), which is fine, but then you say in your conclusion that we’re really just influenced by internal things. So is it both, or is it internal?</p>

<p>I’m not disagreeing with your thesis that it’s not just one thing that changes us, and it probably is due to a variety of factors. You could really make your argument if you had a week to work on it and more than two pages of room! For the test, you’ll be much better off picking ONE position and arguing that one position. Doing so will automatically keep you focused, and keep you from wandering into irrelevant statements. You have to be an exceptional writer to pull off counterarguments on an SAT essay, and you’re much more likely to do yourself harm than good by trying it. Your two examples aren’t linked well, and the first comes off as kind of a throwaway since you’ve already said that we’re primarily influenced internally.</p>

<p>Also be very careful of using vocabulary words you’re iffy about the definition of. An idyll is a poem - in your sentence you mean an ideal.</p>

<p>I’d probably give this a 3, but it could be a 2 for lack of appropriate examples. Your writing is fairly clear, but you’re taking some liberties with grammar rules, which you shouldn’t be on an SAT essay. Your style on an SAT essay should be basic since it’s going to be difficult to pull off unusual phrasing within the time limit. But, my primary criticism is that your point is muddled by counterarguments, and assuming that your real thesis is that we change due to internal motivation, you have only one supporting example.</p>

<p>Give it another try and let us read it then. Just don’t let swinging for the fences ruin a decent essay :slight_smile: Good luck!</p>