<p>hi, did anybody get a 12 on the essay part by following the rules in grammatix guide? and if so, could you please post your essay? i can't believe that three personal examples are ok.</p>
<p>hi yosei,</p>
<p>i did :)</p>
<p>check out the sample top-scoring essays published by the college board. the one on page 120 of the Blue Book cites these examples:</p>
<p>"i owe my good grades, my success as a dancer as well as my organized room to my drive to be perfect."</p>
<p>(also note that that sentence is improperly formed, which in spite of what the published essay-scoring rubric on page 105 requires).</p>
<p>also see the top-scoring essay on page 200, which uses for its examples an encounter between the writer and his cousin, cheating on a test, and explaining death to a child. there's not a single reference in the entire essay to a novel, a historical figure, a theory, or anything else academic.</p>
<p>it's important to remember here, as with all things SAT-related, that the SAT tries very hard not to reflect socioeconomic influences in the testing population. if the SAT were going to reward academic examples and punish personal examples, it would be giving an advantage to people who attended better schools, which it really doesn't want to do. by allowing personal examples, the SAT avoids the criticism that a good writer with less exposure to good education will score lower than he should.</p>