<p>First I'd like to say hi and introduce myself, as this is my first post.
I'm a grade 10 high school student in Bulgaria and I have ambitions for a scholarship in any of America's renowned universities. Therefore, I'm giving myself a head start by starting my SAT preparation earlier than necessary.
Today I wrote my first practice essay and I'd be really grateful if someone could rate it for me and point out my mistakes (or just some because I'm sure there'll be many). I don't usually write essays like this (my writing style is totally different), but I made an attempt to adhere to the rules and advice of many forums & websites on SAT essay preparation. Therefore it might sound a bit odd, because it's the first essay I've written in such manner.
As for the timing, it took me 25 minutes to write 70% of it and 1 hour to write the rest :S
Here it is:</p>
<p>Is it always better to be original than to imitate or use the ideas of others?</p>
<p>What distinguishes humans from animals is their ability to hand down knowledge. We never start anything from scratch; we use what our ancestors have laboriously discovered for us and develop it further. Human society means sharing. We live together, striving to enhance our lives, and we do that by reusing the knowledge and ideas of others. Like Picasso said: “Good artists borrow, great artist steal”. There are many examples that support this point view and an illustrative analogy can be made with today’s IT industry.</p>
<p>Apple has always been the innovator, the creative sector of its business. I doubt that anyone can doubt the fact that they are the ones who revolutionized the computer and the way we use it. Their ideas helped make technological discoveries accessible to everyone. But in fact their ideas are nothing more than a remodelling of previous creations, and as a matter of fact Steve Jobs himself has repeatedly cited the preceding words of Picasso. What Apple did is that they took previous technological ideas and discoveries, and shaped them together into one new product, a product which can make these ideas useful to our everyday lives.</p>
<p>Not long after, Microsoft did the same. They came up with an operating system, similar to Apple’s but with portability in mind, therefore having the flexibility to be distributed on computers of different prices and features. This appealed even more to the mass user and the result was evident: Microsoft had become the leader in market share. The same thing is happening today with Google’s Android OS, which has been the target of many lawsuits, mainly because it stole a lot of ideas from Apple’s iOS. Yet, it’s currently the leading mobile OS; it applied Apple’s innovations on a new open-sourced product, which can be deployed on various phones. The process goes on and on; there will always be companies who will try and take it to the next level, and they do this by “recycling” the work of other firms and thus creating their own. That is the very key to their success.</p>
<p>Human ideas and creations will never fade away, they will always be there: not only for others to make use of, but for others to redevelop. The way humans have learned to work together as one whole is what makes the world go round. Creativity is a virtue, but learning to make use of what others have left behind is also a vital skill in the 21st century.</p>
