<p>Do schools even really care? I see many people with around a 2250, but an 800 writing, putting their math + cr much lower than is shown by their 2400 score. Is someone with 750's across the board more competitive?</p>
<p>I think a 1500/2259 would be (slightly) more competitive than a 1450/2250 because many colleges (ex. William and Mary) still evaluate SAT’s primarily by looking at the CR & Math. I don’t think there is a huge difference in the scenarios you’ve mentioned, though. </p>
<p>*1500/2250</p>
<p>As far as the first answer I disagree on the point that those scores are virtually the same.</p>
<p>If you look at the Common Data Set for a particular college, you will see if they count all parts of the SAT or not. Some only use M+CR. For the ones that do count the Writing, I’m not sure if it is weighted differently so that would be interesting to have more info about.</p>
<p>The answer varies by college.</p>
<p>Thoughts, anyone else?
I know that the essay on these tests doesn’t count for much (30 minutes for an essay? come on SO one dimensional…</p>
<p>lol forgot to close my parenthetical aside.</p>
<p>*)</p>
<p>Unless proven otherwise, consider everything important - even “silly” 30 minute essays. How long do you think you have to write an essay on a test in college? D was already informed that at her school, she will NEVER see a multiple choice test - for which she is eternally grateful, because she hates them.</p>
<p>@MrMom62
The time actually isn’t the problem. The problem is that, in order to write an INFORMED essay, you need outside information. You need to read opposing viewpoints…
The point of writing an essay is answering a question for which there are more than one viewpoint…</p>
<p>You can’t do that at the sat or act writing. It is meaningless. </p>
<p>If you don’t know the other viewpoints, if you haven’t read other responses, if you don’t have outside facts/data/statistics
There is no point.</p>
<p>You should take a look at some prompts - no outside information is necessary. They are asking for your opinion and grading you on how well you can support your argument. You don’t need to argue against yourself.</p>
<p>@mrmom62 I have taken the essays; I’m going to be a college freshman. I’m simply saying that the essays portion of these tests is, for lack of a better word, stupid. You need outside information for everything…otherwise you can’t draw an accurate conclusion</p>
<p>That’s just silly - </p>
<p>Prompt: What is your favorite food? Why?
Prompt: “Allies do not require a common goal, only a common enemy” Do you agree or disagree? Explain why.</p>
<p>What possible outside sources do you need?</p>
<p>@MrMom62 That first prompt is just silly.
and the second prompt OF COURSE requires outside sources. You need actual examples (not lame examples you can scrap). You need to read viewpoints that oppose your own. You need to formulate your argument… </p>
<p>I don’t want to argue, but I truly think these essays tell NOTHING. Most people agree with me</p>
<p>You’re actually right that 750s across the board is better than, say M 800, W 800, CR 700, because many schools don’t care about W at all and most others give it less value than M and CR (for good reason! It resembles <em>nothing</em> you’ll do in college!). In that scenario, 2250 is better than 2300.</p>
<p>Top LACs consider all 3 sections of Math, CR, and Writing. Essay scores are not important. </p>
<p>If they post Writing averages/ranges on their Common Data sets, they consider it important. CR+M is more important, though.</p>
<p>I think the writing section’s more like a pre-req. A high W score won’t make up for a low CR+M, but a low W could hurt you. Colleges wanna make sure that applicants know their grammar/can express themselves coherently.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Unsupported argument. Not well structured or reasoned. Your peer group does not count as “most people”. Overall weak essay. Score: 2. Next!</p>
<p>@MrMom62 Great. How do you know what I mean by most people? After posting my thread, I read others on this site. Needless to say, no one agrees with your stance. </p>
<p>No one cares about the essay. It measures no ability (actually, it measures one’s ability to voice nonsense lol).</p>
<p>I posted this hoping to assure rising seniors that this essay is completely ridiculous-- one less thing to worry about. Stop defending something that is so insanely lacking that it is being CHANGED. If this essay were a good measure, college board and ACT wouldn’t be taking steps to alter it’s structure. </p>
<p>@noel597 - While I tend to agree that the Writing section of these tests are the weakest evaluator of the student in several ways, you are making one mistake in implicitly assuming there is only one type of essay. The kind of essays you are talking about are research mini-treatises, if you will, that do indeed require prolonged thought, research, analysis, and careful writing that has undergone several drafts (ideally at least) and has citations. The essays on these standardized exams are extemporaneous, designed more to test your ability to take what you have learned in high school about writing a structured argument based only on material presented to you at that moment or, as @MrMom62 says, is strictly an opinion that requires no other material than that which a normal 18 year old would have from life experience. They try to train the readers of these essays to grade them as such, not on whether they think the student’s personal view of the world is right or wrong or even supportable by other outside facts. Only if they write clear coherent sentences in a structured argument based on what is presented to them.</p>
<p>I will also disagree with @MrMom62 a bit though, when he says
Yes those are limited in time and can’t be researched, but presumably, unless the prof is really bad, the question assumes you have been learning about the topic all semester and so can bring insightful information from multiple viewpoints to bear in the answer. While you might not be able to cite things like in a research essay down to the book title and page, you certainly would be expected to say something like “Alexander Hamilton posited in one of the Federalist Papers that the role of the state governments in commerce was to…” So they aren’t really like the essays being asked for in a standardized test either, except to show that you can (or in the alternative didn’t) structure an essay in a way that presents a good argument as a learned capability. </p>
<p>I think that is where the discussion disconnect is happening. So @noel597, before you talk with such assurance, don’t assume that your definition of an essay is the only one. Still, I think you have a point that universities are not happy with the writing portions in general, both because of inconsistent and subjective scoring and because that isn’t the kind of writing one tends to do in college, but instead the essays there are pretty much all like the definition you were using for an essay. Assigned well ahead of time, researched, and edited.</p>