May 3rd SAT Essay

<p>^ You got an 11 or 12 coming your way, buddy.</p>

<p>I am the one that started this thread but no one told me anything about mine...doesnt really seem right imo.</p>

<p>^ Sorry, hm, definitely an 8 (they're everyday examples but if you elaborated appropriately... not bad)... how long was it? vocab? etc.?</p>

<p>page and a half-page and 3/4. Vocab was probably about above average, nothing special. I felt sentence structure was great and I elaborated on the topics in different ways and explained them each several ways.</p>

<p>Sorry about that. Assuming that it indeed is okay grammatically and that you varied your vocabulary a little bit, it is sounding 9'ish to me. As feed asked, could you elaborate on your essay a bit more in terms of basics, such as length and structure?</p>

<p>well i just told you length, it was broken down into intro, two body and conclusion. And what do you want to know about the structure?</p>

<p>You posted right before me! :-). A solid 9 from me.</p>

<p>^ I think you definitely have an 8 in your lap... depends on the reader.</p>

<p>Thats fine with me :) Those were the scores I was going for.</p>

<p>The essays can tend to be very subjectively graded from the readers. I had a score dispute on the last time I took it (December '07). They sent me the detailed report, so I got to know I got a 6 and a 3 initially, and finally the master scorer had to step in and gave me a comp. of a 10. It's really weird as to how they grade them, and I would be fascinated to get to know the process in depth. I mean, they are, to a certain degree, playing around with our futures after all.</p>

<p>I used Amish people as an example; I remembered thoreau/walden pond right after I was done :(</p>

<p>Thats a good example though with the Amish people. Non technology in real life. I wish I had thought of that.</p>

<p>Expectations for mine?</p>

<p>Full pages, completely filled.</p>

<p>Examples:
Amazon.com's Kindle eBook reader
- Talked about how technology is moving forward but a great amount of people still prefer to read physical books because of certain almost intangible things, smell of the pages, sound of the page turning. Old style things help us to get back to our roots and transport us to other worlds.
Thoreau and Walden
- Talked about by separating himself from technology and society allowed him to become more in tune with the lake and nature itself. By moving himself away from those distractions he was able to discover who he was. The person who knows himself best is one who can maintain his opinion while amidst all the technology and dissenting opinion.
Einstein/Szilard Letter, the atomic bomb
- Einstein was a pacifist, but he still used his celebrity in order to get Szilard's letter noticed by Roosevelt. Letter led to the Manhattan project. Einstein put aside his own views and embraced technology for the safety of the world and an expedient end to the World War. </p>

<p>Thesis was that I qualified it, sometimes it's good for us to go away from technology and sometimes we need to embrace it. (Safety, etc.)</p>

<p>Not to be too off topic but I was never under the impression that Walden had anything to do with technology. In fact Walden didn't even advocate retreating into nature. It advocated retreating into escape from society, whatever that meant for the individual. I think Thoreau had more of a problem with society than technology itself...though the loose association could probably be made on the SAT prompt I suppose.</p>

<p>Good ideas Gregarion, but I would max you out at a 10. Unfortunately, I have found out that taking the fence on the topic doesn't stick too well with the CollegeBoard graders. I have heard that one of their grading paradigms is "Did writer take a specific side." Furthermore, the fact that you should mention the length of your essays baffles me. It isn't just you; multiple people post essay lengths, and people seem to be using that as a guideline to measure how good the essay was. I have gotten an 11 from a 1.25 page essay in December '07. So, could someone explain the length issue to me? Thanks.</p>

<p>And yes, I tend to agree with you, DwightEisenhower.</p>

<p>Quick question regarding the essay--I know that the type of examples are all treated equally, e.g. a reference to literature is no more or less valuable than a personal anecdote. But is it important to have a diversity of examples? My essay for this prompt was almost entirely personal anecdote, albeit ellaborated.</p>

<p>Second question too, actually. How much of an issue is handwriting? My handwriting is atrocious...readable, obviously, but it may take a little exerted effort. How do readers handle this, and how do they treat illegible words? As spelling errors? I mean I may use the word "pervasive" and have an "r" that kind of feeds into the "v" and doesn't really look like an r. Will a reader take the extra mental second to figure out that the word says "pervasive" or will they get annoyed?</p>

<p>suggestions needed:</p>

<p>1st argument: tech impedes our ability to socialize/experience the immediate things around us (support by: cell phones, pagers, ipods)
2nd argument: tech poses threats to our existance (detrimental death toll in WWII due to invention of submarines, tanks, airplanes.... related to hydrogen bombs & nuclear weapons as future threats (but did not finish this argument)</p>

<p>overall, a more more than 1 1/2 pages but lacked conclusion </p>

<p>thanks!!</p>

<p>To Gregarion, If most of your essay expressed an argument, and you added in a short/quick antithesis expressing that you realize the virtues of the other side - then you should be Okay. Ayeleswarapu, as for on the fence - it really depends... Sometimes, well written, it can fly. The key part is the clarity with which you express your ideas, the vocab, sentence structure and variety, and limiting the grammatical/spelling mistakes. The ideas themselves don't have to be extremely great/awesome. I've read essays just based on personal experiences that have gotten 12s. It really is on HOW you write it, WHAT you write about is less important to the CollegeBoard Readers - though they still matter, to a degree. </p>

<p>My 2 Cents.</p>

<p>BTW, on my support I cited:</p>

<p>1 Personal example of my grandmother, elaborated on her refusal to accept the complicated new techonology, etc.</p>

<p>2 Historical non-safeness of technology and how w/ more technology, comes more hazards (IRS was hacked and thousands of people lost their CC information including my parents, etc.)</p>

<ol>
<li> War and their technological advancements in killing, etc. Cited a direct quote from Einstein which I thought was pretty nifty.<br></li>
</ol>

<p>Basic argument followed the thesis of: familiarity, safety, and simplicity (or thereabouts). </p>

<p>Ideas, again, not great, I simply could not think of a literature source for the life of me... </p>

<p>But I thought my writing was well done, and so it shouldn't be too bad. </p>

<p>Just remember, it's a writing section, not a "how good are your ideas/support" section. </p>

<p>Best of luck to all!</p>

<p>i got the tech essay..
i expressed benifits of not using technology are found in</p>

<p>a) societys - historical - the shakers made some of best woodwork etc with no tech;; modernday- Amish</p>

<p>b) movie - "life as a house" father and son build house from hand, gain life experience, sense of pride</p>

<p>c) price of handmade goods is higher than those made by using technology, handmade is valued more</p>

<p>how do you think i did</p>