Please grade my essay!

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
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<p>I'm studying for my december sat! Please grade my essay. Any feedback will be appreciated!</p>

<p>Prompt: Do people have to be highly competitive in order to succeed?
The definition of success varies from person to person; therefore, stating that a person must possess a certain characteristic to be successful is a severely unjust generalization. This being said, even though people generally view competitive nature as a positive motivation that can encourage success, being highly competitive can actually be harmful in the long run, and this characteristic has caused the destruction of many in the past. </p>

<p>Success is most often defined as accomplishing an incredible feat, something along the lines of inventing useful machinery or finding the cure to a fatal disease. To others, success is linked to financial accomplishments such as having a large income or winning a lottery. What are the reason of accomplishing all these deeds, however, if one is not happy? In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Esther, due to her competitive nature, worked hard to get into one of the best women’s universities and even earns a prestigious summer internship from a company that is one of the most respected in the fashion industry. She is envied by many girls and is described as successful. She, however, after accomplishing these superficial successes was not happy at all, forcing herself to become depressed and antisocial. She felt unworthy and working too hard caused her not enjoy life; she soon committed suicide. In the case of Esther, it seems hardly appropriate to say that competitiveness caused her to be successful. </p>

<p>In our country’s history, there was another tragedy caused by the highly competitive man by the name of Aaron Burr. After losing the vice presidential election twice and even losing the governor election, Burr becomes revengeful and even mad. He starts blaming all his miseries on Hamilton, a politician who won the governor election. Unable to control his anger, Burr challenges Hamilton to a duel and kills him. Although Burr might have felt slightly better after the revenge, his happiness did not last long, for Hamilton’s immense popularity forced Burr to flee to Europe to save his life. He was exiled and didn’t even have anyone to mourn over his death. Due to the excessive competitive personality, Burr does not accomplish success but rather a lonely death in a lonely and, a feat that can easily be described as a failure. </p>

<p>Competitiveness will be an everlasting part of the human nature. Even though it can sometimes positively encourage success by providing motivation to work hard, most of the times it will be negative, as can be seen from the cases of Esther and Burr. People definitely do not have to be highly competitive to succeed and highly competitive nature and actually deter success.</p>

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<p>Good essay. It should earn around 11 - 12. However, I should point out that you should trim out, or move, the first 3 sentences of your first paragraph, which discuss the definition of success rather than talking about whether people must be competitive to succeed. Since this essay is meant to be read quickly, the examiner may form the impression that you have gone slightly off - topic based on your first few sentences of paragraph 2. I suggest that you restructure your first paragraph to highlight your main point. Elsewhere, you are mostly fine.</p>

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<p>Could you help me grade my essay too?</p>

<p>Assignment: Can success be disastrous?</p>

<p>Essay:-</p>

<p>A man once said, everyone will soon have his 15 minutes of fame. As we approach closer to such a reality, success stories abound these days. With our economic and political successes, many are reaping the fruits of their labour and reaching the zenith of their life at the height of our civilisation. However, can this success be disastrous?</p>

<p>Sadly, the answer is yes. For one thing, success brings about pride which can lead us to overlook certain problems which we may dismiss as trivial ones. In the Song dynasty of China, the success of the Chinese in administrating the largest and most powerful empire in the world then, China, led them to believe they were invincible. Thus, they did not care about the military situation at the borders. They were caught by surprise when the Mongols, with their Persian trebuchets, defeated the Song dynasty and conquered China. Such was the shock that many officials of the Song dynasty commited suicide, perhaps believing it to be the end of the world.</p>

<p>Success can also lead us to take reckless decisions. A study has shown that success increases the presence of certain hormones in the body and thus cause us to overlook certain factors in making decisions. The best example is that of Lehman Brothers. During the 2008 economic crisis, they declared bankruptcy with liabilities nearly 40 times their assets. This happened because they became overconfident with their investment succcesses and hence made several bad decisions although the warning signs of an imminent economic crisis came in 2007, a year before they declared bankruptcy.</p>

<p>Success can also lead us to isolate ourselves from others. While this may seem like a harmless act, we can take a leaf from what happened to China. China, after their successes during the Tang and Song dynasties, chose to isolated themselves during the Ming dynasty. While China led the world in artillery during the Tang and Song, their wapons soon fell behind European firearms during the Ming as they isolated themselves and halted the inflow of knowledge into China. Thus, while European firearms flourished during the Renaissance, Chinese ones remained the same. This problem became severe during the Opium War when the British took Hong Kong and Shanghai due to their superior weapons.</p>

<p>Indeed, success can have pernicious effects. If we can take a leaf from history, surely, we can avoid success from becoming our greatest failure.</p>

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<p>Hey there! @ clementines
I will try to help you out as much as you can.
First you have few grammatical slips: mixing of past and present tense.</p>

<p>Yes, you have a good introduction and a body. They to seems to argue for one side: competition does not always lead to success and can be highly harmful to someone. The Esther example is quite illustrative and the example of the politician is good, but the phrase “most of the time” doesn’t really support your essay. You could have probably written “extreme competitive nature is very likely to trigger enmity, depression and failure as shown by these example which eventually leads to one’s failure”. You have only provided two example and ‘most’ does not balance your conclusion with the reasoning.
Moreover, you pointed out that people do not have to be highly competitive but have not produced an example or a small explanation to back this point up. This is quite redundant as you have already mention it can be a positive drive for others at the beginning of your conclusion. </p>

<p>The conclusion is equally important like the rest of your essay and you may be heavily penalized because of the unbalance between your reasoning and conclusion. Its a huge flaw in Critical Thinking. So, may be you will be given 7 or 8. </p>

<p>Hope that helped.</p>