<p>This is my essay from collegeboard's free online practice new SAT, any help would be appreciated:</p>
<p>**Prompt: **Do people have to be highly competitive in order to succeed? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, experience, or observations. </p>
<p>Response:</p>
<p>"Success" is considered by many to be a goal paramount in importance. However, with so many individuals all striving for the same goal, competition is also frequently experienced by those seeking success. Indeed, success is one of our society's main goals, and competition is almost certainly a necessary and ultimately inseparable component of success.</p>
<p>One of the earliest recognizers of our innate desire to compete and to succeed was a Renaissance man named Niccolo Machiavelli, author of The Prince. In this short book, Machiavelli essentially provided with the world with its first guide to dirty politics - and also coined the phrase, "the end justifies the means." Machiavelli believed that, as long as the end result (success) was good, it made whatever means taken to arrive at that result (competition) acceptable. Therefore, for hundreds of years, many people have considered competition and success as inseparable means and ends.</p>
<p>Furthermore, an important point to consider is that success is completely relative. Take, for example, the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. In that world, all citizens are born with a social caste permanently assigned to them. There is literally no competition whatsoever in this world, and therefore, those in high positions, do not feel like they have achieved any measure of success because they did not have to compete to get there. This further illustrates the fact that competition and success cannot exist without each other.</p>
<p>The link between success and competition also appears in our own everyday lives. As a high school student, I am under pressure to succeed, despite the fact that if I were to succeed (ie, getting accepted at a selective school), another person will indirectly fail as a result (ie, getting rejected from that same school). This pressure to succeed results in competition. Of course, not everyone desires to get into an Ivy League school, but this does not mean that they do not compete for success - instead, they simply compete for success with a different pool of people. Thus, everyone (no matter what brand of success he or she competes for) must be competitive to succeed.</p>
<p>Competition and success are inseparable means and ends, cannot flourish without each other, and everyone engages in competitive behavior in order to achieve some measure of success. </p>
<p>If you could, critcisms would be great (this is my first essay of this sort), and also please leave an idea of what score this essay would get. Thanks</p>