<p>Essay 2: Are people's lives the result of the choices they make? </p>
<p>Each person has his own life and people's lives differ from individuals to individuals. What makes this difference? Of course people's own decisions and choices determines a lot about their lives; however environment is greater force that shapes one's life. Environment limits one's options to choose from.</p>
<p>Environment first narrows down people's choices. Environment is what comes before making decision. For example, a student from very wealthy family may have more variety of universities to choose from than a student from poor backgrounds because poor student has to consider financial factors and this limits his options. And since which college one graduates from can determine his life, certainly it is plausible to say that the life of the student was affected by his poor backgrounds.</p>
<p>Comparing a child in U.S. and one in Somalia makes this idea more clear. A child in U.S. has rather prosperous and wealthy life and has more opportunity of education. However, in Somalia, most of the kids are deprived of good foods and shelters, and thus they are forced to join the pirates to keep up their living. What makes those kids in Somalia become pirates instead of civilized professionals? Their characteristics or their intelligence? No, it is the environment that determined their lives.</p>
<p>In conclusion, environment precedes the actual decision making, often narrowing down our scope of choices; decision making is just choosing within the boundary of environment. Thus, environment plays greater role in shaping ones life.</p>
<p>No one to give me score?</p>
<p>Giving me a score without comment is fine with me!</p>
<p>Plz give me a score cuz I want to know where I am!</p>
<p>I don’t like this essay. It asserts a number of points that shouldn’t have been mentioned. For example, the part about Somali pirates should have been either excluded or worded differently. Moreover, the core argument of the Somali child paragraph is the same as the preceding paragraph’s: the financial situation of one’s environment affects one’s living. Thus, the second paragraph comes off as both redundant and tactless. What you need is not two examples of how one’s environment affects one’s life, but two ways in which the environment influences one’s life. You could’ve talked about how stress, health conditions or peer expectations affect one’s lifestyle. You then, of course, should provide some kind of substantiating evidence, whether it be from a book you read or an event you experienced. You did provide evidence, but you only presented one argument (e.g. way in which the environment matters). Try to write two or three points next time. </p>
<p>Also, in both your intro and conclusion, you explicitly say that the environment is a greater force than one’s volition in decision making. Okay, I agree. However, that’s not exactly the what the prompt is asking. Let me rewrite it for reference: " Are people’s lives the result of the choices they make?" Your argument is definitely related to the prompt, but it isn’t exactly a homerun. Try to answer the prompt a little more directly next time. ( I think I might be a little too picky here)</p>
<p>Regarding mechanics and style, you need to polish your fundamentals a little. For some reason, your use of articles (a, the, an) is funky (this is a problem second-language students have). Also, there are a number of classic SAT grammar/style errors in your essay. I see dangling modifiers, ambiguous pronouns and redundancies. Finally, I suggest sprinkling a few more SAT words.</p>
<p>I think this would get about a 7/12. You show a decent foundation, but not enough polish and meat.</p>
<p>I agree with the above poster that this would be a 6 or 7.</p>
<p>Really?
I should work more on essays… any suggestions on preparing for essays?</p>
<p>Anyways thank you for bitter but really helpful comments!</p>
<p>I’ll grade it 5-6/12
first we recommend concrete examples in SAT essay (like history events, celebrities and literature) It cannot be persuasive by saying “a student” and “a child”. examples should be convinced and demonstrative so as to support your argument.
Plus it is not very recommended for u 2 pose a question in your opening statement. seriously we don’t often do that in essays.
ur essay is a bit short for SAT test. longer essay will be much more informative. U may refer to some well-written essays in CB and find out more differences!
good luk^^</p>