<p>I've always considered myself a fairly good writer. I've earned perfect scores on SOL writing tests. Received a 5 on my AP Language and Composition exam and was selected as Student of the Year for the class. </p>
<p>On the SAT, I got every single question right for the writing multiple choice section, but then I received an 8 on my essay. Which brought my score down to a 780 (extra question: do I have to earn a 12 on the essay in order to get a perfect writing score, or could I earn, say, a 10?). Given, I thought the essay prompt was terrible, but I still felt disappointed in myself.</p>
<p>I took the ACT a few months ago. Got a 33 on the English section. Felt much better about the essay prompt, but once again, I got an 8!</p>
<p>I feel like I'm a better writer than an 8...but these tests have really been shaking my confidence. How can I improve these stupid essay scores? Will colleges look down upon an 8 disdainfully?</p>
<p>I heard that colleges don’t really care about the writing part. I mean, 25 mins to prove your writing skills?
You might want to start giving yourself a sort of format to make sure you have enough time. You wanna start writing as much as possible. Review some literature, historical figures, events, and personal experiences and see how you can apply those to the essay prompts beforehand. Doesn’t work for any other essays other than ACT and SAT tho;</p>
<p>The writing tests are scored by minimum wage workers who go through a few days of training to score essays. They have stacks of essays to read in very short amounts of time. The readers/scorers have to score upwards of 200 essays per day, so they don’t really read the essays and scan them instead. Then it gets scored by another person the same way. If the essay is decent, the “go to” score is an 8. </p>
<p>[Inside</a> the multimillion-dollar essay-scoring business - Page 1 - News - Minneapolis - City Pages](<a href=“http://www.citypages.com/2011-02-23/news/inside-the-multimillion-dollar-essay-scoring-business/]Inside”>http://www.citypages.com/2011-02-23/news/inside-the-multimillion-dollar-essay-scoring-business/)</p>
<p>My DD is an excellent writer and got an 8 twice with a 34 English score. We decided not to worry about it. It doesn’t change the overall ACT composite and most schools don’t require it anyway. An 8 score is = to a 30 which is fine. If you take the ACT again, don’t take the writing portion unless any of the schools you really want to go to require it.</p>
<p>i took the SAT TWICE and i got 8’s both times - even when i’d read up on all the tricks to superficially boost your score like by including big words from your lexicon. and the second time i only missed one multiple choice question, and it brought me down to a 750. not end the end of the world,i know, but it did cause me some irritation. i’m not even the best writer at all, in fact i’m pretty dismal, but i thought i could game some silly test. but i was wrong!</p>