<p>On the SAT essay portion, do the people who grade the essays prefer that you use personal experiences as examples or historical and literary examples?
Post your essay score and the kinds of examples that you used.</p>
<p>10: US history only
8: Hypothetical BS</p>
<p>10: current events
12: US history (women's rights movement)</p>
<p>They prefer whichever you can work in the best. If your historical and literary examples are all weak and poorly explained or too general, use personal experiences. If you have a very strong personal experience you can adequately explain in the allotted time, use that.</p>
<p>The bottom line is they don't really care. All they want to see is if you can clearly express your thoughts in an essay. Examples can be hypothetical or real events. i got 11/12 using "hypothetical BS" As long as you correctly tie the examples into your argument you are fine.</p>
<p>10 ~ History + Hypothetical BS + Rhetoric.</p>
<p>And I'm the type of person who just can't write quickly.</p>
<p>10: Literature (Crime and Punishment, Things Fall Apart), Psychology (introspection) and US History (John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie)</p>
<p>Like Taggart, I can't write quickly - I need time to develop my thoughts carefully, for I'm a very deliberative person. Honestly, I think that the readers prefer to read Lit & US History... cuz it kinda makes the person seems more "learned," and the SAT essay is a lot about impression. But, if you can form a very strong essay about a personal experience, write about it.</p>
<p>But if you used literary or hist. examples, and say you missed up on a date or a name or a title of a book, are they going to notice that?</p>
<p>They don't have the time (or inclination) to check your references. Now, if it's something very basic for a very well-known work, event, or author, that's one thing....but if you sound authoritative and work your examples well into your essay, you're probably OK.</p>
<p>11: comparison from The Scarlet letter and the Rwanda Genocide. They spend less than a minute each grading the thing, so obviously they won't be able to check the accuracy of your references, but probably can tell if your clearly BS'ng.</p>
<p>I'm the type of person who pains over every word set down because I believe that words have an exact meaning, and should only be fit together in certain ways to reflect those meanings. Evidently, this tendency is rather problematic when I don't have all the time in the world on the essay.</p>
<p>I end up writing about whatever feels right, and using time till the last second.</p>
<p>Does an ACT essay count? I just got an 11. I used only examples from personal experience or "commonsense" reasoning--that is, things that I haven't personally experienced but which I can easily understand as if I had. I suppose you could call it "hypothetical BS" =]</p>
<p>hmm i usually use one literature example, one history one (if i can remember that is... :P), and one personal BSish one</p>
<p>here's a new thought: if you wish you could write more about history convincingly, realize that your family's or neighbor's personal story can link you to major historical events. My S did nicely (12) by choosing the example of what his grandfather did in WWII on D-Day, as an example of the individual make choices and decisions. He hardly knew the grandfather, but got all the details from his grandma by asking her what he did in the war. Then on the essay, the only historical "fact" he used was to mention "D-Day" but the rest of the example was about his grandfather's activities that day. </p>
<p>So, if you know someone who is in Iraq, or if you remember anything about September 11, or have a parent or uncle/aunt who served in any military conflict (Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo, Desert Storm...), ask them to describe it. Think for yourself what it represents. You'll have a link to history that way. </p>
<p>Or, if you know your family's immigration history to this country, that's another link with world events.</p>
<p>Scorpio08 --To use an historical event for an example, just focus on the main idea or big trend. If you forget a date while you're writing, just leave that off. If you can't remember if it happened in 1762 or 1792, it doesn't matter, just say "late l8th century" and keep writing. It's not a history exam.</p>
<p>Find out what your grandparents did during the American Civil Rights movement; if their town changed before/after Martin Luther King's influence.</p>