<p>Hi all! Question on the essay portion of the SAT. Are colleges able to read your response, or do they only see your score? I would assume the latter, but when I took the ISEE and SSAT for high school placement, one of the tests had an unscored essay, but sent copies of each student's essay to the schools to which he was applying. The only reason I ask is because in the strategy of using one literary, one historical, and one personal example, I often end up making up the personal one. While I feel no guilt for lying to the College Board, I would feel apprehensive about lying to colleges both morally and for the purely selfish reason that they might find out. Just wondering...</p>
<p>I believe they are able to get it. I suppose you could give the personal example about a "friend."</p>
<p>Yes. Some colleges read the SAT essay as a check for your writing skills, in other words they would be suspicious if your essays were absolutely brilliant but you had poor structure, grammar, writing style in your SAT essay.</p>