<p>I don’t know…it’s rather weird. The SAT essay tests how clearly and succinctly you express your ideas and thoughts; this, it seems (at least to my observation), punishes the more developed writers. Don’t get me wrong, there are those who still can get 12s and are highly polished as writers…</p>
<p>But for example, when I took the SAT as an Eighth grader for the Duke Tip Program, (I took it for the math section to get above the cut so I naturally bs-ed the other sections) but surprisingly? I got an 11 out of 12 on the essay. And that was when I had only lived in US for two-three years and when I still wrote the way I talked. Now, I get annoying 8s.</p>
<p>I got an 8 during the May SAT of this year so I retook it to at least improve it to a 10 but I got an 8 again… >.< Well, the overall score at least went up from 2220 to 2330. :o</p>
<p>I too was baffeled by my essay score of 9 in October. 2 years ago I wrote a boring, unorganized, rambling essay and got a 10. This time I wrote a much better thought out and put together essay and got a 9.</p>
<p>I think the difference is that my 10 essay had more details rather than critical thinking. I listed out more examples rather than taking time to study a few deeply. Apparently they like that more? Even if the quality of writing is lower.</p>
<p>I’m a future English major who wants to eventually pursue creative writing. However, the SAT rewards formulaic, structured writing. If you’re good at English, you should be able to understand this and write to their standards. I got a 12/12 on my first SAT with a 5 paragraph essay, using one extended example.</p>
<p>You can just about guarantee an 11 or 12 by filling both pages and using one extended example that relates directly to the prompt. Also, regardless of how perfect or advanced one’s syntax, grammar, or vocabulary are, if any bit of the essay does not clearly correlate to the prompt, the most that will be given is a 4/6 and I am guessing that that is the case for those who are puzzled regarding their scores of 8.</p>
<p>I had no idea there was a “formula” when i took the test. My academic advisor told me to focus on the other sections, especially math, where I was initially weakest. I was initially strongest on the writing. I studied like crazy and showed my mock essays to my English teachers, who consistently gave them 10’s or 12’s. Oddly enough, I got an 800 on the math (my weakest subject in school), a 730 on the Critical Reading (around what I had anticipated) and a 680 on the writing. The weirdest part is, on the ACT, I got a 36 on the English section, which is the same idea as the SAT writing MC. I did crap on the other sections of the ACT though, so I’m submitting my SAT.</p>
<p>As for my name, “futurephysician”, I have a lot of other hobbies and interests besides medicine. Though medicine has always been my greatest passion. I’m one of those people who have a lot of random, varied interests. For example, at SSP (Harvard) i took Neurobiology and Tragedy courses (as different as you can possibly find), and did very well in both. For the latter, I had to write essays, which I consistently did very well on. Which just goes to show that Collegeboard has no idea what they are doing when correcting essays. </p>
<p>In my opinion, formulaic writing is the worst kind, and the most boring to read. Why on earth would anyone want to read something that is boring, especially given the nature of essays past college? In reality, essays people actually enjoy reading are often those without a formula. Lewis Thomas, for example, was known for his essays, and they were by no means one hundred percent by the book formulaic essays. Yet they were insightful and entertaining, probing and thought-provoking, as essays should be. And look at Alexander Pope, one of the most renowned essayists of all time. His essays were far from the typical five paragraph essays of our time, which are so enforced for no good reason. You could have an essay with focused ideas that don’t follow a formula. The way the SAT is encouraging the teaching of English is just… bad!! (for the lack of a better ‘SAT word’).</p>
Hah that sounds like me (although my english grades arent THAT low… but I wouldn’t call myself a published writer, either). I got a 12 on my essay, despite the fact that I bs’d my examples (one of them was even blatantly false, to my knowledge): the SAT essay is really just a measure of how well you can write random **** in 25 minutes. They don’t care about your examples, they care about mechanics and the cohesiveness of your writing (aka “flow”). It also helps to write on both pages completely in smallish handwriting.</p>
<p>“They don’t care about your examples, they care about mechanics and the cohesiveness of your writing (aka “flow”).”</p>
<p>In my experience the opposite of this is true. My first essay had no cohesiveness, and was poorly organized but with lots of (though poorly developed) examples. My second essay was MUCH better written, but it didn’t have as many concrete examples. First got a 10, second got a 9.</p>
<p>My english teacher is an essay grader for the college board. He told us that many of the graders just look at the length of the essay and the quality of the handwriting to determine the score, and never even read the essay.</p>
<p>Although lots of people would disagree, the SAT essay grading is highly objective: it requires the standard essay format, a good vocabulary, good flow, and convincing arguments. Standardized test essay grading doesn’t get (and can’t get) any more objective than this, and if you got a bad score you didn’t meet the requirements mentioned above, all of which are known to be the qualities of a good essay. </p>
<p>Although people say that they got 9’s and 10’s or even 8’s on great essays, when you have a look their essays, they’re not that amazing at all. Talk about self-evaluating essays.</p>
<p>For everyone who says the SAT writing is sooo formulaic etc… why don’t you just follow the formula and get the easy 12/12 then? If you are such a great writer, this should be even easier than creative writing. It seems many people on this thread have already retaken the SAT focusing on a formulaic essay, so this seems to be the easy solution.</p>
<p>I practiced writing the essay with an english/sat prep teacher at our school (columbia master’s degree in literature or sth) and the worst grade she ever gave me for the essays I’ve written was 10. It was usually either an 11 or a 12</p>
<p>then i take the november sat test, i get 8 on the essay section</p>
<p>I have a 77MC and 8 essay, and have a 730 on writing</p>
<p>Although I never wrote a practice essay when I was studying, the SAT essay rewards formulaic writing and doesn’t care much for style or prose. I’m a pretty good writer but I got 10s both times. I never bothered to find out exactly what collegeboard wanted in its essays and I never will, since I’m content with my Nov. scores.</p>
<p>I would say just work on your MC score, as a perfect MC score pretty much negates a sub-par essay. I got 78/80 MC and 10 essays on both the Oct. and Nov. tests and ended up with an 800 and 790. </p>
<p>With a perfect MC and an 8-9 essay, you’ll end up with a 780-800 typically. 80 MC and 9 essay is usually an 800, but it depends on the test too.</p>
<p>My handwriting might have been messy (I am incapable of neat handwriting - I try, but fail). I mean, it’s not horrendously messy but I write relatively large and my letters always come out a bit harried looking. I also only wrote a page and a half, of what I thought was an excellent, well-thought out essay. I had no idea of the “formula” so I just focused on making it well-thought out, grammatically correct, with good vocab and concise examples. I didn’t care for length, but it begun and ended well. </p>
<p>I mean, come to think of it, collegeboard essay graders spend on average a minute on each essay. How on earth could one properly assess an essay in one minute?</p>
<p>As for the MC, I practiced it like crazy, but there are ALWAYS some questions that come in from left field, where you have absolutely no idea where the error is. For those, I put “E” and am usually wrong. Since I’m from Quebec, I’m completely bilingual, so the fact that I learned both English and French at the same time, the same amount, might have complicated things because sentence structure in French is completely different, so the whole “what feels right” is just not there sometimes, no matter how hard I try and how much I study. </p>
<p>As for the comment about “well, maybe you’re just good at prose and fiction-type stuff and not so much formulaic writing”. As long as it’s not too formulaic and leaves room for some degree of creativity and “style” or “flair”, I usually do exceptional. Especially on essay competitions, which involve a higher order thinking and a ridiculous amount of originality. I placed 3rd in the prestigious “QAIS Provincial Essay Competition” in grade 9, against far more “elite” private school kids than my own ordinary public school. (I was still annoyed that 1st and 2nd just HAD to come from LCC, which is the Andover of Montreal, where only the super-rich kids go.</p>
<p>Impetuous - I hear ya. I practiced like crazy and our SAT prep advisor gave me the best scores on the essay. She has been doing this for years and years, and only recently she told me that lately, since the subject test became part of the reasoning test, her marks are no longer correlating with the marks the students end up getting. People have gotten 12 for writing crap, albeit long crap. People have gotten 6’s for writing lovely pieces that were “short and sweet”. I am so mad at collegeboard right now, my chances of getting in with my score are like, zero. I seriously hope schools don’t care as much about ACT/SAT writing. I’m especially upset about ACT, because my “6” on the essay brought my English score down from a 36 to a 30, and it was a good essay. </p>
<p>The worst part is, my college advisor said he has so many requests to write letters (he is the only “school counselor” who is designated to write them) that he only grants these requests to people who get over 2300, because from his experience, everyone who gets under doesn’t get in anywhere (I wanted to scream at him “well, it’s because your letters are so rushed and impersonal that they have to overcompensate in SOMETHING!”)</p>
<p>I had to tell him that my scores were delayed… if I do not, he will not write me. I got 2210, with a 1530 CR+M. My CEGEP is the strongest in the province, so everyone is like, insane. A score of 2200 is considered “bad”.</p>
<p>I had exactly the same issue. I took SAT the first time as a sophomore (which is apparently unfathomable to the English teachers at my school, so I consequently knew nothing about how to please CB), and I figured since I am published and have always been a strong writer that I would nail the writing section.
I received an eight, after handing in what I thought was a very well argued, polished, interesting essay. Now, as a junior, I’ve been taught The Formula (and my teacher admits that it does in fact exist) and I can clearly see where I went wrong.</p>
<p>What is the “formula” anyway, and why on earth did the SAT prep person at my school NOT TEACH IT TO ME!?!?</p>
<p>Perhaps because she “wasn’t worried” about it at all - according to her, the essay was the “least of her worries” because I am the “one of the school’s most gifted writers” (and since I go to a giftie school, that is quite a compliment). I don’t know who I’m madder at, her, or collegeboard.</p>
<p>This is direct transcription from some notes I took in class, except for the parenthetical:</p>
<p>Intro: Clear position on the prompt
1, 2, 3: Historic, literary, and Cultural reference. (I don’t think the order matters too much, but cultural at the end has worked best in the past essays we’ve been reading, I’ve noticed) Stay away from ‘general’ examples, and try to stay away from obvious analysis.
OR, provide an extended metaphor throughout these three paragraphs.
Conclusion: tie all three examples together neatly and leave the reader something to think about.</p>
<p>That’s what she’s teaching us, anyway. And rely more on logos and ethos than pathos.</p>