<p>Let's see if we can find some patterns here. If you got a high essay score, please fill this out so everyone here can learn from some correlation! Just copy and paste and plug in your answers.</p>
<p>Here's an example (not a real test)
Month/Year: March 2011
Score: 11
Prompt: Photography
Length: 1.75 pages
Clarity/Quality<em>: Decently written
Vocab</em>: Sprinkled a few SAT words here and there in good context
Structure<em>: Very simple and direct sentence structure. 4 Paragraphs
Additional Comments</em>: I thought I got a 0 since the prompt threw me off. I used example A and B and it felt offtopic afterwards!</p>
<p>The starred portions involve some detail so feel free to write anything you feel can help the community!</p>
<p>Month/Year: March 2011
Score: 11
Prompt: Reality Entertainment
Length: 2 Pages
Clarity/Quality: clear
Vocab: Constant SAT vocab usage
Structure: 2 body paragraphs but with one much larger
Additional Comments: 11 in oct with similar stats and 12 in jan but jan was more logical</p>
<p>Month/Year: March 2011
Score: 8
Prompt: Reality TV (ugh)
Length: 2 pages
Clarity/Quality: not very good… but ok
Vocab: simple
Structure: straightfoward, 5 paragraphs
Additional Comments: considering I wrote 2 pages and it was coherent, I thought I had a 10… but guess not</p>
<p>Month/Year: March 2011
Score: 11
Prompt: Reality Entertainment
Length: 2 pages
Clarity/Quality: I thought it was great.
Vocab: Decent.
Structure: 5 even paragraphs.
Additional Comments: The difficulty of that prompt has been blown WAY out of proportion. The above box with the info about reality television shouldn’t have suggested at all that reality entertainment should be defined strictly as television… They were right when they said that it was a fair prompt IMO.</p>
<p>Month/Year: March 2011
Score: 11
Prompt: Reality Television
Length: 2 pages
Clarity/Quality: Clear
Vocab: Pretty good
Structure: I can’t exactly remember but 4-5 paragraphs
Additional Comments: I did not use any reality television shows as examples.</p>
<p>Month/Year: March 2011
Score: 10
Prompt: Reality TV
Length: filled up 2 pages, i write pretty big
Clarity/Quality: Clear and straight to the point.<br>
Vocab: Solid choice of diction
Structure: 4 paragraphs, my intro was the longest of them all… filled up 3/4 of the first page
Additional Comments: First example, i made up an article to back up my thesis, 2nd example i somehow was able to say that Music During the civil war was somewhat like reality tv shows in which it distorted how people viewed reality. << i thought my 2nd example was gna be a complete fail.</p>
<p>Month/Year: March 2011
Score: 11
Prompt: Photography
Length: 2 pages
Clarity/Quality: Very clear, concise, creative
Vocab: Medium-High, a few SAT words
Structure: 4-5 paragraphs, strong thesis and conclusion which reiterated topic
Additional Comments: I used two historical examples to support my thesis that photography was a form of art and therefore should be seen as subjective rather than objective. I tried to put in as many details as I could think of, but it honestly wasn’t too detailed.</p>
<p>Month/Year: March/2011
Score: 10
Prompt: Photography
Length: Wrote to the very last line!
Clarity/Quality: Clear, not too much fluff, range of examples
Vocab: med-high. could have used more sat words probably
Structure: Organized.
Additional Comments: Well…wasn’t expecting this kind of prompt. It threw me off guard. :/</p>
<p>Month/Year: March 2011
Score: 10
Prompt: Photography
Length: 1.5-1.75
Clarity/Quality: clear, okay quality
Vocab: low, I might’ve used one or two SAT words
Structure: intro, 2 body paragraphs, conclusion
Additional Comments: I basically restated the prompt a ton of times and used only one historical example and one very general example I made up. I have no idea why they gave me a 10. 8D</p>
<p>Month/Year: March 2011
Score: 10
Prompt: Photography
Length: 1.75 pages
Clarity/Quality: Somewhat confusing due to me using reason as one of my points
Vocab: Very high, i used around 15 SAT Vocab Words
Structure: Intro, 3 body, conclusion
Additional comments: I did not use any literature examples. For my 3 body paragraphs i used an example of how photography is a kind of art and therefore subjective, certain photographers are considered above therefore making it not that objective, and how propaganda used by Stalin in modifying pictures.</p>
<p>Month/Year: March 2011
Score: 11
Prompt: Photography
Length: 1.90 pages
Clarity/Quality<em>: Decently written, i knew what i was writing about. see additional info.
Vocab: no ‘special’ words for me. however, i use a lot of vocab anyways, so…
Structure</em>: semicolons. complex structure, with interwoven examples from photography such as f-stops, focus length, rule of thirds, etc. 4 paragraph standard intro and conclusion, 1 body paragraph arguing the technical side of what makes a photo personal and a paragraph arguing the emotional side.
Additional Comments*: i love photography as a hobby, have my own dSLR (google it if you don’t know what it is) probably helped alot. i got a 2400 on this SAT also, i tend to use words that people who get less than 2000 on the SAT probably need to bust out the dictionary for, but i didn’t really study vocab or attempt to put words i consider difficult in there. your mileage may vary, but from a perspective of a grader who had been through a bunch of 7/8 essays mines might have a lot of vocab. i go to a public school that’s top 30 in nation (public OR private), so keep that in mind when considering my vocab.</p>
<p>Month/Year:March 2011
Score:10
Prompt:Is reality TV good or bad for society? (more or less)
Length: I filled both pages entirely
Clarity/Quality: No grammar errors
Vocab:Not over the top, but somewhat sophisticated.
Structure: Intro, 2 body, conclusion
Additional Comments: One of my pieces of evidence was not legitimate; I used a scripted comedy show as an example of reality TV, which it wasn’t. Also, the prompt didn’t lend itself to the use of scholarly evidence in the essay–I was expecting to be able to talk about the Progressive Era, or biology, or something like that. I don’t watch all that much reality TV so my examples were stretches. I had several sentences written in first person, although my personal presence in the essay wasn’t overwhelming.</p>
<p>Perhaps. When you choose “scores” on the side panel your section scores should immediately come up, and the essay score will be next to your writing score, though it is rather tiny. Did you get your scores in the mail for October? Try looking at that. Hope you can figure it out!</p>
<p>Month/Year: March 2011
Score: 10
Prompt: Are photographs affected by the bias of the photographer (more or less)
Length: Filled every line, wrote really small in the last paragraph.
Clarity/Quality: Fairly good, organized, to the point. My examples were not the strongest (2 personal examples that were “inspired by a true story,” and a paragraph about the commercial applications of photography and how that impacts photographs), but they were decent.
Vocab: Moderately strong, forced myself to use several advanced SAT words
Structure: 5 paragraphs, the intro and conclusion were fairly short. Also, the conclusion just basically restanted my thesis and the main idea of the body paragraphs.
Additional Comments: Kind of a wierd essay topic, so I was pleased with the results because I thought it could have been a lot worse. I couldn’t really use any of my pre-thought out examples from literature/history/current events, so I had to improvise.</p>
<p>Month/Year - May 2010
Score - 11
Prompt - Do small decisions often have major consequences? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Length - Took up entire two pages and wrote very small.
Clarity/Quality - Got my point across pretty well. Strong anecdotes along with showing a higher level of thinking I believe helped my score.
Vocab - Average. No truely outstanding words, that would require the normal person to grab for a dictionary. I like to focus on quantity rather than quality when it comes to writing. Rather than going for those “wow” words i just limit the repeating of words. Say if the prompt involed the word “bigger”, I’ll find 100 different ways to say it.
Structure - 4 paragraphs. Lengthy intro, even longer body paragraphs, very short conclusion (1-2 sentences)</p>
<p>Month/Year: March 2011
Score: 10
Prompt: Photographs
Length: 1 page + first five lines of second page. My handwriting is tiny as heck.
Clarity/Quality: Fair.
Vocab: Decent. I’m not very good at integrating “SAT” vocab. I did use “inchoate” correctly. Perhaps that helped.
Structure: Long intro, winning thesis, two body paragraphs.
Additional Comments: Wrote about Japanese internment and the photos sponsored by the Gov’t, as well as propaganda photos from WWII. I definitely had a leftist tone. Not sure if this positively or negatively affected my score.</p>
<p>Month/Year: March 2011
Score: 10
Prompt: Reality Entertainment
Length: Filled to the last line, however my handwriting is gigantic
Clarity/Quality: Maybe a 7-8/10 on my own personal level
Vocab: Slipped in a few slightly obscure words here and there
Structure: Stated opinion - thesis outlining body paragraphs, body paragraphs, conclusion referencing body paragraphs.
Additional Comments: Wrote about American Idol, Celebrity Rehab and Jersey Shore. I felt as if I was just continually shoving my thesis whenever I could and it lacked any really strong logical arguments lol</p>
also, i tend to use words that people who get less than 2000 on the SAT probably need to bust out the dictionary for, but i didn’t really study vocab or attempt to put words i consider difficult in there. your mileage may vary, but from a perspective of a grader who had been through a bunch of 7/8 essays mines might have a lot of vocab. i go to a public school that’s top 30 in nation (public OR private), so keep that in mind when considering my vocab.</p>