Score My Essay -- Creativity

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>Quote:
Given the importance of human creativity, one would think it should
have a high priority among
our concerns. But if we look at the reality, we see a different
picture. Basic scientific research is
minimized in favor of immediate practical applications. The arts are
increasingly seen as
dispensable luxuries. Yet as competition heats up around the globe,
exactly the opposite strategy
is needed.
Invention</p>

<p>Adapted from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the
Psychology of Discovery and</p>

<p>Assignment: Is creativity needed more than ever in the world today?
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.</p>

<p>Essay:</p>

<p>People are amazing animals. There fame in the animal kingdom comes from one particular trait: their brains, along with the creative ideas and technologies they have developed. In today's highly competitive world, using one's own faculties to the limits is the only thing that can seperate a person from being just another animal.</p>

<p>In Steve Wozniak's autobiography, iWoz, he explains how in his computer club most people were developing similar machines. These computers all had only rudimentary interfaces (no mice or cursors). Steve was able to break way from this mindset, going on to become the most famous computer engineer when he built a computer with a mouse. This computer, suitable for home use, embodied the creativity necessary to outcompete the rest.</p>

<p>I, like Steve, used creativity myself to do my own outcompeting. Most of my friends have been crammed up in their rooms with dry, arduous SAT prep books, in hopes of acing the SATs. When I watched their efforts fail, due to lack of motivation and the monotony of the task they set for themselves, I became determined to come up with a personal study plan that would allow me to have some fun and enjoy what I was doing, such as drawing pictures of vocab words and writing funny practice essays. This novel plan of mine is helping me right now compete for a high SAT score.</p>

<p>Steve Wozniak and I bother appreciated innovative thinking when we broke away from the tried-and-true to form our own paths, and the world rewarded us.</p>

<p>Thanks guys.</p>

2

<p>Some grammar mistakes (misuse of homonyms, etc.) marred the flow of your essay, and I found your diction to at times be awkward.</p>

<p>The first example was good, but could have used a bit more elaboration, but I didn't like the second one. Given that you don't yet know the results of your SAT, you can't quite establish the causation (or correlation even) needed to support your thesis.</p>

<p>8/12</p>

3

<p>I'd give this a 4 out of 6. It has some good ideas and thoughts, but they're underdeveloped. For example, your first paragraph goes into very little detail about what made Wozniak's machine so much better than the other competing machines (you merely said his computer had mice...). I mean, the mouse was just a very small part of the Apple's success. Talk more about the software innovations that were made possible by the hardware. For example, Wozniak wrote a version of Breakout for the Apple II complete with sound (this made owning a sound board desirable). There's lots more detail you can talk about wrt to Wozniak's creativity.</p>

<p>Your second paragraph, er, well, you again underdevelop your point of view. You state your creative methods merely in passing and you touch on them only topically. Go into more detail, talk about why your method was better than the standard method. Prove your thesis!</p>

4

<p>Thanks guys.</p>

5

<p>Question, though. </p>

<p>If I use my current writing style, but get less abstract and go into way more depth, is that enough? Would these 4 paragraphs have been enough if I seriously delved into my two examples?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

6

<p>The question was: "Is creativity needed more than ever in the world today?" You didn't answer it.</p>

<p>I don't know how things are graded on the tests younger people are taking today (when I want to register for classes these days I use my prior postsecondary performance instead of standardized tests), but I have graded freshman papers at the college level for similar kinds of questions ("What do you think about this, and why?"), and you wouldn't do well there.</p>

<p>Your first paragraph is completely irrelevant. It doesn't answer the question, it doesn't support an answer found elsewhere in the essay, and it doesn't really make sense. I'm not sure in what way people can be famous in the animal kingdom. (Do lemurs, for example, spend a lot of time talking about us in the way that we spend a lot of time talking about Hollywood stars?) Brains, ideas, and technologies are not three traits, let alone one trait. And in the sense that most people talk about "today's highly competitive world," people aren't competing against penguins and moose, so your third sentence completely changes direction halfway through. </p>

<p>Your next three paragraphs answer the question "Is appreciating creativity rewarded in the world today?" Apparently, at least sometimes, it is: you and Steve Wozniak appreciated creativity and were rewarded for it. (I'm not sure exactly how you are saying you were rewarded, though -- have you already gotten a high SAT score? Maybe you should ask yourself whether you think you learned more than you would have if you'd done it the other way.) I think you meant to say that you and Steve Wozniak were creative and were rewarded for it, but that's still an answer to a question other than what was asked. After all, at least sometimes, embezzlement is rewarded in the world today, but that doesn't mean that embezzlement is needed now more than ever.</p>

<p>You have some good ideas. In both your examples, someone sees everybody else doing basically the same thing, identifies the limitations of that method, comes up with another, better, way of achieving the goal, and gains a competitive advantage. If gaining a competitive advantage is needed more than ever, those examples can be used to support the answer I think you're arguing for. But you should know exactly what point you are arguing for ("Creativity is needed more than ever in the world today") and make sure that all the links are there.</p>

<p>I'd suggest trying to come up with an example that is a little different rather than having two parallel examples. For example, instead of (or as well as) focusing on Steve Wozniak's competitive advantage, what if you argued that the creativity he applied to inventing the mouse made computer use accessible to a much wider audience and helped change society for the better? That's not just different example of the same principle you illustrated with your SAT argument, so you'd be coming at the answer from two directions. Or what if you considered how likely continuing to do the same things we're already doing is likely to solve some kind of problem? Might we be better off coming up with innovative ideas to ensure that more high school graduates had access to really good postsecondary educations instead of just coming up with more and more similar ways to try to enhance specific students' ability to compete for the spaces we already have?</p>

7

<p>nontraditional,
I can't believe you would really go out of your way to write almost a page worth's of critiques. Thanks. I also like how it isn't sugercoated (-:</p>

<p>Back to work. I am trying to study examples of 6s the collegeboard has on its website, and I see what you are talking about in these examples.</p>

8

<p>Thank you for taking it the way it was intended. Sometimes I come off as more harsh than I mean to. :)</p>