<p>Just to clear out before starting, this is my first time practicing an SAT essay, thus I didn't use the 25-minute counter. I instead composed it in about 35-40 minutes, so I hope someone would give me the most precise score for it.</p>
<p>Topic: Is success in life earned or do people succeed because they are lucky? Plan and write an essay. . . .</p>
<p>My essay:</p>
<p>Success is the key to prosperity and everlasting happiness, and the key to success is hard work and determination. As the path to success is full of obstacles and hardships, it is seldom achieved by luck.</p>
<p>Bill Gates, the prodigy of computer and technology and the founder of the world-famous Microsoft corporation, is considered the most successful man in the world. After uncovering his passion for computers during his childhood, Bill Gates kept dreaming about a time when he has his own computer and full uninterrupted time to work on it, until he dropped out of college in his freshman year. Gates dedicated all his time and resources to the computer field, because he had faith that the bounties of hard work and dedication are eminence and success, and now is the most successful person in the world and the second richest man.</p>
<p>Another person who sets a great example of success is Benjamin Franklin. Franklin helped founding the democracy and the powerful constitution of America back in the 18th century. he made various contributions in many fields of education although he was raised without any. He was a successful politician and always ended disagreements between members of the constitution. He reached this popularity and claimed this reputation not because of luck, instead those were results of faith in himself and hard efforts through years. He's now admired by all Americans and considered one of the most successful politicians in America's history.</p>
<h2>Don't wait for success to knock your door by luck, because without hard work you will never achieve it. Always look up on people like Bill Gates and Benjamin Franklin, and set for yourself a goal just like they did, then start putting your best efforts to achieve it and be as successful as anyone of them, because nothing is impossible.</h2>
<p>Any help with the score along with tips and advice would be much appreciated, and thanks in advance.</p>
<p>Your examples are relevant, however, your argument is very superficial. You only discuss the concept of luck a couple times during your entire essay. Had you gone more in-depth with your examples, you would have gotten a higher score. Also, your style of writing is a touch too simple, and could prevent you from achieving a top score.</p>
<p>Hmm. Thanks for taking the time. Now in what ways could I improve my style of writing? Like more complicated words? Different sentence structures? Perhaps different examples? Or those are just fine but need more supporting details?</p>
<p>I like Preply’s evaluation- you set up as a thesis hard work and determination is more important than luck. A great response for the prompt- but then you never address the luck part. I would have like some portion of examples to have discussed how these guys had back luck (maybe Gates being sued by both IBM and the US government) and it still didnt matter to their eventual success. </p>
<p>Some of your sentences are coming across as confusing. For instance:
-“he made various contributions in many fields of education although he was raised without any. " raised without contributions? raised without fields of education?
-”…Bill Gates kept dreaming about a time when he has his own computer and full uninterrupted time to work on it, until he dropped out of college in his freshman year. " Probably more clearly expressed in two sentences. </p>
<p>Your conclusion doesnt have to attempt to be inspiring; you are really just reenforcing that your thesis is proven by your examples. Introducing this, “because nothing is impossible”, at the end unnecessary and new information. Your essay discussed that many things are possible with hard work. Thats a different concept than Nothing is Impossible. </p>
<p>I think this is probably a 4 over all, maybe flirting with a 5 if your sentences were cleaner. HOWEVER you have to practice against the time limit too. If you had to chop it down from 40 to 25 minutes you could have ended up with a 3.</p>
<p>Thank you for your reply argbargy. As for your tips they really are useful and I shall apply them the next time I practice an essay. I can’t understand your point of view about addressing the luck part though, because my teacher said I should only focus on one thesis and avoid talking about the other, since it may cause bafflement to readers. I’d also like to note out that this is the first time I practice on an SAT essay, so I wouldn’t say that’s very bad as a start, so yeah I may improve with further training. I planned before I start writing this essay that I will only do ONE essay with free time, just to grab the techniques and skills needed. The next time I practice I plan to narrow down the time to about 15-20 minutes, since I now know the basic techniques needed. Last thing to ask, is your scoring of the essay out of 6 or 12? Much thanks to you :)</p>
<p>I agree that your focus is on proving your thesis. Sometimes people launch into a consideration of the alternative thesis, which is not what you want to do.</p>
<p>What you are doing is reenforcing your thesis by proving it holds despite objections. </p>
<p>For instance: “Not only was Winston Churchill England’s greatest Prime Minister, its clear that his success was due to his hard work and not mere good luck. In fact he had a lot of bad luck- and overcame it all through his own efforts. He had the bad luck to be born with clinical depression, which he had to battle all his life. His career was nearly destroyed by the disastrous Gallipoli Battle and he was forced to resign. During his “wilderness years” he lost political favor and he was seen as so out of step and inconsequential he was actually heckled out of Parliament. All of this he endured and moved forward from, eventually not only holding the highest political post in England but being the most successful at it.”</p>
<p>In your first paragraph, you should introduce your examples or lead them in. "Several examples . . . . clearly demonstrate (claim) "</p>
<p>In your introduction, you mention individuals struggle on the path of success. You should tie your thesis along with your examples. For example, Bill Gates had to through specific obstacles and then explain how he overcomes them through sheer determination.</p>
<p>Grammatical errors
Bill Gates kept dreaming about a time when he has (had) his own computer and full uninterrupted time to work on it, until he dropped out of college in his freshman year.</p>
<p>Another person who sets a great example of success is Benjamin Franklin. Franklin helped founding (found) the democracy and the powerful constitution of America back in the 18th century.</p>
<p>He reached this popularity and claimed this reputation not because of luck, instead those were results of faith in himself and hard efforts
you need to go into more detail about his hard efforts</p>
<p>In your examples, the success of the examples overshadows the struggles that they had to overcome.</p>
<p>“Last thing to ask, is your scoring of the essay out of 6 or 12?”</p>
<p>Each grader scores you out of 6. There are 2 graders so your maximum score is 12. </p>
<p>My understanding is that the two scores can differ by a maximum of one point (so not Grader#1: 3, Grader #2: 5) before the essay gets sent to a 3rd reader to get a consensus score. </p>
<p>So a 5 might translate in to a range of possibilities from 9-11. It would be nice if we had a histogram of scores to say how elusive a 6 really is but I havent seen one.</p>
<p>@argbargy: Well, I guess what you’re trying to point out is mentioning both debate subjects is better, as long as I keep supporting my thesis and mention why I don’t agree with the other point by providing powerful examples for the readers to comprehend. Is that what you mean? And I know how is the score checked and revised, I just wanted to know if you meant 4/6 (nice) or 4/12 (horrible). :)</p>
<p>@jaefosho: Thanks for replying mate. I disagree with quite some points you stated in your tips and advice. First of, my thesis is clearly stated in the first paragraph (and the key to success is hard work and determination), and then I added “it is seldom achieved by luck” to emphasize my thesis further. Second, the grammatical mistakes you pointed out are definitely not mistakes.</p>
<p>-The first one, has->had: I used has to point out possession, not a tense.
-The second, founding->found: Here I didn’t use it for tense either. I think you don’t know the meaning of founding (no offence), but it means establishing or setting up.</p>
<p>Then, I agree with you that I didn’t go deep in details about Benjamin Franklin’s experiences, and my conclusion was very weak perhaps. I lacked the techniques and tackles needed for writing the conclusion, which gave this horrible outcome. :)</p>
<p>I found your thesis to be somewhat confusing. Your opening sentence says that success is the key to prosperity, which is not what the prompt asked you to write about. You then digress and talk about the prompt. Personally, I think that that sentence can be omitted. Directly answer the question: “Success is earned through hard work and determination.”</p>
<p>Small thing, but I don’t think Bill Gates should be THE prodigy, but A prodigy.</p>
<p>“After uncovering his passion for computers during his childhood, Bill Gates kept dreaming about a time when he has his own computer and full uninterrupted time to work on it, until he dropped out of college in his freshman year” This sentence is ungrammatical and thus confuses me as a reader. I would suggest revising it.</p>
<p>“Don’t wait for success to knock your door by luck, because without hard work you will never achieve it. Always look up on people like Bill Gates and Benjamin Franklin…”
Don’t address the reader! As a reader, I feel insulted that you, the writer, are telling me what to do.</p>
<p>If you guys don’t mind, can you please grade my essay and give comments, too? Thank you so much!</p>
<p>The prompt was “Is creativity needed more than ever in the world today?”</p>
<p>Numerous ingredients are essential for the recipe of future success in our society and planet. Among these, the easily most essential quality needed in the status quo is an explosion of creativity. Most dictionaries explain that creativity is the “ability to reason abstractly.” With that said, it is so much more than that. It is not a stretch to claim that creativity is the defining characteristic of intelligence that can make or break success. Without question, creativity is vital now more than ever in the world because it allows people to break down the constructs of routine society while also promising massive technological breakthroughs.</p>
<p>In his classic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey elucidates how creativity is necessary to fight the restrictions society and the world enforce. Quite simply. he argues through the text that creativity is nothing less than freedom. In the novel, the protagonist McMurphy gets arrested for a small crime and chooses to serve time in a mental asylum rather than a traditional penitentiary. He fails to anticipate that this asylum is run by a power-hungry totalitarian dictator named Nurse Ratched who has cleverly tapped the patients on the ward and removed all their freedom. McMurphy’s massive creative abilities allow him to open up new avenues for the patients to rebel and fight for increased freedom. For example, McMurphy both plans a carnival and a fishing trip to achieve this paradigm shift for how the ward is run. Through both of these creative avenues, McMurphy allows the men to have fun and taste freedom, ultimately leading to the demise of the dictatorship of the nurse. As is clear, it was only through McMurphy’s creativity that the micro-society of the ward was revolutionized and in the same way, creativity is needed in order to fix the fundamental issues with out society.</p>
<p>In addition, Mark Zuckerberg’s creation of Facebook is brilliant proof that creativity is of the highest necessity to cause technological advance. Mark Zuckerberg is a true genius in countless aspects. Importantly, his massive creativity led him to explore revolutionary new ways to connect people on the internet. Years of insight and “messing around” with computer programs in undiscovered realms led him to the idea of creating a social network. In the late 2000s, all this creative exploration came together with the launch of Facebook the revolutionary website that connects individuals across the globe. Indeed, his creativity led to this leap in technology and our world needs creativity to further future technological innovations.</p>
<p>When examining the facets of our world that need to be reinvigorated, creativity is an obviously one. Through breaking down the constructs of traditional society and through the advancement of technology like with Facebook, the importance of creativity is more blatantly clear that is ever has been.</p>