<p>Teen</a> Student Finds Longer SAT Essay Equals Better Score - ABC News</p>
<p>I saw that this morning on GMA. I have never been a fan of the writing section because it is subjective, plus even now, yrs later, many colleges do not place weight into the admissions process regarding this section since they all require their own essays.</p>
<p>I hope this gets traction and college board finally scraps the whole idea of the writing portion.</p>
<p>Eassay is less than 25% of total writing section, and writing is only 1/3 of total SAT score. Grammar part is based on formula and can be taught and studied. It’s the CR that’s difficult.</p>
<p>I got little bit excited when I read the title as D2 is taking SAT I for the first time this Sat.</p>
<p>I’ve always been skeptical about the writing portion, too. It sounds like a good idea in theory, but they lost me when it came out that it’s perfectly fine to make up facts to support your thesis. As if we don’t have enough of that in journalism already. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>One thing my d3 found boosted her writing score was reading the sample essays on the collegeboard website to see what gets a 6 and what gets a 3. </p>
<p>Something that made a big difference in her CR score was when a CCer said something to the effect that “every answer will be found in the text itself” which seems obvious in retrospect but my d had been reading too much into the questions in that section. Best of luck to your d this Saturday, oldfort!</p>
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<p>My understanding was that even if they made up facts to support their views, it didn’t seem to matter on scoring. I guess the people reading the essays can’t or won’t take the time to verify WHAT is being said.</p>
<p>It is known at least by us that facts and quality of ideas do not matter in SAT essay writing. They are supposed to mostly grade sentence structures, grammar, and proper composition and progression of ideas. Long essay and throwing big words are also supposed to be beneficial. Things like having good introduction and a body that provides proper support for the assertions in the intro and good ending summary. If it sounds good, cohesive, not confusing and proper presentation of arguments, you are good.</p>
<p>I guess they’re only looking for the mechanics, then, which is perfectly fine. It’s their test - they can look for whatever they want. 
But it’s harder to write well when you’ve got to acknowledge those pesky facts.</p>
<p>If you can make up facts, think of the fun you could have writing the essay. If more students knew this, it would totally change the way students feel about the essay. It would make it much easier to write more, too.</p>
<p>I loved this comment: “My employer takes the SAT almost every year, and he always receives a perfect essay score–even when one of his examples said that JFK was a failed Saxon leader of New Brittany during the Ostrogoth Revolution.”</p>
<p>My older son got a better essay score the second time he took the SAT but sadly went down on the multiple choice questions and still ended up with a 690, just like he’d gotten the first time. Strangely he’d gotten an 800 on the PSAT writing.</p>
<p>This is old news though - I remember the MIT prof’s analysis from years ago. Unfortunately my kids tend to be terse.</p>
<p>^^I agree, anyone who has spent time on CCs SAT Prep forum has heard that length counts in scoring. This was posted by a CC member in 2006 or earlier, a slightly different take on why longer tends to get higher scores (#5):</p>
<p>How to Score a 12 on the Essay – A Miniguide </p>
<p>I scored a 12 on both the March and June SAT essays, so I thought I would write up some spicy tips for you all to do the same.</p>
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<li><p>Read the Quote and the Question. Most kids open the first page of the question booklet and skip the quote, heading right to the question. The quote is there for a reason, though. It gives you some instant mental imagery, sets the tone for the question, and ignites your critical thinker. It is highly probable that you wont know the author of the quote, but if you do, it would definitely be prudent to at least mention that person and his or her ideas briefly in the essay (on the same topic, of course). Read the quote twice if you have to. Otherwise, move onto the question. Read the question ten times if you have to, noting how it is phrased. Realize that the questions must be politically correct and are supposedly philosophical, which means they are questions of truth and knowledge. You must fully understand the question to proceed. If you misread it and write off-topic, the results could be disastrous.</p></li>
<li><p>Time is not on your side. The test prep books will tell you how to manage your time, but the fact is that theres barely enough time for any type of planning. You do not have time to create an outline! Immediately after comprehending the question, begin your first sentence! You need every second possible. If, after reading the question, your mind begins to race with ideas (which is the best possible scenario), jot a few letters down in the test booklet to refresh your memory, but thats it! The ideal situation is to spend just a minute or two on the quote and question, dive into writing, and have a minute to spare at the end to search for grammatical errors or to upgrade your word choice in a few areas. However, you dont want to have to stop in the middle of a sentence when time is called, so bring a watch with a built-in stopwatch if possible. Try not to look at it for the majority of the essays duration, though.</p></li>
<li><p>Examples, Examples, Examples
and more Examples. This is the fuel of your essay. You need to keep thinking of examples as you write. Personal anecdotes will not work (e.g. At my school, I volunteer every week…). You need solid examples that carry at least partial academic weight (for instance, a well-known person, historical event, movie, philosophical concept, etc). The more examples you have, the more you have to write about, and the better your argument becomes. Many people have stated that since these essays are read by english teachers, it is a good idea to include books as examples. I think there is validity in this belief; however, you want the reader to think of you as a culturally enriched student, so draw from all types of examples, current events, entertainment, whatever!</p></li>
<li><p>Stay Focused. Its easy to lose sight of what the question is asking. In each paragraph, re-read the question to tie it all together. You dont want to write two whole pages only to realize that you digressed majorly and went off on a tangent. You can easily lengthen your essay by continuing to mention how your examples fit with the topic. </p></li>
<li><p>Content is King, but it wont guarantee a 12. Ever since that MIT professor found a correlation between length and scores, everyone assumes that longer essays get higher scores. Its true, but only because the more capable students usually have more to say and more to think about. Writing just to fill up space wont ensure a high mark (in fact, the more a reader sees of your writing style or lack thereof, the more it may in fact hurt you). Many of my friends filled up both pages until the last line and still received 10s. This reaffirms the fact that its what you write and not how much you write. (I will note, though, that I did fill up every line provided on both of my essays).</p></li>
<li><p>Prepackage, but also let it Flow. Think of some well crafted sentences and vocabulary that you know you want to use in the essay. Broad but insightful statements work very well as they can be applied to almost any essay the SAT writers throw at you. The readers <em>will</em> award more points just because there is an indication of planning. During the week or night before the test, lay out some vocab words which you are familiar with but which are still academic (dont use anything too far above your level). You can also think of some broad examples (for instance, editorialist Thomas Friedman has been writing recently about how the world is flat since jobs are being outsourced to India and China this could work for that job essay prompt, the majority rule question, practical skills, creativity
you name it!) Still, you should allow yourself a good amount of flexibility, so dont try to memorize an entire 2 page essay you could end up reading the question and panicking since your ideas dont fit the topic.</p></li>
<li><p>Forget conventional American writing. The 5-paragraph essay format practically breeds mediocrity. Its true that you need some type of introduction, and you will need insightful concluding marks, but anything in between should be up to you. On my essays, I had solid introductions but only a couple sentences for the conclusions. There are no rules, so as in the previous tip, let it Flow. If your ideas require one continuous paragraph for the whole essay, so be it. That probably isnt a great idea, but you shouldnt stress yourself out with having three main examples fit perfectly into three main body paragraphs. You are allowed to break a new paragraph just for one or two sentences if you so desire. Whatever you do, make sure its on your terms. In European countries and around the world, they use a spiral format, which uses the whole essay to discuss many viewpoints, and then they arrive at a thesis in the conclusion. For the SAT essay, it doesnt even matter if your thesis isnt the most prominent line so dont spend time crafting a perfect thesis.</p></li>
<li><p>Have a point of view. Go for a nonconformist view, even though that doesnt mean taking an opposte side to the question. Go for the point of view that somehow embraces the beauty of life, succeeding, and progress (it sounds corny, but it works). Dont depress the reader
impress him or her with a new and innovative direction on the prompt.</p></li>
<li><p>Write Legibly. If your reader has to squint to read your essay, it will slow the person down, paying more attention to grammatical errors and other inconsistencies in your essay. Write clearly so that the reader can zoom through and be wowed by the end of it. </p></li>
<li><p>Retaking the SAT? Recycle your essay thoughts. There are no rules against recycling your own ideas. It will be a different grader and a different test, so if you liked the essay you wrote from a past administration, feel free to use some of the same vocabulary, examples, or concepts. Obvious? Yes. Effective? Definitely.</p></li>
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<p>This does not reaffirm anything. It’s a tiny sample, and you have no way of knowing if these friends would have done worse if they wrote less. No one is saying if you fill it up you get 12, but rather that length is correlated with a higher score. </p>
<p>I agree that length may be correlated with other factors that relate to the grade (and thus explain the correlation), but in my experience as a professor, length is not correlated with quality (both weak and strong students write short and long essays).</p>
<p>In terms of real life writing, longer lengths definitely do not correlate to better quality and greater effectiveness, but for the SAT essay you do want to put in as much relevant information as possible. I found in my own experience as well that longer essays equate to better scores. </p>
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<p>I don’t think graders were supposed to judge on the accuracy of the facts, only the style and the coherence of the essay. As for wring should or should not be a part of the SAT… even before, when SAT didn’t have the writing section, many competitive colleges required a subject test in writing. And, as already mentioned, the essay that is highly subjective only constitutes 1/3 of the total writing section grade. The other 2/3 comprise of grammar related question that are important to master.</p>
<p>My D. has struggled with her long way of writing. Finally, her AP Eglish and Lit. class taught her to write shorter, but still not short enough. She continued struggling with long essays and shortenning them down for Grad. School applications with limited essay word count. Otherwise she is a very strong writer, who spends more time shortenning her essays to appropriate size than writing original ones. </p>
<p>I do not think that writing longer has any advantages, including in SAT. Actually, learning to wirte shorter and to the point is really helpful. On the note of improving your SAT score, self-preparing for test using customized plan is very helpful, more so than taking some expensive class.</p>
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<p>No argument here. But please note that the comments I posted were specifically directed at scoring on the SAT Writing section. They were never intended as comments on writing in general, and any such implication is taking them out of context of both their original posting (SAT Essay miniguide) and this thread (Better SAT Score).</p>
<p>Frazzled, academic writing is being able to make a statement, factual or not, and being able to use logical reasoning to articulate your points that support the statement. It’s about critical thinking ability. I’m not sure why one needs “facts” for such an exercise. I’m sure the political bickering on Fox and MSNBC is enough to convince anyone that “facts” are not universal and are open to interpretation.</p>
<p>RE: making up stuff</p>
<p>Those scoring the essays take only about a minute or two on each one. There is no time for them to Google your examples. Though most graders would recognize that JFK was not a “failed Saxon leader,” you get more points for using more examples–ANY examples–that support your thesis. You won’t be graded on the accuracy of those examples. So it’s a good idea to have a few of these made up titles, people, events, etc. ready to throw in and twist to the topic. Kids could have a lot of fun mismatching random stuff from history/novels/plays/films/TV/video games etc. I imagine the readers get a laugh out of some of the more “creative” essays, too.</p>
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Still, I imagine one’s grade in History 101 would be affected negatively if one referred to JFK as a Saxon warrior (to use atomom’s amusing example :)). Part of the challenge of writing, even in high school, is being able to make one’s point using sources (real ones), or what one has learned in class, while observing the rules of grammar and style. The SAT Writing test isn’t looking for that particular set of skills. Which is fine, as I said - they’re looking for whatever it is they’re looking for. You aren’t going to get impressive academic writing in any case if the kid has 30 minutes to crank out a 5-paragraph essay. </p>
<p>I can understand that of course the readers don’t have time to fact-check. It’s just my own little opinion - I think a test is kind of :rolleyes: if it’s fine to make up your own facts.</p>
<p>A professor of mine once matter-of-factly told the class that he graded our essay tests by the “weight criteria” - the further the test flew down stairs when thrown, the higher the test score. Since we never understood his grading criteria for reading illegible handwritten tests anyways, we figured he was telling the truth. Length matters when all other things are illegible.</p>
<p>credit to mathmom (and original source) for that amusing JFK example :)</p>
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<p>My point was to disagree with what you said below. I do not believe that more capable students- on SAT or anywhere else- have more to say than less capable students.</p>
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