<p>"He was stunned by how complete the correlation was between length and score. "I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one," he said. "If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you'd be right over 90 percent of the time." The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade."</p>
<p>This might be ancient history, and I bet someone has posted this before. But I just discovered this by typing in SAT essay in google and I went into a wikipedia page for SAT essay and found this source for one of the quotes in the article.</p>
<p>I find this rather interesting. Does this claim have any bases? If it does then I think I got myself a new SAT essay strategy before I review it.</p>
<p>Haha, my essay was too long. I was only able to finish the intro and 2 of my body paragraphs before I ran out of room, and I write VERY small. I still got an 11/12 though (5 from one grader, 6 from another). Guess its true, but I would rather see a coorelational study between quality and length. I would be willing to bet that the longer essays are also the most well written.</p>
<p>My essay filled up the entire first page and 3/4 of the second (that would make it long) and after re-reading it, I think that it sucked, but it got a 10, so I guess if you see that as good then maybe that theory is true. </p>
<p>Hah, if anyone out there wants me to send my essay to them I will. Just pm me your email and I'll send you the scans of it so you can see for yourself.</p>
<p>I've heard that before though. I've also heard that essays writting in cursive rather than print generally score higher... I'm not sure how reliable that is.</p>
<p>The thing about essay length is that longer essays tend to back up the thesis with more and more well-supported evidence. If you wrote gibberish but made it the full length, your score won't be as good as a shorter, but stronger argument. And kidwithshirt, why did I read the article you sent? I'm currently reading Anna Karenina and the article spoiled the end! Oh, boo.</p>
<p>For example, lets say there's an essay that goes up to the last line and that has quite a few grammar mistakes. </p>
<p>Now let's say there's another essay that has taken up a 1 and 1/3 page, and has no grammar mistakes.</p>
<p>Both these essays having similar thesis support, and vocabulary-level. I'd bet on the longer essay getting a 10 and the shorter essay an 8. I really believe that the extra-BSing to fill up the empty lines works. I've taken the SAT twice, the first time I focused on quality, I got an 8. Second time I focused on quantity, I got a 10. I have heard many other cases of this also.</p>
<p>By length, do you mean the # of words or the visual length (1/3 of page, to the last line, etc.)? My hand-writing is tiny and one page in my writing is literally equal to a normal person's two pages. Will this affect my score negatively?</p>