<p>my mom knows someone who was an essay grader for the SAT. she (the grader) said "use authentic, personal examples, be creative, and don't be afraid to not use a 5-paragraph format."</p>
<p>this suprised me quite a bit. it seems weird that a standardized test wants creativity at all, but my experience with the essay backs up her advice--i wrote a boring, standard essay with advanced vocab and sentence structure and got a pretty crappy score. so...yeah, apparently you should be creative with it. who knew.</p>
<p>When the grader talked about creativity, how did she mean that? Did she mean that a person should be creative in selecting examples, or that the essay should be a creative work (like a poem or short story)? Without knowing more I'd be leaning towards the former, but if you could ask that as a follow-up question we'd all be grateful :)</p>
<p>While I've seen a lot of 12-scoring essays (and wrote one) with personal examples, I haven't seen any that were "creative" in the second sense of the word that I mentioned above. Does anybody have one of those to share?</p>
<p>what do you guys have against creativity? sounds like youre afraid of it. </p>
<p>my english teacher likes us to be creative in our essays. that doesnt mean it has to be a short story or a poem, it just means it has to be stylistic and, dare i say, have some uniqueness to it, some ingenuity. Use striking adjectives and strong verbs, just add some spice to it, that's all. usually its a personal essay too, so feel free to use the first-person--i find it much easier to be "creative" when im discussing my own personal experiences or observations.</p>
<p>Perhaps I will be called lazy for not doing it myself, but I know there have probably been about 10+ threads in the past month or so called things like "People who got 11s or 12s on essays, post what you did" and stuff like that. Lots of people are looking for advice on this. </p>
<p>It might be helpful if someone went back and compiled all of the advice which had been given into one thread, and then reposted it... I'm sure the people who are "cramming" for the May test would appreciate that -_-</p>
<p>I'm not afraid of creativity at all--but there's a difference between creative phrasing and e.e. cummings. I've seen plenty of creative phrasing in 12-scoring essays, but that, to me, is just strong writing--I wouldn't necessarily call the decision to use the first person or a striking adjective a creative choice. On the other hand, maybe some people would, which is why I wanted to know what the grader meant by "creative."</p>