<p>So I just looked online and saw that the CB posted my March essay online. Would you guys mind reading it and scoring it? If you do, please give me some constructive criticism and tell me where I could improve. The topic was about "remembering our mistakes."</p>
<p>A 10/12? It was pretty interesting and you used good examples, but it lacked the natural sophistication that i think comprises what College Board considers a perfect essay (12/12).
I’m pretty curious to see what you actually got for this?</p>
<p>(1) Both the Steve Jobs and Enron examples are shopworn. The Enron example more so because it is dated. In neither example do you make it clear what the mistake was. You refer to “it” in general terms, and you do this repetitively in your essay. Nor do you make it clear “what” was done better and how the action was related to the original mistake. For example, in the case of Steve Jobs you say that he “learned from his mistake” but what was his “quantitatively” different approach?</p>
<p>(2) The Enron example is barely on topic. It reads “Enron did bad things, and they were punished. So now the financial world is in better shape.”</p>
<p>@Snappy
Yep, I got a 10/12. As soon as I finished reading over it I knew exactly what I’d done wrong and I ended up just needing one more point for the 800.</p>
<p>@fogcity
Thanks for the suggestions, when I was writing it I realized that I didn’t actually know Jobs’ changed approach / all that much about the Enron scandal. I will definitely research my examples more extensively if I retake the SAT.</p>
<p>I agree with the previous posters. You make the same exact mistakes I often make (I got a 10 on the March SAT too).</p>
<p>Sometimes our examples are so good that we just don’t know how to thoroughly explain them. For example, I had a prompt about tradition. Jane Eyre, if you’ve ever read it, has a lot to do with tradition. But I knew too much about it and didn’t explain thoroughly what the tradition was and how she broke it. I sort of just explained what happened because she broke tradition.</p>
<p>So? What do we do? </p>
<p>It’s one of 2 things. Either we don’t know our examples well enough (not the case for me, I know mine well) or we’re lacking organization.</p>
<p>I’m gonna assume we’re both lacking organization. My solution is to attack each body paragraph systematically: first explain what error Jobs committed. Next, explain thoroughly what he did differently next time. Finally, explain how he learned from his mistake.</p>
<p>Your problem is that you simply jumped around too much, sort of assuming that the mistakes made were already obvious or known.</p>
