An SAT Essay Formula

No matter what you’ve been told, the SAT essay doesn’t test how good of a writer you are. There’s no way it can, especially in the form it takes. Outside of the SAT, you’ll only find yourself in a situation like this when taking other standardized tests. The essays you’ve written in high school and those you’ll write in college do have some things in common with the SAT, but the comparisons are limited. Why â€Å"good† SAT essays aren’t really â€Å"good† writing I studied writing through high school and college, and now I write for Magoosh, so you can bet I have some thoughts on what makes â€Å"good† writing. But I don’t necessarily see those traits in near perfect SAT essays. The SAT doesn’t care much about your sense of voice, nor does it care much about how engaging or descriptive your writing is. It doesn’t care if you use too many adjectives or if you have an unfortunate love for clichà ©s. So what makes an SAT essay â€Å"good†? Its pretty formulaic. According to the College Board, they care about five things. Developing a point of view Organization Vocabulary Varied sentence structures Grammar And while that’s all true, in a way, you can bet that they don’t pick every student’s response apart meticulously according to each of those five evaluations in equal measure. In fact, let’s think for a moment about what SAT graders really do. They go through thousands of essays every year, and they work by the hour. If you follow the link above, you’ll see that the pay isn’t even all that good. So they take literally about two or three minutes on each essay, and they read quickly to see if there are any glaring errors and whether the writer developed an idea. The most noticeable strengths of good SAT essays Here’s an interesting thought: your essay can be pretty much nonsense and you can still score pretty highly on it. Use some high-level vocabulary, avoid obvious grammatical errors, and write enough to make it seem like you’ve developed an idea, and you’re looking at a total score of 8 or higher out of 12. After all, you would’ve met at least three or four of the criteria for a good essay, even if there’s not a single coherent idea on the paper. As long as the schizophrenic lady on the street has some collegiate vocabulary and solid grammar, her essay about how being the queen of 7-Eleven proves the importance of honesty might get a decent score. That’s either a depressing idea or an encouraging one, depending on how you take it. The point is that the SAT essay actually tests a lot of the same skills that SAT reading comp and SAT writing multiple choice do. Avoid frequent, large grammar errors, use a couple of your flash-card words correctly, and fill the page as much as you can, and you’re looking at a pretty decent score already. It won’t make you a good writer, per se, but hey—points are points on the SAT.