If your like one of the millions of high school seniors applying to college, chances are you are going to have to write a college admission essay. It will round out the rest of your application and help you stand out from other applicants. It is one of the only parts of the application you have complete control over, so thought and hard work will be required.

It will be one of the most important essays you will ever write, but its subject is something you should be familiar with- you. The college you are applying to wants to know something not mentioned by your SAT Scores, Transcript, and Resume. They want a chance to get to know your character/personality, and what makes you, well, you. By doing so, they will get to know the person behind the GPA, and if they like what they read in the admission essay for college, they will want you on their campus. Read more…

A 14 year old teenager names Milo Beckman says – he thinks he’s cracked the SAT. Hailing from New yours, he wanted to test the research of MIT professor Les Perelma, who had claims that longer essays resulted in higher SAT scores. According to the College Board, these essays aren’t graded according to any rigorous criteria, but on the “general impression” they give the grader. Beckman, on the other hand, decided to go straight to the source.

Beckman used Facebook to collect data from his fellow students at Stuyvesant High School. A total of 115 SAT-takers reported to him the length of their essays (in lines), and their scores. After analyzing the sample data, Beckman discovered a positive correlation between essay length, and score — and a pretty strong one, too.

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Writing an essay was never so easy. But do not worrrrry !   Research conducted at the MIT shows that high-scoring SAT essays follow at least 4-5 characteristics which the test graders look out for. Apart from the essay length, scholarly examples, explicit points there are other things a student must be informed about.

On the actual SAT two readers will rate your essay. Your essay score is the sum of their two ratings and could range from 12(the highest) to  2 (the lowest). The higher your total score between you are likely to do on the essay section of the SAT. The graders usually grade your essay holistically, rating it on the basis of their overall impression of its effectiveness. Practice is the key here and in-case you are into self studying or your teacher doesn’t have time to score your essay, here’s how you can do it yourself. The following scoring guide will help you to assess you writing strengths and weaknesses, so that you can decide which areas to focus on as you prepare for the SAT.

Position on the topic –

Tick 6 if your essay is clear, convincing and insightful

Tick 5 if fundamentally clear and coherent

4 for fairly clear and coherent

3 for insufficiently clear

2 largely unclear

1 for extremely unclear

Organization of Evidence- Read more…

So now you are ready to dive into the SAT Essay prompts practice session. If not, you may like to refer to some of our earlier posts on SAT Essay to gather information on this very first step of Critical Writing Section.

SAT Essay – Plan before you write

The SAT Essay: An Exploration

The Most Important Step Of Writing The SAT Essay

SAT Writing Essay: Make it consistent and complete

Since the SAT Essay was introduced in 2005, several archetypes have emerged. Some choices faced  in these excerpts are regarding  Individuality, Unique thinking,  Questioning Positions in Authority, Moral Choices, Creativity, Motivation & Success, Hardship & Success, Self Determination, Conflict, Technological Progress, Loyalty and  other Moral Values. Generic reading in Science, History, Famous Personalities & Literature is suggested keeping in mind the above key traits.

Here are a few Sample Essay Prompts for practice which have been released by the College Board since  2005– Read more…

In the last post How To Ace the SAT Math Section, I had touched on some helpful things you can do to raise your math score. I will be coming back to the math section later on, but I’d really like to take a look at one of the most feared parts of the SAT: the essay.

Essay is the only subjective part of the exam. It is worth about 10% of your entire exam. That’s a lot of points!! You want to make sure you do your best on it. It is graded by two college/high school teachers, who will each give it a score out of 6. This means that the maximum that you can score is a 12 and the minimum is a 2 (you can only get a 0 if you write off-topic). How can you ensure that you get a 12? With some insider tips. Read more…