stone_cutter

I used Amish people as an example; I remembered thoreau/walden pond right after I was done

ayeleswarapu

Thats a good example though with the Amish people. Non technology in real life. I wish I had thought of that.

Gregarion

Expectations for mine?

Full pages, completely filled.

Examples:
Amazon.com's Kindle eBook reader
- Talked about how technology is moving forward but a great amount of people still prefer to read physical books because of certain almost intangible things, smell of the pages, sound of the page turning. Old style things help us to get back to our roots and transport us to other worlds.
Thoreau and Walden
- Talked about by separating himself from technology and society allowed him to become more in tune with the lake and nature itself. By moving himself away from those distractions he was able to discover who he was. The person who knows himself best is one who can maintain his opinion while amidst all the technology and dissenting opinion.
Einstein/Szilard Letter, the atomic bomb
- Einstein was a pacifist, but he still used his celebrity in order to get Szilard's letter noticed by Roosevelt. Letter led to the Manhattan project. Einstein put aside his own views and embraced technology for the safety of the world and an expedient end to the World War.

Thesis was that I qualified it, sometimes it's good for us to go away from technology and sometimes we need to embrace it. (Safety, etc.)

DwightEisenhower

Not to be too off topic but I was never under the impression that Walden had anything to do with technology. In fact Walden didn't even advocate retreating into nature. It advocated retreating into escape from society, whatever that meant for the individual. I think Thoreau had more of a problem with society than technology itself...though the loose association could probably be made on the SAT prompt I suppose.

ayeleswarapu

Good ideas Gregarion, but I would max you out at a 10. Unfortunately, I have found out that taking the fence on the topic doesn't stick too well with the CollegeBoard graders. I have heard that one of their grading paradigms is "Did writer take a specific side." Furthermore, the fact that you should mention the length of your essays baffles me. It isn't just you; multiple people post essay lengths, and people seem to be using that as a guideline to measure how good the essay was. I have gotten an 11 from a 1.25 page essay in December '07. So, could someone explain the length issue to me? Thanks.

ayeleswarapu

And yes, I tend to agree with you, DwightEisenhower.

DwightEisenhower

Quick question regarding the essay--I know that the type of examples are all treated equally, e.g. a reference to literature is no more or less valuable than a personal anecdote. But is it important to have a diversity of examples? My essay for this prompt was almost entirely personal anecdote, albeit ellaborated.

Second question too, actually. How much of an issue is handwriting? My handwriting is atrocious...readable, obviously, but it may take a little exerted effort. How do readers handle this, and how do they treat illegible words? As spelling errors? I mean I may use the word "pervasive" and have an "r" that kind of feeds into the "v" and doesn't really look like an r. Will a reader take the extra mental second to figure out that the word says "pervasive" or will they get annoyed?

reichin0717

suggestions needed:

1st argument: tech impedes our ability to socialize/experience the immediate things around us (support by: cell phones, pagers, ipods)
2nd argument: tech poses threats to our existance (detrimental death toll in WWII due to invention of submarines, tanks, airplanes.... related to hydrogen bombs & nuclear weapons as future threats (but did not finish this argument)

overall, a more more than 1 1/2 pages but lacked conclusion

thanks!!

einstein7th

To Gregarion, If most of your essay expressed an argument, and you added in a short/quick antithesis expressing that you realize the virtues of the other side - then you should be Okay. Ayeleswarapu, as for on the fence - it really depends... Sometimes, well written, it can fly. The key part is the clarity with which you express your ideas, the vocab, sentence structure and variety, and limiting the grammatical/spelling mistakes. The ideas themselves don't have to be extremely great/awesome. I've read essays just based on personal experiences that have gotten 12s. It really is on HOW you write it, WHAT you write about is less important to the CollegeBoard Readers - though they still matter, to a degree.

My 2 Cents.


BTW, on my support I cited:

1 Personal example of my grandmother, elaborated on her refusal to accept the complicated new techonology, etc.

2 Historical non-safeness of technology and how w/ more technology, comes more hazards (IRS was hacked and thousands of people lost their CC information including my parents, etc.)

3. War and their technological advancements in killing, etc. Cited a direct quote from Einstein which I thought was pretty nifty.

Basic argument followed the thesis of: familiarity, safety, and simplicity (or thereabouts).

Ideas, again, not great, I simply could not think of a literature source for the life of me...

But I thought my writing was well done, and so it shouldn't be too bad.

Just remember, it's a writing section, not a "how good are your ideas/support" section.

Best of luck to all!

laxgirl22

i got the tech essay..
i expressed benifits of not using technology are found in

a) societys - historical - the shakers made some of best woodwork etc with no tech;; modernday- Amish

b) movie - "life as a house" father and son build house from hand, gain life experience, sense of pride

c) price of handmade goods is higher than those made by using technology, handmade is valued more


how do you think i did

giantsfan

am i the only person who got this prompt?

do people today care too much about winning?

im in california, so maybe sat splits the essay topics up regionally.


my supports were:
race riots caused by competition over jobs
desire to win vietnam war, leading to unnecessary deaths
personal experience

and i filled both pages. how do you think i did? 10-12 possibly?

snow_white

I got the prompt about winning too! I'm surprised that no one else mentioned it, but you are right, it might be a regional thing. I used a lot of personal examples cause I'm a competitive swimmer. I just wish that I had more historical examples. I didn't do well in that respect but I liked the rest of it. And no matter what I get I'm practically guaranteed to beat my essay score from last time. It was horrid!

GullibleAirhead

I got the technology question. My overall thesis was that all these tools prevent humans from living as nature intended. My supports:

1. The futuristic society in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (only book that came to mind at the time) and how the panoramic TV screens and gadgets distract Montag's wife (Millie?) from loving her husband and being a feeling human, how all those tools end up living her life for her, etc

2. Unhealthy effects of people not commuting, health issues, obesity

3. Decreased standards in education and brain enrichment, with calculators and auto spell-check doing all the thinking for students nowadays

I filled up nearly all the two pages, I had about 2 or 3 lines left over. But I made sure my handwriting was legible and used proper sentence structure and varied vocabulary....Based on that, and also my supports, what would you give me if you were SAT readers?

Thanks all, and everyone else had really good references too, some I would have never thought of (Amish) but brilliant!

G. A. (hopefully my SAT score won't reflect my username, haha)

Feed

^ That's a pretty solid essay. 9~10 (at least). Even if you used like not so impressive vocab, and a tid bit of varying sentence structure (which I think you did)... you could have an 11 your way. Great thesis, btw.
I was thinking about Fahrenheit 451 too... but I chose to right about Feed instead.

Good job! & Good luck!

GullibleAirhead

Feed - thanks! btw, you wrote your essay about yourself? Cool!

It was my first SAT...and I was hoping that the essay part would help out my writing score because I'm more comfortable with that than finding errors and stuff (I think they write badly-written, but technically correct sentences on purpose!!) and I have a pretty good feeling about this. Can't wait for May 22!