<p>I wanted to post some advice for your SAT essays which also will apply to your future college work in general. This is based on my experience tutoring the SAT and teaching writing at NYU, Stony Brook, and a handful of other places.</p>
<p>First, imagine a game of tug-of-war! Imagine people on both ends of the rope pulling against one another, straining away. Now imagine that each of these “people” are actually ideas or truth-bearing propositions about some subject, and their game of tug-of-war is actually a dialectical confrontation of theses and antitheses surrounding some central proposition. We will tentatively call the outcome of their tug-of-war a “synthesis” (to abuse Socrates and Hegel just a bit). If this doesn’t make sense yet, don’t worry–read on!</p>
<p>For arguably most academic writing, this tug-of-war is how your thesis statement should feel. Especially on the SAT essay prompts, a tug-of-war thesis is usually the first step towards writing a perfect 12. It also will help enrich your college essays and elevate them from a mere summary of your readings to genuine analysis and reflection over them (for college profs, over-summary devoid of original analysis tends to be immediately aggravating). So let’s co-explore what a tug-of-war thesis really is.</p>
<p>The tug-of-war thesis is a statement that contains two opposing lines of thought. It usually begins with a qualification or concession to an opposing point-of-view but then immediately lists several reasons why your position is right anyway. There are many variations of this type of thesis statement, but ultimately, they all have one thing in common: it feels like the ideas presented in them are pulling against each other. This lends both tension and a rich conflict to your content. Let’s go over some examples, each based on student responses to practice SAT prompts:</p>
<ol>
<li>“Even though cultivating one’s passions is essential in the quest for self-fulfillment, financial stability is paramount because it lays the groundwork for pursuing higher aspirations, helps us overcome the crises that visit us in life, and enables us to take care of our parents when they pass into old age.”</li>
</ol>
<p>With this tug-of-war thesis statement, the cultivation of one’s own passions and interests is pulling on one half of the rope. Imagine it as some musclebound, formidable character who is going to earn an entire paragraph of prose real estate in the essay to follow. But the notion of fulfilling the base of Maslow’s triangle, the survival of hardships, and the attention to family obligations are all pulling on the other half of the rope. They are each formidable characters, too, and they are stacked up against the concession. However, the syntax and the content of the thesis statement both declare the winner of this tug-of-war match. There is no mystery as to which end of the rope the writer thinks will win. And now the writer is going to use the rest of the essay to back up this position.</p>
<p>Corny quasi-illustration, with < - - - - - - - - - - - > acting as our rope and “characters” standing in for main points:</p>
<p>Dream-chasing (1 character) < - - - - - - - - - - - > $$$ (3 characters)</p>
<p>Aaaaaaand the winner is…$$$!</p>
<ol>
<li>Just to play devil’s advocate, here’s another example that states the opposite: “Money is the most versatile fuel in the world because it can be converted into anything from an education to a house to a car. However, the happiness we derive from financial gains exhibits sharply diminishing returns, and so it is crucial that we make the pursuit of our dreams our highest priority.”</li>
</ol>
<p>Whenever you use a tug-of-war thesis statement, but sure to declare the winner right away so you can proceed to backing up your judgment call. You don’t want to present opposing lines of thought and then leave the reader guessing about which one you support. Some students of mine have thought that this creates suspense, but it usually just creates confusion (or worse, annoyance) for the reader. So for this example, we have:</p>
<p>Dream-chasing (2 characters) < - - - - - - - - - - - > $ (1 concessionary character)</p>
<p>Aaaaaaand the winner is…dream-chasing!</p>
<p>Another thing to say about the tug-of-war thesis statement is that if you use it, you probably should deal with the concession in your first paragraph or section, often while providing the context for your topic. Afterwards, you should structure your essay to deal with your main ideas in the order you present them in your thesis. In other words, your thesis statement should foreshadow the structure of your entire paper. It’s like a microcosm of your work. (Compare how Shakespeare foreshadows all of <em>Hamlet</em> in the tense opening scene.)</p>
<p>Finally, I recommend leading with your best idea in the very first paragraph or section of your essay. It’s usually not a good strategy to “save the best for last,” especially considering how swiftly SAT readers (and, alas, sometimes your college professors) grade.</p>
<p>I hope this little tidbit helps you craft what I consider the most important sentence in traditional academic writing. I also hope it gets you thinking about both the advantages and limitations of this binary mode of thinking.</p>