Critique and feedback for my essay please? :)

QuantMech
Thu, 27 Oct 2011 15:24:31 +0000

I agree that this is a very good essay, for one written under the conditions of the SAT test. I would definitely have rated it higher than 8.

Since you are looking for suggestions that could increase your score next time, though, here are a few:

1) If you can avoid the use of “many,” do avoid it. Generally, it weakens your statements. Similarly, a concrete word is often better than “several.”

2) Avoid listing adjectives in sequence, unless that really adds something to your statement. Your use of “inevitably always” in the introduction is likely to cause the reader to take your score down a notch or two. If something is truly inevitable, then it does always happen, so both words are not needed.

3) Your examples come from the arts (literature, film, painting). This is fine, if you cannot think of an example in engineering or medicine, off-hand. However, when you introduce them as “different” fields, the reader might expect more variety. Again, a concrete word choice, rather than “different,” might serve you better.

4) In the last few minutes of the allotted time, check your word choice for precision. When you wrote about Dr. Seuss “people disliked his creativity,” this might have caused your readers to question the word choice. It might have been Suess’s particular style or his irreverence that they disliked, rather than his creativity. Also, while I am a great fan of “And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street,” Suess takes a very dismissive attitude toward women in that particular piece. (I believe that it includes the line: “Why even Sue could think of that!”). Probably about 60% of the essay readers are female. You can accidentally fall into the trap of citing something approvingly, when the readers may dislike it for reasons that you do not know.

5) Be careful with modifying phrases. For example, when you write “Especially as a woman, her profession and style [were] unconventional,” the word “woman” is in apposition with “profession and style,” neither of which is female.

6) I know that the SAT graders are not supposed to take errors of fact into account, but Mickey is a small talking mouse, not a giant one! Along more serious lines, Walt Disney died in 1966. Your use of “he has become” would be correct if he were still alive. This is a case where an error of fact could masquerade as an error in tense choice, and might cause you to be downgraded. Your reference to Walt Disney as “Walter Disney,” though totally accurate, probably identifies you as an international student, since Americans would typically write “Walt Disney,” as you did later in the essay. There may be a subconscious reluctance on the part of the essay graders to give high scores to someone they suspect is not a native English speaker.

7) You might avoid using “yet another” to introduce your second example. (It’s ok for the third example.) Also, the preposition with “example” should be “of,” rather than “about.” You had this right part of the time, but wrong in the section about Emily Carr.

Other than that, I think this is actually a quite good essay, especially given the time constraints.