Critique and Grade?

johnstucky
Thu, 10 Jan 2013 01:22:02 +0000

The first thing I notice is that your essay is considerably short. It seems to be only about 250 words. Try to shoot for 350+, as it will help your score. Although quality is important, quantity is a huge component of the SAT essay. Since the graders only have a couple of minutes to grade, first impressions are key. Thus, you essentially need a relatively long essay to achieve a high score because the grader will be impressed by the length and may not even read it in its entirety.

Your essay, evidently, is underdeveloped. Your example about the entertainment industry is really hard to follow. The part about “that word” meaning “not to think” is sort of relevant, I suppose, as it shows society’s incapacity to think critically. The execution isn’t very good, though, as I’m wondering which word is the one that you’re referring to. I’m assuming that the word is “amused,” which makes sense, but it’s not the easiest thing to interpret. Your essay should clearly explain your point of view. You have good examples, but you should elaborate more.

Focus on answering the prompt, not side issues. In your conclusion, you tend to address humankind’s inability to express itself due to social pressures instead of the necessity to express oneself. Your argument is that today’s culture prevents people from thinking “outside the box,” but you don’t really address why people should try to fight the status quo to be creative. [Sorry if this doesn’t make sense, it’s hard to explain.]

There are some other minor flaws, including the fact that your last sentence doesn’t really make much sense grammatically (I’m referring to the sentence before “originally,” which is also a fragment).

Apparently my gradings have been too harsh in the past, but I could not see this essay getting any more than a 7 or 8 (out of 12). I’d probably give it a 5 (out of 12) myself, but I think that that might be a little low. The grading scale that the college board uses is very ambiguous (and reasonably so as it is hard to create a qualitative scale) and the same essay will score generally within a 1 point range out of 6.

Edit: I didn’t realize that the essay was space limited. Did you fill up all of the available space? If so, the actual SAT gives you way more space, and thus your essay should be substantially longer. You will also have a time limit of 25 minutes, which is probably similar to the constraint you faced when writing this essay.