<p>How long and detailed must the opening paragraph in an SAT Essay be? According to AcademicHacker’s “How to Write a 12 Essay in 10 Days”, the opening paragraph should be about 2-3 sentences, literally just the thesis and something to the tune of “The evidence supporting this point is very pervasive throughout history and literature”. However, I have noticed that many of the high-scoring essays posted on CC have fairly dense opening paragraphs that employ hooks and go beyond the AcademicHacker template. Can the introduction literally be a bare-bones thesis, or does it have to be more elaborate than that?</p>
<p>“Hooks” usually sound phony and contrived. I’ve sat in many SAT (and AP and GRE and on and on…) reading rooms. No one wants to read silly “attention getters.”</p>
<p>Be wary. You CAN get from an ten to a twelve in ten days, but ten days will NOT totally transform the quality of a kid’s grammar, syntax, vocabulary, insight, punctuation, and essay structure.</p>
<p>Although I won’t read it, I’m sure that the “guide” by “Academic Hacker” has some merit. However, consider this sentence:</p>
<p>“The evidence supporting this point is very pervasive throughout history and literature.”</p>
<p>There’s a grammar error (albeit a subtle one) right there: “very pervasive” is redundant. What’s worse (and ironic indeed) is that it’s exactly the kind of error that differentiates fives from sixes (and tens from twelves).</p>
<p>The sentence is also rife with filler words.</p>
<p>To (hopefully) answer your question, the intro and conclusion can and must be very short.</p>