<p>I would say so. Don’t hold me to that though. </p>
<p>I hope you’re right. So much suspense</p>
<p>There’s no way a -1 will give 800 on math guys. Sure there were some tricky questions but nothing was difficult enough to warrant a less-than-perfect perfect score.</p>
<p>I’m inclined to agree. Thankfully, I’m pretty sure I got all the math questions right.</p>
<p>Writing question: were the questions about “years of neglect” and plans that have “come (came? I forget what tense it was) to fruition” separate questions, or both part of the same question?</p>
<p>No I didn’t miss that one. I just was wondering because I know there were 3 no errors, but if those were 2 separate questions that would mean there were 4 no errors (those 2 plus the AI one plus “far inferior”) which wouldn’t make sense. So it’s good for me that they’re the same question. Are you positive on that? Do you remember the sentence?</p>
<p>To answer your question, I’m not 100% certain on anything in life but I’m about as close as you can get in saying that the answer was “interested outsider.”</p>
<p>yeah I put interested outsider</p>
<p>12?</p>
<p>I am assuming a 12 on the essay part.</p>
<p>They’re fairly rare. I wouldn’t take a 12 for granted at all, even if you’re confident in your writing abilities.</p>
<p>As it has been repeated ad infinitum, it’s not about your writing ability so much as your ability to mold your writing to what the SAT asks for.</p>
<p>If you wanna be pedantic about it, sure. Those sound like the same thing to me (or at least one is contingent on the other), although I don’t really know what you’re trying to say with the “ability to mold your writing to what the SAT asks for.” Are you saying you should address what the SAT prompt asks for? I mean yea that’s obvious, and the only way you can do that is by developing your writing abilities. Addressing the prompt is pretty much the purpose of all essays, and develops pretty much in tandem with writing abilities. Once again though, I have no idea what you even mean by that. And it hasn’t been discussed ad infinitum (or actually at all), at least in this thread, so…
I dunno what to tell you mang. Maybe you were alluding to the study that found that length and higher-level vocabulary correlate with higher scores?</p>
<p>Regardless, that’s kind of conveniently missing the point of my post, which still stands. Call it writing ability, call it the “ability to mold your writing to what the SAT asks for,” all I’m saying is that you shouldn’t take a 12 for granted.</p>
<p>Not sure that the CB publishes percentiles a for the essay on its own, but a score of 12 is the 99th percentile on the ACT. I wouldn’t be surprised if the SAT had a similar percentile.</p>
<p>Yeah. They’re difficult, for sure.</p>
<p>I’m saying that being an excellent writer doesn’t guarantee a high essay score. In fact, you don’t have to be all that great to get a 12. You have to be focused, organized, and at least a little bit intelligent. You don’t have to be creative or captivating (qualities of an excellent writer).</p>
<p>This idea has been discussed a lot on these boards, not necessarily in this thread. Perhaps it just seems like a lot to me because I have read so much about it.</p>
<p>I think organization and intelligence are more crucial to rhetorical writing than are creativity or captivation, though that is certainly not the case with creative writing. I don’t know if I’d say any of those skills are inherently more valuable or indicative of a good writer, either.</p>
<p>But I see your point. The SAT definitely does cater to specific writing skills while not necessarily placing as much emphasis on the others.</p>
<p>
I completely agree.</p>
<p>However, my peers who are talented creative writers think they will score well on the essay because of their talent. Many don’t realize that the ability to write an enjoyable short story != The ability to get a 12 on the SAT essay.</p>
<p>I think overall “writing ability” includes organization, focus etc. and creativity. If the SAT essay does not attempt to measure ability in all of these categories, it is not a true test of “writing ability”.</p>
<p>Although I suppose rhetorical writing ability is probably more important, as far as an adcom is concerned. I don’t think the SAT essay is bad, per se; I just think there is a misconception out there.</p>
<p>Ok, fair enough. There was actually a study done by a guy from MIT named Les Perelman who found that CB gives higher scores to long, formulaic, and vocab-heavy essays while ignoring any factual errors. That would certainly lend credence to the idea that CB doesn’t really care about creativity (or even accuracy), but rather organization and a rigid, typical style.</p>
<p>How long was your essay for the January SAT? Mine was only 1 and 3/4 pages.</p>
<p>it was 2, and I doubled-up my writing for the last 5 or so lines in order to fit everything in.</p>
<p>Oh also for what it’s worth, essays that score 5s are apparently about 92nd percentile. This means that 6s likely aren’t quite so rare (but still pretty rare).</p>
<p>What do you mean “doubled-up”?</p>