need help on the essay - dec 4th

Test Preparation
1

<p>hi guys</p>

<p>im taking the sat in december and need my essay to be strong (its what always messes up my score)</p>

<p>i did a practice one and tried to use the 10 steps to the 12 thing</p>

<p>here it is: please do let me know my score and where i should improve
just for reference: length = 450 wds</p>

<p>Can knowledge be a burden rather than a benefit?</p>

<p>Knowledge is always beneficial. It is powerful and can have a profound impact on lives, exemplified by several examples in history and in the present.</p>

<p>Doctor Alfredo Quinones is one of the leading brain surgeons in the USA, but his path to receiving this honor is more spellbinding than the achievement itself. Quinones grew up in Mexicali, a bucolic abode in Mexico. Nevertheless, he was severely impoverished, with nothing but a pittance to live on. When he was 19, he immigrated illegally to the USA, serving as a migrant worker. He farmed all day and received meager pay, and he soon realized that the pay he received would not support a family or his future. He turned to one thing to bring him out of the abyss of poverty: knowledge. Quinones enrolled in a community college, taking night classes with the little he had saved. He then saved enough to enroll in a more formal school, and after 4 years of undergraduate education, he applied to Harvard. He was accepted to the medical school, and became a brain surgeon, achieving his goal of a sustainable lifestyle. The key to his success was his intrepid commitment to knowledge, as he stove to learn more and more. Knowledge for him provided all that he needed, and so it was of great benefit, providing him with the income he needed.</p>

<p>In addition to Quinones, another story of success was that of Charlemagne. Charlemagne was a French ruler who brought fame and prosperity to Western Europe during the Feudal Period (500-1500 AD). His people loved him, and deemed him Charlemagne, “Charles the Great”. The key to his success, similar to that of Quinones, was his focus on education. After uniting the people with his military prowess, Charlemagne kept the people unified with education. He established libraries and schools to teach science, math and the arts. His French capital, Paris, became the knowledge center of the world, and many flocked there to learn more. This in turn augmented Western Europe’s status in the world and brought fame and prosperity to the region. This use of knowledge by Charlemagne demonstrates that knowledge can be extremely beneficial.</p>

<p>Knowledge can even be beneficial in situations we cannot control. Volcanic eruptions are too enormous for us to control and regulate them. However, volcanologists can analyze the data and predict when and where volcanic eruptions will occur. Moreover, this information is then released to the public, notifying them to not be in the eruption zone. Knowledge therefore, can save lives even in situations we cannot control.</p>

<p>Knowledge is always beneficial, as evidenced by Alfredo Quinones, Charlemagne, and volcanic eruptions. Even in situations we cannot control, knowledge serves us well. Knowledge is, indeed, power.</p>

2

<p>The scoring rubric for essay graders specifies “effectively and insightfully develops a point of view on the subject and demonstrates outstanding critical thinking”. Consider the depth of your analysis. Outline the major points that the examples are intended to support. What do you get?
The same idea in other words…Your examples are presented in depth, but how much of the writing ties the example to the topic? How many different relevant points and sub-points ABOUT KNOWLEDGE are contained within such long examples?
Put the “three examples and get out with a zinger” formula on the back burner for a moment and look at how much you actually said about the topic.
I’ve read many posts on this site about how easy it is to write an essay using the five paragraph form, but they miss an important point: the form is just a form. It’s like an application form…sure you can fill in the blanks and it will look good from a distance. If you can spell and write legibly you will get an average result. But if you want a superior result, you have to pay attention to what you say when you fill in the blanks. The form by itself won’t help you with that. That comes from what ETS calls your “developed ability”, which means the knowledge, skill and wisdom you have incorporated into your thinking throughout your lifetime. You have to apply that to the topic before you start filling in the blanks on the form.
So, the essay is long, well-written from a grammar and usage point of view. The vocab is adequate for a good score (“exemplified by examples” is redundant). The intro and conclusion are clearly straight out of the 10 million (also redundant) ‘How To Write an SAT Essay’ books. An introduction introduces the subject and main idea of your essay, but it also introduces YOU to the reader. What does your intro tell me about you? It tells me you are reciting an answer and don’t really care much about your topic. And your conclusion tells me you could have written a much more thoughtful essay if you had given yourself a chance.
What do I mean? Your zinger, “Knowledge is power”, could have been the key to a much better analysis of the topic. Power to do what? Go back to your first example.How, specifically, did knowledge give Quinones power? How many times and in how many ways did knowledge make a difference in his story? Where did the knowledge come from? The answers to these questions are what make his example relevant to the topic and change that paragraph from ‘here is a man whose example says SOMETHING about how knowledge can improve an individual’s life’ to ‘here is a man whose example at this point and this point and again at this point illustrates THREE SPECIFIC WAYS knowledge empowers an individual to improve his life’. To which essay would you give the higher score?</p>

3

<p>After re-reading your essay, I see your Charlemagne paragraph contains more of what I didn’t find in your Quinones paragraph. The fault is partly mine, and partly yours. I read as an essay reader would read, quickly and looking for several different things- spelling, sentence structure, etc- at the same time. I formed an impression from your intro and first paragraph that led me to under-rate your second. There are two good points of analysis in the paragraph: knowledge as a unifying force among previously divided people and knowledge as a source of national prestige. Even though I read the essay twice, I missed these points. They passed by without my registering them. They needed to be emphasized, highlighted, and that means repeated in some way. You had two chances to do that. The first was in the closing sentence of the paragraph, and the second was in the closing paragraph of the essay. Look at those two places in your essay and see what you wrote. In both places your sentences rely on my memory of your points rather than refreshing my memory of your points.
You’ll get more points for your points if you make sure the reader knows that they’re there.
By the way, I know time is an issue, but the repetition doesn’t have to be wordy. As in, ‘Knowledge gave Charlemagne the power to unify a nation and to raise that nation to greatness.’</p>