SAT Essay Help (Score my essay?)

SirPingPong
Sun, 09 Feb 2014 20:14:55 +0000

Hello everyone,

I’m practicing for my upcoming SAT on March 8th, and I want to improve my essay score. I’m a Junior and last fall I got 760 CR, 700 Math, 700 writing on my SAT, however, my essay score was only an 8. In school, my AP essays have been scored very highly, but I feel like I’m writing differently for the SAT. Below is a recent practice prompt I wrote.

Can you help me score it/improve it? I used all the lines on the paper when handwritten.

Prompt: Do we need other people in order to understand ourselves?

Essay: Understanding others is the first step towards understanding yourself. Throughout history, humans who perceive and absorb the beliefs of others are more capable of developing their own moral virtues.

Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World demonstrates this. in Huxley’s ‘utopia’ dystopian society, humanity is ruled over by a means of triviality and apathy. An outcast to the social-norm, “savage” John attempts to integrate himself into the mainstream society. It is clear that, as John meets and interacts with the people of the Brave New World, he discovers more and more about himself. He develops a sense of morality, displayed when he refuses to have intercourse with Lenina Crowne on the premise that he wants a more meaningful relationship and Lenina only wants sex. John matures by the conclusion of the novel, and would not have been able to do so without first understanding Bernard Marx, Lenina, and other members of the World State society.

Recently, the Bernie Maddoff scandal alongside company J.P. Morgan’s blind-eye to the incident also supports the idea that humans need to understand other to understand themselves. Wall Street in itself is notorious for corruption and iconic as a symbol of the American dream of wealth. in 2007, the 65 billion dollar investment fraud through Maddoff’s firm teaches important values about the motivations and nature of humanity. Maddoff supports the Hobbes view of humans: humans naturally desire to steal and fend for themselves. Whether or not this view is true, the Madoff scandal reflects the nearly unanimous desire of people to make wealth at all costs, and disregard the welfare of others. Added onto of Maddoff’s fraud was the inability of the J.P. Morgan banking to report the ongoing fraud. The whole incident was simply “one-big-lie”, and by analyzing it, we can better understand our own motivations; motivations possibly shared with liars like Maddoff.

Ultimately, no matter the background, all humans share a common vestige; by being aware of others and their beliefs, individuals can approach a more comprehensive understanding of their own.

Thanks in advance guys!