<p>Before I write my SATs, I’m planning on going over some of the short stories that I studied from English class and possibly draw out some points from those stories in my examples. However, if the short story isn’t very well-known, will ETS accept it?</p>
<p>And by “well-known,” I mean literatures written by famous authors like Shakespeare. But what if the works are written by less famous authors, or authors that not many people know about?</p>
<p>Anything from “your reading, studies, experience, or observations” is fine. If you use relatively unknown examples, make sure you give enough context to make your point clear.</p>
<p>I have the impression that unpopular examples are prefered to cliches. :)</p>
<p>I used a lesser-known example (from a fantasy fiction book actually, lol) in my last essay and I didn’t seem to suffer too much from it.</p>
<p>However, collective experience disagrees with the above poster: lots of people are convinced that using examples from certain books, such as Paradise Lost or To Kill a Mocking Bird, does increase your score.</p>
<p>Remember, the ETS is trying to standardize essay grading as much as possible, and it’s pretty likely that their essay-scorers have been issued orders to give higher regard to more common examples so as to ensure that they don’t end up with a situation in which half of their graders prefer common examples and half of them prefer uncommon examples. Of course that is speculation, but it does indeed seem that they prefer well known examples.</p>