What is my essay missing?

satman1111
Sun, 07 Jul 2013 16:58:52 +0000

The SAT essay is more about giving real examples, then just explaining. You waste basically your whole essay saying the same exact thing, just in different ways. Your second example is more what the SAT readers are looking for in a good essay, but it is still too general. Instead of saying that mistakes could be made. You could give a real example. Something like this…“Checking where information on the internet comes from is very impotant for all aspects of life. For example, Joe Cullen, a structural engineer who specialized in bridges caused the deaths of 22 people, just because he failed to check the source that his information on the internet came from. Joe was on a strict budget, and so, quickly searched the internet for a cheap source of steel. He found one, and bought it without checking the credentials from where the steel was actually coming from. It turns out that the steel was made cheaply, and was too weak to support the bridge. Sadly, Joe did not learn about that until after it collapsed.”

Obviously, that example is not perfect, but I wrote it in about 3 minutes (it’s fake by the way, which is fine for the SAT essay - I actually used 2 fake examples just like this one, and I still got a 12 (on the March SAT))

I can easily think of many more fake examples that could fix this prompt, you just have to use your imagination.