Grader's Response

You score 6 out of 12 on your essay. Your essay shows promise, especially in the areas of structure and some aspects of style and rhetoric, but you need to make some significant changes in developing your evidence and argument.

Let's first review these positive aspects of your writing.

In terms of structure, a three-paragraph essay is a logical scheme for a short, timed writing sample. Often under the pressure of time, students abandon all structure and simply write one loose paragraph. You successfully avoided that pitfall; however, a three-paragraph essay will likely not allow you to explore your topic in sufficient depth and development. We will teach you a more complete, four-paragraph model in our essay lessons that follow. In terms of style and rhetoric, you are capable of sophisticated diction, such as "amiss" and "mortified," so you'll want to continue pushing yourself on that level; such diction impresses an academic audience. In terms of rhetoric, your citation of the George Santayana quote in your conclusion is a persuasive tactic, opening up your argument to a broader meaning and application. However, recall that Santayana's quote actually reads, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (Reason in Common Sense) and was written in the 20th Century, so it is not quite the old adage you claim it is. All in all, however, these are positive aspects of your essay to be praised and built upon.

Where your essay could be improved substantially is in the area of evidence. What you have to remember is that this is, more or less, an argument written for an academic audience, and academic audiences tend to be persuaded more effectively by substantive and objective evidence—examples from history, literature, or science. A personal approach is not necessarily wrong, but it tends to strike an academic audience as subjective at best and trivial at worst. Your generic example of Student XXX lacks the necessary detail and specific interest to add real substance and weight to your argument. What's more, your anonymous character might strike your audience as too hypothetical (or perhaps even invented) to lend compelling substance to your argument.

Since the SAT essay question is often broad and therefore can be discussed in context of any number of examples, you should prepare some examples from history, literature, or science. Is there a period in history when individuals were motivated to change through experience, a character in literature that experienced some epiphany, or a scientist who was motivated to progress through trial and error? Using what you know from school—and consequently displaying facts, dates, names—will help you produce a more substantive and more persuasive essay.

Writing on more elevated examples will, in turn, elevate your style and rhetoric, increasing the overall sophistication of your essay. While your friend XXX may be interesting to your other friends, perhaps the American Revolution or Civil Rights Movement might illustrate a more compelling motivation for change to an academic audience. In addition, such academic examples have the weight to justify your use of Santayana's wise saying in your conclusion.

About this Grader

Matthew Pietrafetta

While working on a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature at Columbia University in the City of New York, Matthew Pietrafetta instructed hundreds of college and high school students in a variety of academic subjects and standardized tests. At Columbia, Matthew was selected as a Writing Fellow in the English Composition Department to instruct Columbia undergraduates in a number of composition courses. His work with students concentrated on logic, reasoning, and argumentation. At the same time, Matthew prepared hundreds of New York City high school students in standardized tests and numerous academic subjects. His teaching experience includes tutoring standardized tests such as the SAT, the SAT Subject Tests, the ACT, the SSAT, and the ISEE, the LSAT, the GMAT, the GRE, and the MCAT. Through his work with high school and college students, Matthew found that the logic skills required for successful test taking were also necessary rudiments for success with the more complicated tasks of reasoning, analysis, and argument on the college level. Academic Approach is Matthew's attempt to bridge these two levels of education by developing a standardized testing curriculum that imparts both sound academic knowledge and the salient reasoning skills necessary for optimal test performance and sophisticated critical thinking in the classroom.