July 16, 2009
SAT Essay Tips For Success
1. Read sat essay prompts carefully
This is the step where many students go wrong. Read the prompt and with your pencil underline the main idea you need to be writing about. Most students who get low scores fail to read the prompt carefully. Don't be one of them.
2. Write a topic sentence that gives a title to your example and explains what about your example will prove your thesis. For example in one essay a student wrote "Atticus Finch's actions in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee show that to truly know a person's convictions we must observe his or her actions."
The thesis was "To truly know a person's convictions wemust observe his or her actions" and this is reflected in this topic sentence. And yes, it's OK to repeat your thesis in your topic sentence. The student also explained what in the example supports the thesis by saying that it is Atticus' actions that proves her point.
3. Make sure you use SAT Essay prompts as part of an overall study program. Because, unlike repetitive activities like running and swimming, you won't just get better with practice. You need both practice and accurate feedback.
So before you even look at these practice SAT Essay prompts make sure that you have an idea of who will review them for you. Test prep centers will often do an 'OK' job of reviewing your essay but few actually base their suggestions on research into how graders grade essays.
To find out what it really takes to score well on the SAT Essay–based on accurate research–get my free report "The Five Deadly Mistakes Students Make on the SAT Essay… And How You Can Avoid Them."
4. Know how the essay is scored. Two graders give your SAT Essay a score on a scale of 1 to 6. You can achieve a total score of 12 (6 from each grader) on the SAT Essay and a low score of 2 (1 from each grader). SAT Essays that are off topic are given a score of 0.
Scorers have no choice but to score your essay according to a rubric. This means that they are instructed to look at your essay as whole judging the quality of your ideas, and how you prove them to come up with your score. However, research has shown that there is one factor that has the strongest impact on your score and that is length. Essays that had more than 400 words achieved the highest score of 12 about 90% of the time.