3Here it is, Young's unofficial guide to writing the SAT essay. After a long delay, here are the results of my work. This will help some, not help others, and ignored by the rest. I don't really care what you take out of this. But here goes.
I've seen many very smart people who cannot reach a high score on the essay. This drags their entire score down more than a short essay should. Following these steps should guide you to an easy high score on the essay. (In case anyone wanted to know, I got an 11) Before I get to any tips, I want each reader to write a short essay, following the SAT guidelines. Here is the prompt:
in life is largely a matter of luck. It has little correlation with merit, and in all fields of life there have always been people of great merit who did not succeed.
Karl Popper, Popper Selections
2. As Colin Powell said, "There are no secrets to success. Don't waste time looking for them. Success is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."
Adapted from Barry Farber, "Selling Points"
Assignment: Is success in life earned or do people succeed because they are lucky? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Are you done? Good. Well since I can't grade your essay, I'll tell you what I did (this prompt was the one I took for the real SAT). First, you should think, "What is the usual answer that students will write?" If you want your essay to stand out, having a fresh topic is a very easy way to get scores to pay any attention to what you're saying. Some times it's very clear cut. For questions such as "Is procrastination good?" should be easy enough to find a new answer. Most people will, due to a lack of ideas, choose the old beaten path of "procrastinating is bad." But if you can defend the other side well, you've got the start of a winning essay. This prompt, however, lacks that definitive quality. In cases like these, you can just stick with one, or choose both. I prefer writing about both, because well, it's an answer that's not usually written. So I had a thesis in my head that went something like "Success is earned from both luck and hard work."
Alas, a problem soon arises. What will you possibly write about? For many of you, the list of every book you've ever read probably wooshed by your head as you thought for a relevant title. You would spend many minutes trying to think of a smart book, relatively well known, and hopefully you know enough of to write about. Well, that's the stupid way. Why? It wastes time. I'll digress here and discuss just what an SAT prompt is. Now the assignment is picked quite carefully by the Collegeboard people, because this is a nationwide test. Every high school student, from the backhills of Alabama to the adderall addicted halls of Bergen Academy, must be able to write on the topic. If someone can't, lawsuits fly. People will claim that knowledge of a specific topic, such as science or biology, is not necessary to take the SAT test, and therefore inapplicable to the prompt. So these prompts are written to be as broad as possible. Usually they're about simple topics such as, in this case, success. How is this beneficial? Well, every topic is SO broad, any self-respecting novel WILL cover all of them. Think of any book you've ever read. Which one does not contain some form of success in it? The same will go for every topic. So instead of trying to match the tiny evidence to the broad gaping thing that is the prompt, have evidence that will apply to any topic you receive. Have a list of maybe three or four respected books, films, situations, that you know well. A popular one is the French Revolution. I personally use the Oedipus stories. I mean, come on, who hasn't heard of the tale of Oedipus? And it is a respected enough work that I come off as smart. Another one I use is Amadeus. Yes, that smart movie about Mozart. I have yet to come up against a prompt that I couldn't use these two as major topics in my essay. (And I've written for about 30 different essay prompts) If you have even a couple of books by little known authors, that's fine. Your evidence is done.
So you start the essay, armed with the ridiculously easy evidence. All you did so far was have an answer that not many will answer. How long did that take? 30 seconds? Well, I want you to take another 3 minutes. You can afford it, trust me. You should have the entire essay structured in your head. Know exactly what you're going to use as proof. Then, it's a piece of cake.
The introduction This is perhaps the easiest part of the entire essay. It is very easy to start by using a very standard structure. Just replace a word here, a sentence there, and voila! A fine and dandy introduction! Here's the structure. - these things are writing cues.
Restate the prompt in your own word, and state your unusual idea. This should be pretty short. Your unusual idea acts as the hook, so you don't need to wonder about how to interest your readers. Don't feed them information instantly; you want them to read the whole thing. Here is a great place to put in a little counterpoint, so you sound balanced. Start with the word "Although…" and say the alternate side. After the alternate side, restate how your idea is right, and how the alternate side is retarded. This sentence should be long, and wordy, and include a couple of SAT words. If the topic was procrastination, this could read, "Although procrastination has the potential to cause a backlog of work, and be a source of many regrets and sorrows, procrastination helps a person avoid unnecessary work, and assuages stress which would cause any work done at that time to be mostly useless anyway." For this prompt, the "although…" thing can't work, as there is no clear 'other side' to ridicule. So I just went with "It is the combination of work and luck that provides the basis and motivation for success." Next sentence is where you introduce your "hard picked" evidence. So if you used Oedipus and Amadeus, (do so and I will kill you. They're mine) this part might sound like "The rise of King Oedipus and Antonio Salieri attests to the idea that success is a product of both hard work and luck." Make sure to restate your idea here, and this part will sound like a thesis. Joy!
Now you've rid yourself of the introduction, now comes the slightly longer, but almost as easy, body paragraphs. Use the structure you've learned in 6th grade to help you. The first sentence will be your topic sentence. This does nothing more than restate the thesis with only one evidence and slightly more detail. Mine went, "Oedipus, of The Three Theban Plays, gains his seat as king due to his will, and a little help from the Greek gods." Some who reach this part will go, "Oh crap! I don't know anything about the book I chose as evidence!" Don't worry. This is where the esoteric title comes in handy. If not many people have read your novel to a great extent, you can just make it up! How? That takes another digression.
The essays, once written, are not taken to a giant grading machine which pumps out scores at 20,000 essays a minute. Each essay, with the poor handwriting and crappy photocopies, are graded by teachers. Tired high school English teachers who get paid PER ESSAY. So each reader will spend only about A MINUTE reaching each essay. Ah, greed. That means, absolutely no one will care if the facts are right. Never will the SAT validation police knock on your door for proof. Remember, you're not required to know the book you've used, so any 'facts' you use are only limited to your imagination. If they sue you for using false information, just sue them back and say you're not responsible to know books to answer the SAT. Go nuts with this. Can't remember the author? Make up a name! Can't remember the character's names? Make them up! Can't remember why you chose this book for the essay? Make up anything you'd like. As long as it's not too ridiculous. On my essay, I couldn't remember who directed Amadeus, so I said that some guy named Michael Phiffer directed it. I've gotten no calls, and neither will you.
Back to the body paragraph, any plausible sounding happenings will pass as real. I've basically created new novels by writing about things that never happened, things that should have happened, and things I've just flat out pulled out of my ass. Nowhere in Oedipus does it state the gods themselves promoted Oedipus to the throne, nor that Oedipus studied riddles to defeat the Sphinx. But guess where this storyline exists. That's right. In my essay. So do what you may. Go nuts. But always remember what you're writing about. And also, specific quotes "from the book" are good. Provide background information, names, personalities. These add to the credibility of your work. This takes a bit of practice. Anyway, you're trying to prove your thesis, in this case, how success is caused by both luck and hard work. After about four or five sentences using this scheme, tie off the paragraph with a nice repeat of the same damn thing you've said in the beginning. I said, "This combination of hard work and luck granted Oedipus the throne of king." Notice how similar it is to the topic sentence? There should be relatively no thought process required for the structure.
The next body paragraph should be a very similar to the last one, but using the other evidence. Make sure you have some transition between those two. Say some stupid thing to the effect of, "From ancient mythology, to modern pancake techniques, Success has been shown time and time again to be a product of hard work and luck." I said something about Antonio Salieri and Oedipus both gaining seat in royalty due to their hard work and luck. Simple. And write on.
Now we come to the end. Easily the most fun part. Many writers struggle to end in a memorable way. Don't. First, restate the thesis, yet again. "Work and luck both aid success." Same crap, different ways. Then have a sentence each, involving each of your evidence. Summarize your evidence on Oedipus, then summarize the evidence on Salieri. To leave in a meaningful way, end with a quote. A smart, witty quote that you've remembered aids vastly in leaving a good impression. Don't know any quotes? Don't worry. Make them up! I know quite a bit of quotes, but for this prompt, I simply ended with a made up one. "Perhaps this business adage puts it the best, (this structure is also very good at introducing a quote. Make sure it's from a respectable source. Say it's from a philosopher, or it's a adage the reader does not know) luck made me work hard and hard work made my lucky." Simple, effective way to finish your essay. Practice at writing smart sounding quotes. I created this one in seconds, apparently from a 'Japanese philosopher Asako Korugani.' "Each man wades his own path through the rice fields. Wherever he ends up, he only has himself to praise or blame." Sounds Japanese philosopher like, right? … Right? Well, that's it! Enjoy my labor of love, and tell me how you guys do with this. I think it's easier than getting a 9 even with struggling.
P.S. Once in a while, you will get a prompt that totally makes this irrelevant. But that's only about 1 in 10 prompts, so odds are, you can stick with this. What that prompt is, though, is one of choice, such as "What two decisions are hardest to decide between?" If you get that, you unlucky bastard, I pray good luck to you. Just remember, you can make up a lot of quotes as your evidence. I did that for one of my practice ones and it sounded kind of coherent.