Cater your SAT essay for the Grader

One of the first things English teachers tell students is that every piece of writing has an audience. Most of the time, a writer caters to the audience she is writing for, even if she is her own audience. If you are a staunch supporter of affirmative action and you are writing a letter to the Stop Affirmative Action group, you have to write differently than if you were writing to the Defend Affirmative Action group.  Your audience isn’t on your side and you may want to write persuasively yet respectfully.  If you had an imperious tone and blatantly assert the wrong-doings of your opponents, you will not effectively accomplish your goals. In high school, much of the writing produced is mandatory; students tend to forget that an “audience” exists, because the audience - the sole individual reading the essay/report/paper - is the teacher. You do not want to forget your audience for the SAT essay and you definitely want to cater to their wants and needs. This will make the grading more conducive to accomplish your goals of a good score. But there are hundreds (thousands?) of SAT essay graders – how can you know what they want or need?

Let’s start with what we do know.

There have been rumors that the SAT essay is going to be computer-graded in the near future, but I can’t find any press releases or any reliable links to verify this.  I am dubious about these claims – how can a computer reliably and consistently grade essays?  If you know anything about this feel free to let us know in the forums.

Your essay grader is probably going to be a high school English or literature teacher or perhaps a college professor. You want to know this simply because they are not going to be idiots.  You also want to know this because that means they probably care about English and its correct usage.  Write good…er…write well.

Also, put yourself in your grader’s shoes.  He could be sitting in a room full of other graders, probably not getting paid very well, to read the same essay over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Or he could get emailed many essays at home and would rather be watching the game instead of reading the same essay over and over again. He will probably get bored and frustrated pretty easily.  What are the implications of this?  First, things that make it easier for the grader are appreciated.  Things like good handwriting and clean margins are a plus.  Fewer spelling errors and clarity of writing are also key (and much more important than you give credit to).  Secondly, making your essay interesting may be more important that the quality of writing. A boring (but well-written) essay will be glazed over in the same way the last 999 were. The grader will stamp it with a 5. An exciting (and well-written) essay may “wake up” the grader - while the introductory anecdote about your grandfather’s courage isn’t going to win the Pulitzer, the grader will probably take note of your use of figurative language in the 2nd body paragraph since he wasn’t sleeping through it.  The grader stamps the essay with a 6 and has a smile on his face (or at least doesn’t have a frown).

And since the grader is reading the same essay over and over again, he probably will not be spending much time per essay. The Princeton Review claims the grader will only be spending 1 (a single) minute on each essay.  I can’t say for sure if this is true or not, but I wouldn’t expect a grader to spend more than 2-3 minutes per essay.  Either way, the point is that this is a short period of time.  There are two implications to this as well.  One, don’t fuss (too much) over spelling and “awesome” sentences.  If you take a look at JZ’s essay you’ll see that he got a perfect score on his essay with quite a few spelling errors.  You just don’t want to have your essay littered with poor spelling.  A grader who is only going to spend a minute on your essay probably will not notice a handful of errors.  Also, students these days (and I was one of them) have the mentality that they need a clutch closing sentence or an ostentatious opener. (Alliteration is awesome).  The students then proceed to spend precious time fine-tuning one or two sentences that a fast reader will probably glide over.  Don’t worry (too much) about a certain sentence or phrases.  Two, if your grader is only going to spend a minute reading your essay, you darn well better make sure he’s going to find the important stuff.  This means that organization and structure are key.  You better have a thesis sentence near the end of your introductory paragraph.  You better have topic sentences and transition sentences.  You better make sure that these sentences clearly (explicitly) state your point of view and reference your thesis.

As a general rule, success in this world is correlated to the connections and networks you have and make.  You want to be friends with your grader.  Make it easy on him or her, and he or she will reward you accordingly.