SAT essay tips to improve your score
When you get your SAT essay scores back, you can expect to receive the three cumulative scores that result from combining the grades each reader gives your essay. Ultimately, you will receive three scores between 2 and 8 for your reading, analysis, and writing.
The essay score does not affect your overall exam score. The essay section of the exam used to affect your Writing score, but weighing your essay performance into the writing section has been eliminated from the SAT exam’s scoring process. Since the essay score has zero consequences on the total score you receive on the SAT test, you may not feel that it is as important, especially if it is not required for your applications.
Keep in mind, however, that there are many more schools that recommend the SAT essay for admission – and schools, in most cases, wouldn’t recommend a piece of information that they didn’t deem useful. Schools that recommend the SAT essay include some top schools, such as Georgia Tech, Occidental, Rutgers, and Stanford. .
The official readers are trained to score you fairly and accurately. For an idea of how you will do on the essay portion of the SAT, it is a good idea to take practice tests and become familiar with the prompts, timing, and expectations.
One of the purposes of the SAT essay is to evaluate how well you write, so essay graders will look for evidence of strong writing ability, including a good grasp of standard English conventions, facility with a variety of sentence structures, application of a variety of transitional elements, a logical progression of ideas, and an appropriately informative style and tone.
There are no percentiles on the essay score report. When you receive your official score report, you will see that the include the opportunity to compare your scores to other students.
These rankings are not available for the SAT essay test because you do not receive a single score: instead, you receive three scores for your reading, analysis, and writing skills.
There are few colleges that require the SAT essay for admission:
Although few colleges still require the SAT essay, many well-regarded schools recommend that students submit SAT essay scores. Any such recommendation ought to be treated as a requirement by potential applicants – if a school recommends something, its admissions officers would prefer to see it.
Studying for the SAT essay is simple: just practice!
Remember, writing can be subjective. Your test scores will primarily focus on the objective measures of the SAT essay response; such as the ability to use persuasive techniques, and your ability to extrapolate information from the original passage to create an argument. Think strategically and use this information to guide your practice before the test.
Does the SAT Essay affect your score?
High scores are always the goal when it comes to the SAT and ACT essay components. Here’s what you need to know about the current SAT scoring criteria for the new SAT essay section, straight from the College Board:
Here’s what a perfect score on the SAT essay will look like:
Writing a thesis statement is a critical skill for high school students to learn; and learning to do so well will help you to create concise and powerful responses to your SAT essay prompt.
This leads right into the next question about the SAT Essay….
Practice makes perfect. As you prepare to ace your SAT essay portion, consider going through the College Board’s repository of sample essay prompts to get you started. You’ll be able to see what type of information you’ll be presented with ahead of time, giving you plenty of opportunities to practice your reading, writing, and analysis skills.
Here are the keys to a higher SAT Essay score:
You’ll only have 50 minutes for the SAT essay portion. This means that you’ll want to start timing yourself from now; training your brain to only spend so many minutes on a given portion of your ideation and writing process. Be sure to practice leaving yourself time at the end to go back over your work and refine it!