The SAT Prep Black Book(131)
This essay is provided with the original handwriting, and it takes up all of both pages, which is typical for an SAT Essay that receives a score of 6 out of 6.
Thesis
There is no real thesis statement in this essay, with the arguable exception of the last two sentences in the entire essay (“So is perfectionism a vice or a virtue? It depends on whom you are talking to”). This is very abnormal for an SAT Essay that scores a 6 out of 6. It shows that SAT Essays can succeed without having a thesis statement clearly articulated in the first paragraph, even though the majority of top-scoring essays do have clear theses.
Structure
This essay has no real structure, which is also abnormal for a top-scoring SAT Essay. Most of them use a variation of the 5-paragraph format as I explained earlier, but this essay demonstrates that it’s possible to score high with a loose narrative structure.
Type of examples
The examples in this essay are purely personal, and might even be made up. This is something we regularly see in top-scoring SAT Essays.
Vocabulary
All of the words in this essay are used appropriately, which is normal in a top-scoring SAT Essay. The words are fairly basic, which is also normal in a top-scoring SAT Essay. The only long words in the essay are “dumbfounded” and “perfectionism,” which aren’t very advanced.
Grammar
The grammar in this essay is okay but not great, with several noticeable mistakes, including the use of “which” instead of “that,” switching from “one” to “his or her” in a sentence, and incorrectly using an apostrophe in a word that’s not a possessive or a contraction, among other things. It’s very normal to see that top-scoring SAT Essays occasionally have a few mistakes like this.
The Essay From Page 123 Of The Blue Book
Length
This essay is presented in a standardized handwriting font, so we can’t see exactly how long it was in the actual test booklet. But we can compare it to the other essays in the Blue Book and see that it’s among the longest in there, which suggests that it probably filled up most or all of the allotted two pages on test day.
Thesis
The first sentence in this essay is a direct reaction to the prompt, and a clear thesis statement that the rest of the essay will support. This is the way that I recommend you begin your own SAT Essay, because a large percentage of the top-scoring SAT Essays I’ve seen have used this kind of opening.
Structure
This essay uses what we might call a modified 5-paragraph format. It includes very obvious introductory and concluding paragraphs, but the four paragraphs in the middle provide an extended historical example with a lot of “howevers” in them, rather than providing a series of unrelated examples. Overall, it’s fairly typical for what we’ll see from top-scoring SAT Essays, though the example paragraphs in other top-scoring essays tend to be unrelated to one another.
Type of examples
As I just noted, this essay uses an extended analysis of a single historical event. It’s common to see top-scoring SAT Essays draw their examples from history, but a large portion of top-scoring SAT Essays also draw their examples from other types of sources.
Vocabulary
The words in this essay are very well-chosen and perhaps a little more advanced than they will tend to be in most top-scoring SAT Essays. Still, the only really advanced words in the essay are “embryo” and “ameliorated.”
Grammar
For the most part, the grammar in the essay is quite sound. There are a couple of missing commas, but nothing major. Like the vocabulary, the grammar is probably slightly above-average relative to most other SAT Essays, even ones that would score a 6 out of 6.
The Essay From Page 197 Of The Blue Book
Length
This essay is provided in the original handwriting, so we can see that it takes up both pages available in the test booklet. This is typical for top-scoring SAT Essays.
Thesis
The first sentence of the essay is a direct response to the prompt and also a clear thesis for the rest of the essay. This is very common in SAT Essays that score a 6 out of 6.
Structure
This essay uses a slight variation on the typical 5-paragraph format that we’ll find in most top-scoring SAT Essays, because it only uses two example paragraphs instead of 3. Remember that the number and type of examples don’t really matter; all that matters is that the examples are relevant and that the essay takes up both pages.
Type of examples
Two examples are included—one historical, and one literary. This is a common thing to see in top-scoring SAT Essays, though we also see plenty of top-scoring SAT Essays that avoid historical or literary examples. There’s also a one-sentence mention of Enron in the last paragraph, but it’s so short I wouldn’t be surprised if the graders didn’t even see it.