Effective Tips for the SAT Essay
What can you do in 25 minutes?
Send 25 tweets? Run through 25 levels of Flappy Bird?
What about write an essay?
“But that’s too difficult!” wail hundreds of high school students. “It take me 25 minutes to decide on a sweatshirt to wear in the morning! How can I possibly write an essay in that time?”
If you look at these tips, writing the SAT I Essay should become a less painful process:
1. Read the essay prompt closely.
You don’t want your score to suffer because you wrote two pages about great friendships when the prompt was actually asking about good leadership.
2. Outline.
Think about archery; does an archer draw back a bow to shoot without a target in mind? The same principle holds here. Spending 3-5 minutes to scribble down a thesis and examples can keep your writing focused.
3. Make sure the essay is neat and readable.
Your handwriting should not look like the “are you human?” security checkpoints on a website. If you make your essay graders question their own humanity when looking at your work, it will be more difficult for them to fairly assess your essay.