I can’t post much because I’m currently preparing for SAT II Chemistry. I still hope that this post may help you readers regardless.
The SAT Essay section, for some people, is the most fearful part of the SAT. Since it comes at the first part of the test, you tend to freak out if you can’t get any ideas and can’t start writing immediately. Plus, if you mess up this part, you tend to mess up the other parts because you will start to think that you can’t do the test.
Fortunately and unfortunately, the SAT essay graders also don’t have much time to read your essay (only about 45 seconds to read). Why good and bad? If the SAT essay graders have less time to read, that means they will skim through your essay most of the time. The bad thing is if you put too many details in your essay, the graders will almost always overlook them, and you will waste time by writing something that the graders don’t even want to read. Even worse, your essay won’t make a good first impression if you start to digress by putting too many details in your essay. The good thing is you can be sure that they will almost always focus on the 2 most important parts of your essay. These are the introductory and conclusion paragraphs, and they are the doors to an excellent SAT essay.
What’s my point of saying this? The key to an excellent SAT essay score is the essay graders’ “FIRST IMPRESSION.”
By the time the SAT essay graders finish reading your introductory paragraph, they will have made their first impressions on your essay. Simply said, there are 2 kinds of first impressions. We call them the “lower than 3” impression and the “higher than 4” impression.
If your introductory paragraph doesn’t state your thesis statement clearly, and it just goes nowhere, and it doesn’t contain smart words, and it’s boring, and whatever, it will almost always guarantee you a “lower than 3” impression. When an SAT essay grader has made a “lower than 3” first impression, it doesn’t matter whatever you write in the following paragraphs, it will still be extremely hard, if not impossible, to obtain a score of more than 3.
SO, I’ve compiled some ways to guarantee you a “higher than 4” first impression for your SAT essay. These ways will make the good things in your essay shine so that the SAT graders may immediately see them and immediately give you a good first impression. Here they are:
Plan Before You Write
Use your 25 minutes wisely. It would be better to use some time for planning your essay rather than immediately writing and stopping in the middle because you don’t have anything to say anymore. In not more than 1 minute, immediately agree or disagree with the statement, and supply 2 examples from history or literature or science or whatever, as long as the examples don’t come from your own experience.
Prepare Your Examples Beforehand
Read historical books. Read biographies of famous people. Read literatures. The prompts in the SAT essay are so general that any kind of example can fit in your essay later on.
You might also want to try this. Look for heroes in your nation’s history, or look for famous people in your country who aren’t really known internationally. This way, although the examples you prepared are not exactly suitable for the prompt, you can still “modify” (read:bend the truth) your example so that they may fit the prompt better. In addition, it creates an impression that you are an educated person who uses examples from what you’ve learned at school. But don’t bend the truth too much, or otherwise they might notice 
.
Write a Lot and Write Quickly
Write a LOT and write FAST. In this section, you are not expected to make a perfect essay in 25 minutes. Your essay is graded as a FIRST DRAFT, so just write anything you want. Be careful since what you write still has to be relevant to the topic. By the way, your target is 400 words in the real test.
Use Smart Words Smartly
Use smart words, especially in the first and last paragraphs. Keep this in mind, though, when trying to use smart words. Use only smart words that immediately come to your mind and don’t force yourself to come up with a smart word. Not only it will waste time, the word you are trying to come with might be a word that you aren’t familiar with and you’ll eventually end up making fun of yourself.
These words I’ve provided are useful because you will often use them in the first and paragraphs (main words are underlined, the others are synonyms of the underlined word)
- bolster, foster, underscore, support (v)
- exemplify, depict, delineate, illustrate (v)
- explicate, explain (v)
- represent, embody (v)
- elicit, evoke, cause (v)
- a prodigious amount of, a lot of (adj)
- assiduous, hard-working (adj)
- prominent, paramount, important (adj)
- new, novel, unprecedented (adj)
- prevalent, common, conventional, orthodox (adj)
- creative, inventive, innovative (adj)
- exceptionally, very (adv)
- example, epitome, quintessence (n)
- adage, notion, proposition, idea (n)
- aspect, feature, value (n)
- anecdote, story, account
Do NOT Use Personal Qualifiers
This isn’t TOEFL anymore. Avoid, and I really mean AVOID, personal qualifiers (I, I’m, I’d, mine, myself, I think, in my opinion and all those thingies). First, it shows that you’re immature and not brave enough to say what you really want to say. Second, the SAT graders do not want to know about what you think. They want you to support your reasoning with valid examples from literature/history/etc. They want to see you as an educated person who has learned something from school.
Emergency Phrases
Use emergency phrases to prevent your hand from stopping to write and force your brain to think. What does this mean? I haven’t tried this for myself, but these emergency phrases will force your brain to think so that you can continue to write if you ever get stuck when writing your essay
- for example
- on the other hand
- in other words
Template Sentences Technique
Oh wow, this is really my favorite part. The sentences below can be used in all kinds of essay prompts because they are general. In addition, by planning these sentences beforehand, you can put all kinds of smart words in it, and it will definitely help your essay score.
How do you use the template sentence technique?
Suppose that your topic on the real test is
“What are your thoughts on the idea that failure is necessary for education to take place? Support your reasoning with examples from blah blah blah…”
Then you can always put a sentence like this at the end of your introductory paragraph:
The notion (idea) that failure is necessary in order to achieve education is bolstered (supported) by various anecdotes of history/literature/historical figures.
Similarly, you can still use other emergency sentences to embellish your essay. You can use another template for a sentence in the beginning of your body paragraphs where your examples start to show up, just like this:
A paramount example that shows how failure is needed to educate comes from a historical figure, Soichiro Honda.
These are the template sentences:
PUT THIS IN THE END OF YOUR INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH
- The notion that <restate topic here> is bolstered by various anecdotes of <insert your example types>.
PUT THESE IN THE BEGINNING OF YOUR BODY PARAGRAPHS
- A paramount example that embodies <reiterate/restate topic here> comes from/is <insert your example here>
- Another amusing example which implies that < reiterate/restate topic here> comes from/originates from <insert your example here>
- The quintessence of < reiterate/restate topic here> can be found from <insert your example here>
PUT THESE IN THE BEGINNING OF YOUR CONCLUSION PARAGRAPHS
- These examples/anecdotes of people/literature/etc vividly/clearly/undoubtedly embody that < reiterate/restate topic here>. (location : beginning of paragraph V)
- From these prominent examples, we can conclude/appreciate that indeed < reiterate/restate topic here>. (location : beginning of paragraph V)
- Subsequently/consequently, these examples show… (location : sentence 2 of paragraph V)
Notice that I always tell you to restate your topic in each template sentence. This is because your essay’s coherence is also graded, and the easiest way to ensure that your essay is coherent is to point to the topic you’re talking about every time you start talking about your examples.
Another thing, if you don’t feel comfortable with my template sentences (it makes your essay dull or whatever), you could always make some for yourself. Just make sure that your template sentence has some “smart words” in it so that you could always use them in emergencies.
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