How to Study for the SAT Essay

Can you really study for the SAT essay questions? Although the answer would seem to be an obvious no, in fact there are several time-tested tips that have resulted in improved scores. The SAT is the bastard godfather of America’s full-force movement toward standardizing education at all levels in the United States, and despite all the best attempts to make it fair to every single person taking it, it can’t be done. Some people will sit down to take the SAT lacking the necessary cognitive skills required to ace it. It’s not a question of intelligence or lack of learning; the SAT assumes a certain standardization of brain chemistry in everybody that simply doesn’t exist.

All is not lost, however. Although following this advice certainly can’t guarantee that you’ll increase your score, it may at least help reduce your test anxiety. Not everyone is comfortable with writing essays and the standardized manner in which writing essays are drilled into students starting in elementary school doesn’t help. Therefore, unless you are blessed with the ability to easily synthesize information while writing it in essay form, you should take time to brainstorm.

During this period, look over the SAT essay question and really try to determine what the graders will be looking for. Read the question several times until you fully comprehend what the question is about. This may sound like something ridiculously obvious and easy to do, but once you actually begin answering the question it’s surprisingly easy to get off topic. The SAT essay is all about organization and focus if it’s about nothing else. It’s a little-advertised secret of the SAT industry that essay graders spent most of their time poring over the opening and closing paragraphs. Because there are so many essays to grade and so little time to grade them, many SAT graders literally skim over the body portion. They focus on the opening and closing because those are the paragraphs that best indicate whether you actually answered the question posed.