New SAT Essay Response, Score of 8

Earlier, I wrote a post with a sample new SAT essay prompt and an example on how to annotate the text to look for evidence while you are reading it. Today, I’m going to give you an example of how those annotations were used to write a perfect, 8-point essay. This is part one of a series of four attempts to answer this essay prompt. So, try it yourself and evaluate your essay based on our examples. For even more essay fun (because it’s super fun, right), you can also check out another prompt here. A few reminders About essay scoring: The new SAT essay has a different scoring rubric than the old essay, which we go over here. For more of a complete understanding of what each point means for each area of scoring (reading, analysis, and writing), you can check that out on The College Board’s website. About comparing essays: Writing an 8-point essay can be really, really hard to do, even for capable writers. As Elizabeth referred to in this post, 50 minutes is not a lot of time to read and analyze a text and then write a beautifully articulate essay about it. So if you find yourself not at the level you want to be after comparing essays, don’t be down! It’s really all about practice and always keeping track of how you can do better next time. Example 8-point Essay In the New York Times article â€Å"The Selfish Side of Gratitude,† Barbara Ehrenreich asserts that although expressing gratitude is important, particularly toward those that deserve our thanks, in practice, gratitude has evolved into a rather selfish act. Ehrenreich reasons through concrete, real-world examples as well as appeal to pathos to convincingly reveal that the common practice of gratitude has definately become about the self as opposed to about others. In one example, Ehrenreich discredits the popular practice of gratitude by pointing out the hypocrisy of a foundation that  has a prominent role in spreading this ideology. Ehrenreich reveals how the John Templeton Foundation, which plays a significant role in gratitude’s rise to self-help celebrity status for funding a number of projects to publically spread the message of gratitude, does not provide funding to improve the lives of poor people. Ehrenreich forces the reader to question The John Templeton Foundation for preferring to fund projects that improveattitudes as opposed to more philanthropic aims, which is the purpose of most foundations.  As delivering this example required a bit of investigative journalism on Ehrenreich’s part, Ehrenreich also impresses the reader with her well-researched knowledge about the practice of gratitude, which lends more credence to Ehrenreich and her views. Ehrenreich also paints a lucid picture of the selfishness of gratitude in practice by referring to an example of gratitude advice from a well-known source. In a CNN article, a yoga instructor posits gratitude advice, such as â€Å"writing what you give thanks for on a sticky note and posting it on your mirror† or creating â€Å"a ‘thankfulness’ reminder on your phone.† In the next line, Ehrenreich then offers her analysis: â€Å"Who is interacting here? ‘You’ and ‘you.’† By analyzing the excerpt of the gratitude advice itself, the audience can see Ehrenreich’s point for themselves, in which popular messaging about gratitude is inherently self-serving. Furthermore, isolating Ehrenreich’s pithy analysis of the advice serves as an effective stylistic technique to ensure that the reader truly focuses on the  central argument. Finally, Ehrenreich artfully uses appeal to pathos to draw a distinction between how gratitude is practiced and how it should be practiced. Ehrenreich is ultimately arguing that we should not do away with gratitude but rather we should practice â€Å"a more vigorous and inclusive sort of gratitude than what is being urged on us now.† She then lists the menial labor done to ensure one has food on the table and emphasizes that those who enact the labor are actual people with â€Å"aching backs and tenuous finances.† These descriptive details of these jobs and the workers serve to generate compassion and perhaps even guilt in the reader—who, as an NY Times reader, is likely a member of a privileged class—for not considering a more inclusive practice of gratitude. These feelings surely heighten Ehrenreich’s point that gratitude in practice has not been focused on those who truly deserve it. Erenreich then goes on to show specific examples of how one can show gratitude to these individuals, beyond just saying thanks, which highlights the selfishness of the current state of gratitude. Therefore, it is evident that through relevant and real-world examples, reasoning, and appeals to emotion, Ehrenreich provides a cogent argument regarding the selfishness of how society, as a whole, practices gratitude. Why this essay would receive an 8 This is a really solid essay. Let’s break it down by category. Reading comprehension: The writer’s thorough understanding of the essay is shown not only by their understanding of Ehrenreich’s central claim, but also in effective paraphrasing of her words. The writer also skillfully incorporates quotations from the original source only when it adds to their point* and stays away from simply summarizing the article, which can be a pitfall if one is not careful. Analysis: This essay would probably receive full marks for analysis because it clearly identifies concrete rhetorical elements in Ehrenreich’s essay that support her central point and the purpose of these elements as well as providing a lot of original reasoning for why they were effective (a lot of students might struggle with the latter). Writing: This student is clearly a talented writer, using fancy and well-chosen vocabulary (like pithy, cogent, artful). The writer also gets A+ for varying sentence structure and essay organization, in which there is a solid intro and conclusion** and each rhetorical element has its own paragraph in the body. There are minor errors in spelling (the dreaded misspelling of definitely), word choice (enact doesn’t really mean carry out, which is what the writer seemed to intend; perform would be a better choice), and grammar and punctuation, but nothing that interferes with meaning and quality. *Seriously, annotate! If you refer back to the annotation of the original text, you will notice that the writer mainly used quotations that were underlined in the annotations. Thats why underlining important parts of the text, as you read, is a great way to easily refer back to the most relevant quotes that you can copy in your essay. **The College Board doesn’t seem to care if your intro and conclusion basically say the same thing. As long as you succinctly summarize your central claim in the intro and switch up how you say it in the concluding paragraph, you should be good!