SAT Essay Tip

The following quote comes from the instruction page for the SAT essay section at the College Board web site:

"You are asked to develop your point of view on the issue, not give a straight report of the facts. This is your opinion, so feel free to use "I," and give examples that are meaningful to you, even ones from your personal life or experiences."

So just image you are sitting at a desk taking the actual test, and you're asked to come up with a meaningful even in your life. Could you?

Prepare Ahead: Take an Inventory of Important Events

Meaningful life events are things you normally think about in your quiet time, when you're lying on your bed listening to your favorite music. For most people, they're tough to drum up under the glaring lights and high stress of a test environment.

So what can you do? Before you go to the test, come up with a bank of experiences to draw from.

A personal experience bank is a list of meaningful experiences in your life that you can reflect upon to find a lesson or a meaning. If you think about it, you can probably come up with a list of several events that were pivotal in your life.

These pivotal events may not be happy times, but they are times that brought about change. For instance, can you think of a lesson or new outlook you gained from any of the following situations?

• Your first kiss
• A trip to a foreign country
• A really dumb mistake that became dangerous
• Standing up for yourself when it wasn't popular
• Failing to do the right thing, then being ashamed
• The passing of a pet, friend, or a relative

30 Minutes to Future Success

Find a quiet time to sit and reflect. Make a list of your own experiences, and write a brief paragraph about each event. Is there a moral or lesson to each one?

This exercise will help you realize that we truly do learn from everyday events, as well as painful ones. But it will also give you a rich bank of information to draw from on test day, and for the rest of your life.

Feel Silly?

At first, it might seem a little shallow and ironic to keep a list of deep-meaning experiences on hand to use as a tool for a good score on the test. Don't worry about that.

The essay portion of the SAT is designed to determine whether a student can develop and express meaningful essays. Not mechanical essays. You will be expected to use examples from your studies and your experiences. This exercise merely encourages students to prepare ahead of time.

Read more advice about the SAT writing section.

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