Toni Said:

Introduction to a school essay- 9th grade?

We Answered:

Yes its good. Can you do it as if you haven't grown at all and blame it all on the school. That would be funny. Maybe start of with a famous quote about new starts. It would seriously impress.

Marcia Said:

SAT ESSAY! can you please help me grade my essay?

We Answered:

Hi there!

In response to your question about a four or five paragraph essay, the easy and non-committal answer is "it depends." A four paragraph essay is the safe option. You only need four paragraphs (an introduction, conclusion, and two body/example paragraphs) and with only 25 minutes you don't need to stress yourself out thinking that you need to come up with a third example to help prove your point. Trying to write a five paragraph essay is risky. If you have time to write a solid five paragraph essay, then your paper will be stronger. Adding a weak third paragraph, however, will not only make your essay weaker but will also prevent you from making your other two example paragraphs that much stronger. Essentially, a well-written five paragraph essay is stronger than a well written four paragraph essay, but a well-written four paragraph essay is much stronger than a mediocre five paragraph essay.

In your specific case your essay would be stronger if you left out the final "personal example" paragraph. Personal examples are generally frowned upon and in a vast majority of cases make essays weaker. Your examples should primarily be historical and literary, and having one of each (instead of two historical or two literary) is preferable. If you can only come up with exclusively historical or exclusively literary examples, try to make them as different from one another as possible to demonstrate that you have approached the question from different perspectives. Current events examples are a little tricky. Your Bernie Madoff example is outstanding, and examples from "hard news" are perfectly all right. However, you want to avoid pop culture references. Talking about Obama and health care would be great, for example, while talking about actors' or musicians' private lives would be a mistake.

Your paragraph about Julius Caesar is also well-done and the only suggestion I have is that you are using Shakespeare's play as your example and not the actual historical account of what happened to Caesar. That is perfectly fine, but you need to specify that. Fixing that could be as easy as beginning that paragraph with "In Shakespeare's play "Julius Caesar". . . ." instead of simply "In "Julius Caesar". . . ."

As it stands I would still give this essay a 5 or 6, and by erasing your personal example essay I would be tempted to give it a 6. You write very well, have the basic essay structure in place, use excellent examples (aside from the personal one), and always adhere to what the essay prompt is asking you. Very well done!

I am a professional SAT instructor with Test Prep Gurus. If you would like any more help please feel free to email me at Info@PrepGurus.com or check out our website at www.PrepGurus.com