Top SAT Essay Tips To Improve Your Score

We’ve compiled a few SAT essay tips to help you have a better idea of what you’ll be doing. 

Many institutions demand SAT or ACT scores as part of the admissions process. Your SAT score is an essential part of your college application. The SAT essay is an elective section of the SAT that you need to pay an extra $17.00 to take. Are you still unsure where you would like to enroll in college? Only 25 institutions in the United States require the SAT essay. If you want to apply to one of those colleges, you should highly consider signing up for the essay.

Whether the SAT Essay is new to you or you’re just trying to improve the score you received on your last exam, you can gain important information by learning about the essay and what appeals most to the evaluators grading you. 

We’ve compiled a few SAT essay tips to help you have a better idea of what you’ll be doing. 

Benefits of Writing the SAT Essay

Even if a school you’re considering doesn’t mandate it, there are advantages to taking the SAT with Essay. One benefit is that it expands your college options, irrespective of what you’ve settled on so far. 

While some institutions may not need an SAT Essay score, they may suggest it as a component of the admissions process. Usually, having a higher SAT Essay score helps you distinguish yourself from thousands of other candidates. SAT essays are a fantastic way to demonstrate your writing ability.

Colleges can learn from your SAT essay that you have a strong command of the English language, can write well-organized work, and can reason logically. Some institutions require both the essay portion and SAT scores, while others do not. In that case, if you have chosen your potential colleges, check our guide to Colleges And Universities That Don’t Require SAT. 

SAT Essay Tips to Improve Your Score

Given below are some SAT Essay Tips to improve your score: 

1: State your Thesis Clearly

Your essay must give a coherent argument that the audience can understand. An SAT essay analysis tip that helps make your primary argument is identifying the passage’s key concept and describing the author’s strategies to support it.

The SAT provides you with the main concept of the paragraph to make your job simpler. You can summarise the author’s primary argument in your thesis statement word for word.

2: Include an Introduction and a Conclusion in your Paper

A new SAT essay writing tip is to open with a compelling paragraph. The opening paragraph informs the audience regarding the topic at hand and helps you lay the groundwork for the entire essay. The introduction can always determine the caliber of the paper. A sloppy start is sometimes a warning that the article will be cluttered.

The SAT essay is 50 minutes long, and it may not always be possible to have both an introduction and a conclusion. In such scenarios, an SAT essay analysis tip is to give preference to the opening as it includes your primary argument, forming your thesis.

3: Creating Effective Choice Of words and Using Correct Grammar

The SAT rubric emphasizes a command of language and style of writing skill. This essentially means you should avoid redundancy and grammatical errors. An excellent new SAT essay professional writing tip is to avoid repeating the same word in the essay multiple times; instead, aim to use synonyms to show off your vocabulary.

You should avoid utilizing first-person words such as “I” or “My” throughout the essay, as well as any other informality. It is vital to remember that this is a college admissions test and not an informal article. These are some of the critical SAT essay tips to improve your score.

4: Only Use Data from the Passage Given to You

An important SAT Essay tips to improve your score is utilizing the data given beforehand. The passage given to you contains all the necessary information you need to frame your essay. The most essential SAT essay analysis tip that we can give you is to focus on precise information extracted from the paragraph you’re analyzing.

5: Concentrate Your Essay Only on the Important Details

You have to remember that SAT Essay is a 50-minute assignment. To take full advantage of the allotted time, you need to focus your explanation on only a few ideas that make your argument clear and compelling. You will be guaranteed to score more marks with this approach. You need to identify the crucial arguments that the writer has put forward. A new SAT essay writing tip would be to not use examples from outside the text to support the author’s claims. 

A good example would be writing a 50-minute essay on the human face, with an explanation and functional details of each part. A clear, concise essay only includes the eyes, nose, and mouth. 

6: Focus on Length of the Essay 

SAT essay tips typically focus on the quality of writing but forget that the length is equally important. You will receive one page of scratch paper and four pages to write your essay. Ensure that at least two sheets are adequately filled. 

SAT Essay Tips: How to Effectively Manage Time?

As mentioned above, candidates get 50 minutes to complete the SAT Essay. This includes time for reading, comprehension, analysis, and writing. You must carefully use the time allotted along with the SAT essay tips to improve your score. 

• Read the Passage Carefully in the First 5 Minutes:

Take notes to assist you in remembering the important ideas. Focus on how the author conveys his point of view through the passage and find a connecting link between paragraphs. Finally, identify the different rhetorical devices that the author employs.  

• Plan your Essay in the Next 10 Minutes:

Utilize your scratch sheet to sketch out your essay once you’ve thoroughly understood the passage. Utilize the SAT essay analysis tips mentioned earlier and identify if the paragraph you read is more of a first-person account or a thesis where the author uses figures and numbers to make a point. An SAT essay analysis tip that may help candidates recognize three features of the author’s claim you want to discuss in each paragraph. 

• Write your Essay in 25 Minutes.

This gives you ample time to write your essay, mainly if you’ve already spent time reading and organizing the contents of your essay. If at any stage you are not very clear about the essay, return to your scratch paper and make adjustments if needed. 

• Proofread for Ten Minutes.

Make sure that you have enough time to go through your work and make any modifications if required. Edit grammatical or spelling issues, mark out and rephrase sections, and double-check that the text and concepts are coherent and logical. 

SAT Essay Scoring 

The new SAT essay writing tips are different. You no longer need to write a 5-paragraph essay stating your point of view and backing it with clear instances; the new SAT essay demands you to read a long section and then evaluate it with an essay. We have included new SAT essay writing tips to improve your score in this article.

The advantage of the new SAT essay is that you won’t have to come up with particular examples from literature, world affairs, or other sources anymore! The paragraph supplied in the prompt contains everything you’ll need to compose your essay.

The Important Facts of the New SAT Essay are: 

• You will get a time of 50 minutes to read the passage and write the essay. 
• Essays that are not on topic won’t be evaluated. 
• Two different evaluators will be scoring your essay. 
• The three categories for scoring are: 
  • Reading 
  • Analysis
  • Writing
• The maximum score for each is 8, and the minimum is 2. 

SAT Essay Dimensions 

Reading (2-8 score)	Analysis (2-8 score)	Writing (2-8 score)
The reading component focuses on the comprehension of the passage, the interpretation, and the understanding of the passage’s main point.	The analysis component focuses on understanding how a clear argument is built and effective analysis of the author’s evidence and reasoning.	The writing component focuses on communicating information and ideas in an organized, logical way, and demonstrating a grasp of conventional written English norms.

UPDATE: The SAT Essay is Discontinued

The body that administers the SAT exam every year, stated in January 2021 that the Essay section of the SAT will be discontinued after June 2021. The College Board confirmed that the SAT Essay would not be offered anymore unless your institution is one of the few that chooses to administer it during SAT School Day Testing. This change will certainly lead to other college application modifications.