College Essay Tip: WRITE ABOUT YOURSELF
Outstanding SAT & ACT scores are simply one step towards admission to your dream school. Craft an application essay that takes you all the way by applying our 7 Steps to an Amazing College Essay. Step 1 is to WRITE ABOUT YOURSELF: Your essay is the first place where you get to connect with admissions committees on a human level and say, “This is who I am and why I will be an asset to your college community.” That is what they’re really looking for. Don’t blow this golden opportunity by writing about someone or something else. First and foremost, make sure you write about yourself. You may be who you are today because of a parent, grandparent, or personal hero, but you should not write about that person except as a bridge to writing about yourself. The essay is not the place to show off your keen grasp of…
2016-17 Common Application Essay Prompts
Basking in the hot sun to perfect your tan may have fallen out of favor, but summer still has its uses. For example, summer is just about the best time for most high school students to prep for the SAT & ACT. But that’s not all: summer is also the best time for rising seniors to work on that all-important admissions essay. One of the keys to an AMAZING college essay is selecting the right prompt. Fortunately, the prompts and directions haven’t changed much over the last couple years, so here are your options for the 2016-17 Common App: Instructions. The essay demonstrates your ability to write clearly and concisely on a selected topic and helps you distinguish yourself in your own voice. What do you want the readers of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test scores? Choose the option that best helps you answer…
Superficial Changes to ACT Writing Results
Remember when ACT, Inc. was perceived as the “smart” testmaker? The ACT started out serving students in the Midwest and certain other American enclaves, but gained even greater prominence in 2005. Back when the College Board released what turned out to be a disastrous SAT revision, all eyes turned to the shrewdly managed test out of Iowa City. Just as that earlier change to the SAT allowed the ACT to overtake its rival as the world’s most popular college admissions test, this most recent SAT revision was supposed to solidify ACT hegemony for the foreseeable future. Too bad ACT keeps screwing up. Gaffe after gaffe signals that the ACT no longer sets the standard for careful stewardship of a public trust. Many of the ACT’s errors have revolved around the Writing Test, the optional essay that actually helped the test gain popularity. The last year, however, has seen ACT stumble…
Persuasive Elements in Writing
The SAT & ACT have long tested structural elements in reading passages, specifically an understanding of why writers make certain choices and what form their choices take. Structure questions challenge a test taker’s ability to recognize literary devices and go beyond understanding what an author says to recognizing how and why. The new SAT essay tests understanding of structure on an entirely new level. Students are given a long passage and asked to explain how the author builds an argument to persuade an audience. This assignment marks a dramatic departure from previous test essay assignments, which were persuasive rather than analytical. Analyzing an argument demands a better mastery of the terminology of structural elements. Test takers should be able to speak to the balance of ethos, pathos, and logos in an essay, but should also be prepared to identify additional persuasive elements. The following represents some of the broader categories…
Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
The fundamentals of persuasion surely date back in their most rudimentary forms to our prehistoric ancestors. The capacity for speech introduced, of course, certain necessary refinements. Yet, argumentation wasn’t universally recognized as an art until the philosophers got ahold of it. Aristotle astutely classified three modes of persuasion in his classic text, On Rhetoric; his classical analysis corresponds surprisingly well with our modern models of argumentation. In other words, we can find ethos, pathos, and logos used in both evidence and warrants to support claims. ETHOS Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds… Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech was so spoken as to make us think him credible… Ethos describes an appeal to authority or credibility. The authority of the presenter obviously lends to the persuasive power of his or her argument, but ethos can also…
Elements of an Effective Argument: Warrants
As Monty Python cleverly conveyed, an argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a definite proposition. The Toulmin Model of Argumentation refers to that proposition as a claim. Some of the subsequent statements are, of course, evidence meant to prove the claim. However, other statements are required to interpret the evidence and show how it supports the claim. These statements are called warrants. Warrants, also called bridges, are essential yet often overlooked elements of effective arguments. Without warrants, the links between evidence and claims may appear tenuous at best: CLAIM: The New York Yankees are the best baseball team ever. EVIDENCE: The Yankees have won 27 World Series. This example of a classic sports argument highlights how even solid statistical evidence lacks persuasive power without a clear bridge between data and claim: WARRANT: 27 World Series wins are far more than any other team in baseball history…