SAT Essay Practice Prompts

 

Here are a collection of SAT practice essay prompts I've gathered from various sources including online websites and many of the tests I've actually done.

1. Prompt:
   "That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only which gives everything its value."
   Thomas Paine
   
   
   Assignment:
   Do we value only what we struggle for? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations.
   
   
   
   
2. Prompt:
   If we are afraid to reveal our lack of knowledge we will not be able to learn. In order to make progress we must admit where we are now. Such an admission of ignorance is not easy. As Thoreau says, “How can we remember our ignorance which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time?”
   
   
   Assignment:
   Does the present system of education encourage us to admit our lack of knowledge, or is there too much pressure to demonstrate the acquisition of knowledge? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations. 
   
   
3. Prompt:
   “A little inaccuracy saves a world of explanation.”
   C.E.Ayers
   
   
   Assignment:
   Is it always essential to tell the truth, or are there circumstances in which it is better to lie? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations. 
   
   
   
   
4. Prompt:
   Many societies believe that the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human right. But it is also true that attainment of happiness remains elusive. Perhaps Bertrand Russell had it right when he said, “To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”
   
   
   Assignment:
   What gives us more pleasure and satisfaction: the pursuit of our desires or the attainment of them? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations. 
   
   
   
   
5. Prompt:
   “The price of greatness is responsibility.”
   Winston Churchill
   
   
   Assignment:
   Do we expect too much from our public figures? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations. 
   
   
6. Prompt:
   “A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.”
   Alexander Pope
   
   
   Assignment:
   Do we learn more from finding out that we have made mistakes or from our successful actions? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations. 
   
   
   
   
7. Prompt:
   “What man calls civilization always results in deserts. Man is never on the square – he uses up the fat and greenery of the earth. Each generation wastes a little more of the future with greed and lust for riches.”  Don Marquis
   
   
   Assignment:
   With our modern awareness of ecology are we likely to make sufficient progress in conservation, or are we still in danger of damaging the earth beyond repair? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations. 
   
   
8. Prompt:
   A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he is not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning the ball stopped to think about his views of the physical and mental advantages of tennis. You must act as you breathe.
   Georges Clemenceau
   
   
   Assignment:
   Is it true that acting quickly and instinctively is the best response to a crisis? Or are there times when an urgent situation requires a more careful consideration and a slower response? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations. 
   
   
   
   
9. Prompt:
   There is usually a kernel of truth in the words Oscar Wilde puts in the mouth of his most outrageous characters – they wouldn’t be funny otherwise. One such gem that is worth pondering is: The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
   
   
   Assignment:
   Is it true that when we most need advice we are least willing to listen to it? Or is good advice always welcome? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations. 
   
   
   
   
10. Prompt:
    “Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.” Bernard Shaw expected to provoke controversy with these words, but I would agree with him that these days there is too much emphasis on independence. While it is certainly true that excessive dependence on others is not a sign of maturity, total independence of others is neither attainable nor desirable: we need to be mature, and unselfish enough to recognize our interdependence.
    
    
    Assignment:
    Do we put too much emphasis on self-reliance and independence, and are we afraid of admitting that we need other people in our lives? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations. 
    
    
    source:  http://www.majortests.com/sat/essay-topics.php
    
    

    From My Personal Practice

    1. In the 1950s, ads for newly available appliances such as washing machines and dishwashers suggested that such technological innovations would free up the housewife's time, allowing her more leisure. During the advent of personal computers, the same promise that machines would simplify our lives was regularly made or implied. However, people today work harder and are more rushed than they ever were before, and few feel that life has changed for the better.
                                                          adapted from Daryl Stradivarius, "Technical Difficulties"
    
    
    Assignment: Is it possible that things that make our lives easier can also make them more difficult? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations. 
    
    
    
    
    2. In a recent speech, the President stressed the need for increased mathematics and science skills among students today, while saying nothing about humanities and the arts and never mentioning the word "creativity". Yet, it is not practical applications and economic incentives that best drive science forward- it is pure research done primarily for the sake of knowledge. And intellectual curiousity of that caliber requires creative minds, minds nurtured in the humanities and arts.
                                                       adapted from William Deverson, "Newton wrote Poetry"
    
    
    Assignment: How important is creativity in relation to progress in the world today? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations.  
    
    
    
    
    3.  People who engage in reckless or self-destructive behavior often justify their actions by saying  they are only hurting themselves and not anyone else. However, eveything a person does has an effect on the world. If a person behaves in an unacceptable way and other people copy that behavior, that person is responsible for the consequences. 
                                                                     adapted from Wim Dannin, "He Told Me To"
    
    
    Assignment: Are people responsible, through the examples they set, for the behaviors of other people? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations.  
    
    
    
    
    4. A collegue of the great scientist James Watson remarked that Watson was always "lounging around, arguing about problems instead of doing experiments". He concluded that "There is more than one way of doing good science". It was Watson's form of idleness, the scientist went on to say, that allowed him to solve "the greatest of all biological problems: the discovery of the structure of DNA". It is a point worth remembering a society overly concerned with efficiency.
                                                                 adapted from John C Polanyi, "Understanding Discovery"
    
    
    Assignment: Do people accomplish more when they are allowed to do things their own way? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations. 
    
    
    
    
    5.  No matter how definite a truth, no matter how resolute a conviction, there is always a "however". 
                                                                                                            Wellesley Dinton 
    
    
    Ever present, contrast is that marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats. 
                                                                                                            Ralph Waldo Emerson
    
    
    Assignment: What is the value of opposites and contrasts? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your readings, studies, or observations.  
    
    
    
    
    
    

On the SAT: Critical Reading Long Passage Terror

 

The long passage sections of critical reading in SAT tends to be my least favorite, not that any of the others are my favorites.
These passages also tend to be the ones I get some sleep during- because I always manage to fall asleep while reading the loooong passages.

The long passage sections can either be a comparison of two medium sized passages about one topic, comparing the opinions of the first author with the opinions of the second author OR they can be just one fat, ugly paragraph by itself.

Here's an example of comparison passages:

source: http://perfectscoreproject.com/2011/06/im-having-relationship-issues/

 Now let's look at the questions that follow them:

source: http://perfectscoreproject.com/2011/06/im-having-relationship-issues/

source: http://perfectscoreproject.com/2011/06/im-having-relationship-issues/

 Here's an example of a long passage:

The pioneers of the teaching of science imagined that its
    introduction into education would remove the conventionality,
    artificiality, and backward-lookingness which were characteristic;
    of classical studies, but they were gravely disappointed. So, too, in
5   their time had the humanists thought that the study of the classical
    authors in the original would banish at once the dull pedantry and
    superstition of mediaeval scholasticism. The professional
    schoolmaster was a match for both of them, and has almost
    managed to make the understanding of chemical reactions as dull
10  and as dogmatic an affair as the reading of Virgil's Aeneid.
    The chief claim for the use of science in education is that it
    teaches a child something about the actual universe in which he is
    living, in making him acquainted with the results of scientific
15  discovery, and at the same time teaches him how to think logically
    and inductively by studying scientific method. A certain limited
    success has been reached in the first of these aims, but practically
    none at all in the second. Those privileged members of the
    community who have been through a secondary or public school
20  education may be expected to know something about the
    elementary physics and chemistry of a hundred years ago, but they
    probably know hardly more than any bright boy can pick up from
    an interest in wireless or scientific hobbies out of school hours.
    As to the learning of scientific method, the whole thing is palpably
25  a farce. Actually, for the convenience of teachers and the
    requirements of the examination system, it is necessary that the
    pupils not only do not learn scientific method but learn precisely
    the reverse, that is, to believe exactly what they are told and to
    reproduce it when asked, whether it seems nonsense to them or
30  not. The way in which educated people respond to such quackeries
    as spiritualism or astrology, not to say more dangerous ones such
    as racial theories or currency myths, shows that fifty years of
    education in the method of science in Britain or Germany has
    produced no visible effect whatever. The only way of learning the
35  method of science is the long and bitter way of personal
    experience, and, until the educational or social systems are altered
    to make this possible, the best we can expect is the production of a
    minority of people who are able to acquire some of the techniques
    of science and a still smaller minority who are able to use and
40  develop them.


1. The author implies that the 'professional schoolmaster' (line 7) has
A. no interest in teaching science
B. thwarted attempts to enliven education
C. aided true learning
D. supported the humanists
E. been a pioneer in both science and humanities.
2. The author’s attitude to secondary and public school education in the sciences is
A. ambivalent
B. neutral
C. supportive
D. satirical
E. contemptuous
3. The word ‘palpably’ (line 24) most nearly means
A. empirically
B. obviously
C. tentatively
D. markedly
E. ridiculously
4. The author blames all of the following for the failure to impart scientific method through the education system except
A. poor teaching
B. examination methods
C. lack of direct experience
D. the social and education systems
E. lack of interest on the part of students
5. If the author were to study current education in science to see how things have changed since he wrote the piece, he would probably be most interested in the answer to which of the following questions?
A. Do students know more about the world about them?
B. Do students spend more time in laboratories?
C. Can students apply their knowledge logically?
D. Have textbooks improved?
E. Do they respect their teachers?
6. Astrology (line 31) is mentioned as an example of
A. a science that needs to be better understood
B. a belief which no educated people hold
C. something unsupportable to those who have absorbed the methods of science
D. the gravest danger to society
E. an acknowledged failure of science
7. All of the following can be inferred from the text except
A. at the time of writing, not all children received a secondary school education
B. the author finds chemical reactions interesting
C. science teaching has imparted some knowledge of facts to some children
D. the author believes that many teachers are authoritarian
E. it is relatively easy to learn scientific method.

 Answers:

1.		B
2.		E
3.		B
4.		E
5.		C
6.		C
7.		E

Source:  For More Practice on Critical Reading

Here's a basic list of things to do while reading the passages:

1. underline transitional words
2. Circling, Boxing, and Underlining

1. Underlining Transitional Words

Most of the SAT Passages do not openly say "Hey Guys! This is my main idea". If that were the case, we'd all be getting 2400s. Most passages go in a weird way to state their main ideas; they say, for example, "People often consider ice cream to be unhealthy because of the contents of fat it contains. However, some health experts argue agaisnt this idea."

In this example, "However" is the transitional word. It tells you that the author's main idea isn't "Ice cream is bad" but actually "Ice cream is good". Those sly authors.
Of course, the passages won't be as simple as the example I gave you but the idea is the same.

Here are some transitional words to look out for:

Opposition
Although
However
In spite of
Rather than
Nevertheless
On the other hand
But

Support
Moreover
Besides
Additionally
Furthermore
In fact

Result
Therefore
Consequently
Accordingly
Because
When
So

2. Circling, Boxing, and Underlining

 When you come across a passage do not start straight off by reading the passage. We've been told countless times by our teachers to read the questions first, SO DO IT. It helps a lot by quickly previewing the anticipated questions, underlining what the questions are asking for, such as "main idea", "tone/mood", "what author's purpose was". Then go to the passage and underline or box or circle the needed content.

When you get a question like this:

3. The word ‘equanimity’ (line 41) most nearly means
A. status
B. happiness
C. justice
D. complacency
E. composure

First of all, it's obvious the question is asking for a definition of the word. However, many people fail to understand that many, many words have many, many different meanings that we are unfamiliar with. The best way to approach these types of questions would be to cover up the answer choices (DO NOT LOOK AT THEM, go to line 41, read the sentence the word is in, then come up with a word that you think could replace the word in the sentence.

So here's the sentence "equanimity" was in:

Under such circumstances Mr. Harding could not but feel
    that he was an Englishman who did not know how to
  live. This new doctrine of Mr. Slope and the rubbish
    cart sadly disturbed his equanimity.

You can replace the word "equanimity" with
-inner peace
-calmness

The answer was E) Composure
The goal of coming up with your own synonyms is to avoid choosing answers just because you know the definition. Just because you know the definition doesn't mean it's right because the question asks for the meaning of the word the way it is used by the author.

In my experience doing SAT questions I came across many authors who used random words and made up their definitions. They used words with completely wrong defnitions to write a sentence but it works because 1) it's their book, they can do what they want
2) it gives the same idea in the context of the sentence

Same with answering SAT questions, never answer questions based on your opinion; it's always about the author's opinion.

The author could write about how slavery benefitted America, an idea that is cruel and horrible, and although you, yourself believe the author's ideas are wrong, you have to stand in the perspective of the author in order to correctly answer the questions.

If you get a question that asks specific material on a specific line:

6. The tone of the sentence 'New men....live' (lines 34-37) is
A. objective
B. ironic
C. derogatory
D. expository
E. ambivalent

1) you should already have underlined a bunch of tone words (ie: dark, grumpy, sunshine, iridescent)
2) Go to the lines the question gave you and read 2-3 sentences before it to get a background.