What students will face on the Essay Writing Section of the SAT

General Overview of the Essay Writing Section.

Students will be asked to write a short essay that requires them to take a position on an issue and use examples to support their position.

Time Allotted for Essay Responses.

Students will be allotted 25 minutes to complete their essay.

How the essay will be scored.

The essays will be graded holistically on a scale from 1-6 (with 6 being the highest score) based on the overall quality of the essay and the student’s demonstration of writing competence.
Holistic grading means a grade will be assigned based on an overall sense of how well the essay has been executed in the time allotted.
Handwriting is NOT a part of the grading scale (but writing legibly so that test graders can reader a students’ work will certainly help).

Who will score the essay.

The essay will be scored by experienced and trained high school and college teachers.
Each essay will be scored by two people who will not know each other’s score, the student’s name/identity or the student’s school.
Each grader will give the essay a score from 1 to 6 (6 is the highest) based on a SCORING RUBRIC for the SAT ESSAY WRITING SECTION.
The two scores will then be added together to arrive at your essay subscore.

What the Holistic Approach to Grading Means to You

Even with some errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar, you can still get a top score on the essay because student’s work will be evaluated holistically meaning readers will consider the essay as a total piece of work and will judge it on the overall impression it produces.
Remember, handwriting will not count against you, but essay readers must be able to read your writing in order to score your essay, so you should try to write legibly.