piece written by Paul Bogard and instructs students thusly:
As you read the passage below, consider how Paul Bogard uses
“Write an essay in which you explain how Paul Bogard builds an argument [uses rhetorical devices] to persuade his audience that natural darkness should be preserved. In your essay, analyze how Bogard uses one or more of the features in the directions that precede the passage (or features of your own choice) to strengthen the logic and persuasiveness of his argument.”
The CB’s instructions for the sample New SAT Essay #2 on its website are identical, except that the name Dana Gioia, who authored the second sample’s passage, is substituted for Paul Bogard’s name.
For Question #2 in the CB’s 2015 AP EL&C FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS, the CB chose to use a passage excerpted from a Cesar Chavez “article in the magazine of a religious organization devoted to helping those in need.” The CB instructs students to “Read the following excerpt from the article carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze the rhetorical choices Chavez makes to develop his argument about nonviolent resistance.”
Switch out the names, the thrust, and the authors of the source documents, and the CB’s instruction to students were virtually identical for its AP EL&C FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONs #2 in 2014, and 2013, and 2012, and 2011, and 2010, and…
So, it should be clear that students who’ve taken AP EL&Comp and done at least reasonably well on the Question #2 (rhetorical analysis) part of the test have a distinct “leg up” on others when it comes to writing the New SAT’s Essay.
We’re going to close with a discussion of “‘Optional or Not.” Unlike in the Old SAT, the CB doesn’t care whether students complete the New SAT’s Essay or don’t, so in that sense, it’s optional. But the CB isn’t going to be applying to any schools, much less schools that consider the New SAT Essay to be mandatory. So, it behooves students to be absolutely certain that they’ll never be applying to any school that requires the New SAT Essay before deciding to opt out of completing it.
The Ivy League schools are a good example of why students must research the necessity of completing the New SAT’s Essay for every school to which they might apply: As of last fall, Yale, Harvard. Princeton, and Dartmouth were in the “must complete” camp, while Columbia, Cornell, Brown, and U Penn took the opposite stance – and Stanford chimed in from the left coast with a “should submit” opinion.
The difference between the “yes” and “no” camps concerns how the New SAT Essay does, doesn’t, will, or won’t equate with tasks the students will face and with the students’ general performances at the college level, and much of that is pure conjecture. But because a lot of the people who have diametrically opposed opinions on this issue are far smarter than we are, we’ve chosen to demur on putting in our one-cent’s worth – other than to advise students to do what’s required by the colleges to which they might be applying, keep their rooms clean, and eat whatever their mothers cook for them.