Sat essay section

The SAT Essay. The purpose of the new SAT Essay is to assess your ability to analyze an author’s argument. To write a strong essay, you will need to focus on how the author uses evidence, reasoning, and other rhetorical techniques to build an argument and make it convincing. The Essay task will be the same in every test.

The Writing and Language section (often referred to as simply the “Writing section”) may look similar to the Reading section, but instead of measuring your reading comprehension skills, this section measures your ability to identify and correct grammatical errors and stylistic weaknesses within passages .

In 2019, the mean score on the Reading and Writing for the SAT Essay was a 5. For the Analysis section, the mean score was a little lower at 3, simply because Analysis is a skill that high school students spend less time honing than Reading or Writing.

If you received a low score that you feel isn’t representative of your writing abilities, focus on crafting stellar college essays instead of retaking the SAT just for the Essay section. If you were unhappy with your SAT Essay score AND your overall SAT score, however, then you should consider retaking the test with the Essay section.