Everybody Writes, 2nd Edition

4Shake Off School Rules

In 2021, College Board officials announced sweeping revisions to the SAT college entrance exam. Among the key changes is that the dreaded five-paragraph essay portion of the test is now scrapped.¹

Research from MIT professor Les Perelman—long a harsh critic of the College Board essay—found that writing fat paragraphs with fancy words earned high essay scores, even if the writing wasn't very good. Higher still were scores that sprinkled in random, esoteric facts.

Perelman coached 16 students who were retaking the test after having received mediocre essay scores. He encouraged them to be long-winded and to fill up the entire test booklet—including the margins and back pages.

The Times reporter Todd Balf writes:

[Perelman] told them that details mattered but factual accuracy didn't. “You can tell them the War of 1812 began in 1945,” he said. He encouraged them to sprinkle in little-used but fancy words like “plethora” or “myriad” and to use two or three preselected quotes from prominent figures like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, regardless of whether they were relevant to the question asked.

So what happened?

Fifteen of the 16 students scored higher than the 90th percentile on the essay when they retook the exam.

And then Perelman said, “… and then I told them never to write that way again! (Because) no one is actually learning anything about writing.”²

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Many of us learned in school to write what is commonly known as the five-paragraph essay. It's ...