In a SAT preparation book, I once read, “Writing the SAT essay is more like building a birdhouse than writing like Shakespeare.”

What does this mean? Well, let’s look at the issue of how much time you have to write. You have 25 minutes. That is not a lot of time.

Let’s also look at who is grading your essay and how much time he or she spends on reading your piece of writing. Usually the College Board hires high school teachers to assess their essays. I have a friend who grades for the College Board, and he told me the company recently dumped 500 essays in his lap. Obviously, he had a deadline to fulfill. He told me that the average grader spends two or three minutes on a paper.

How does this statistic affect your writing? Well…. You need to quickly get to the point, yet you need to develop your idea by using relevant specific details.  Your writing has to be crystal clear, and you need to master the five-paragraph essay.

We can argue about the usefulness of this writing strategy until the cows come home; but simply said, it provides a useful plan for standardized tests.

Did you know that the five-paragraph essay was created by college professors in the nineteenth century who didn’t want to spend a lot of time reading the writing of their students? (Source: Barry Lane’s The Reviser’s Toolbox) These teachers wanted to manage their time effectively so that they could do other things like doing research, writing their own books, spending time with their children or growing roses in their gardens.

And there are some positive aspects to this strategy. It forces you to come up with a thesis statement, it teaches you the important skill of summarizing, and it gives you a system with which you can organize your thoughts. I’ll discuss the negative qualities in another hub.

So, when it comes to writing for the SAT or the ACT, you have twenty-five minutes to create an impressive draft. Develop a strategy for managing your time. Carefully read the essential question and write the logical, systematic essay that the grader wants. Build your birdhouse.

If you want to write like Shakespeare, write in a journal.