I remember when I took the SATs I did quite well on the reading and math, but not so hot on the writing. I remember feeling that the grading of the essay wasn't made clear at all- Should I throw out unnecessary college-level vocabulary to sound smart or write to a casual reader? Should I make appeals to emotion or cite studies?

I remember one prompt I got was "All leaders deserve their positions of leadership," and I thought, "Well they used the word ALL so really the most logical refutation would be merely a counter-example (e.g. Hitler) but now I have to drag out this reasoning into this unnatural 5-paragraph contrivance."