SAT Essay Prompts

Materials on this page relate to the SAT before March 2016.

For updated SAT materials, please see:

• New SAT Prep
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We have a collection of the new SAT Essay Prompts from March 2005 till the most recent test released by College Board to help in your SAT essay preparation.

December 2007

If you took the December 2007 SAT Reasoning Test, you would have been given one of the essay prompts below:

Prompt 1

Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.

The first problem for all of us is not to learn but to unlearn. We hold on to ideas that were accepted in the past, and we are afraid to give them up. Preconceptions about what is right or wrong, true or false, good or bad are embedded so deeply in our thinking that we honestly may not know that they are there. Whether it's women's role in society or the role of our country in the world, the old assumptions just don't work anymore.

Adapted from Gloria Steinem, "A New Egalitarian Lifestyle"

Assignment:
Do people need to "unlearn," or reject, many of their assumptions and ideas? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

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Prompt 2

Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.

Our determination to pursue truth by setting up a fight between two sides leads us to believe that every issue has two sides—no more, no less. If we know both sides of an issue, all of the relevant information will emerge, and the best case will be made for each side. But this process does not always lead to the truth. Often the truth is somewhere in the complex middle, not the oversimplified extremes.

Adapted from Deborah Tannen, The Argument Culture

Assignment:
Should people choose one of two opposing sides of an issue, or is the truth usually found "in the middle"? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

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Prompt 3

Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.

All around us appearances are mistaken for reality. Clever advertisements create favorable impressions but say little or nothing about the products they promote. In stores, colorful packages are often better than their contents. In the media, how certain entertainers, politicians, and other public figures appear is more important than their abilities. All too often, what we think we see becomes far more important than what really is.

Assignment:
Do images and impressions have too much of an effect on people? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

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Prompt 4

Until fairly recently, technological innovations and inventions were intended to serve basic human needs or desires. Today, however, the most important and urgent problem confronting us is no longer the satisfaction of basic needs. The primary purpose of modern technology is to solve the unintended problems caused by the technology of years past.

Adapted from Dennis Gabor, Innovations: Scientific, Technological, and Social

Assignment:
Is the most important purpose of technology today different from what it was in the past? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.