to lie or not to lie?

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koma

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This concerns the essay portion of the Mcat. My Kaplan instructor (who used to work for the mcat) said its ok to make up stuff as a support for the essay. Supposedly the graders don't care about the
truth of the content as long as the logic structure (support for your reasoning) is immaculate. However my friend who is taking PR says that they discourage this and advise to stick to current events and true historical occurences as a support for the essay. So which one is it?

I took Mcats awhile ago and I supported my essay with a made up revolution (but the logical structure was ok), etc since I am really bad with history. I think my overall grade was an M or something really low even though I am a decent writer. Does anyone else have a similar experience or know for certain they take points off for blatant "creativity".

It seems since every reader's background is different, the truth of the evidence should be irrelevant since not everyone may have enough knowledge to discriminate between the made up evidence and the true occurence.

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Its like playing the lottery. If you make up something, you are taking the chance that your reader might/might not know enough about the topic.

I definitely wouldnt do it, too risky, and there are too many examples out there as it is.

I cant think of any prompts that require an in-depth knowledge of history, so I dont think its necessary to make anything up as long as your argument is solid.
 
my god man, whats the matter with you? why in the hell would you make up a revolution?!!?! Why don't you just make up quotes from Thomas Jefferson while you're at it?!?!:laugh:

For one essay I didn't use any real life examples (because i just couldn't think oif any), just made up hypothetical examples (not freaking revolutions), and used one real example for the other essay. I got an 'S' on the real thing.
 
Sure, go ahead and lie! I did it and they sure as hell didn't care. I wrote the August 2002 MCAT and one of the essay topics was something about competition in business, and I just made up an entire theory about how competition is determined by the "asymmetry of information" (I don't even know what that means) and I got S too. Graders really don't care/know if what you wrote is right or not, they just check to see if you followed the format they specified.
 
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i dont know what u mean by lie, but the essence of the mcat essay is to check ur writing abilities in terms of quality, not content, i mean u cant say that the president is muslim when we all know he is a christian, right?
 
feel free to make something up if you have to. one of my essay anecdotes was some purely fictitious consumer report on cell phone usage and i pulled and R. besides, its not like anyone gives a rats @ss about the writing sample anyways :p
 
Yea, I was told to make up quotes by my Princeton review teachers. I did it on all my essays and got a P in April and an R in August. I wouldn't write something totally crazy; I think the whole made up revolution may have been over the top. If you do something small and believable, it works. Also, I think the essay grading is INCREDIBLY subjective, no matter how hard they try to for it not to be. My April essays were much better than my August. It all depends on who grades I think.
 
The key is to know when to make something up.

The key to the Writing section is to offer an argument and provide a logical support. If you can't come up with something for support make it up.

You have to make your argument hold water.

For example, if you have to support the premise that access to knowledge stifles creativity, than make up an example when knowledge does not stifle creativity i.e. medline for research. On the other hand, you can argue the other side and say that online term papers DOES stifle creativity. Notice that I have fabricated both examples but it holds the argument.
 
About how important is the writing sample anyways?

*sigh* I am horrible at writing essays under pressure.. :/ especially on paper since I am the type of person that goes back to revise almost every sentence =(
 
Originally posted by transposon
About how important is the writing sample anyways?

*sigh* I am horrible at writing essays under pressure.. :/ especially on paper since I am the type of person that goes back to revise almost every sentence =(

Its only important if you get really high (S,T), or really low. Any median score around P-ish is fine.
 
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