ACCUPLACER WritePlacer Guide with Sample Essays © 2021 College Board.
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Famous television personalities and politicans provide ample fodder for the
frustration many of us feel when faced with Rowling’s demand that we take the
wheels of our own lives, and yet the complex relationship between personal
responsibility and predetermined circumstance plays itself out in ordinary lives,
as well. Having recently chosen to return to school for another degree, I feel
emboldened and proud of this decision I am making. However, I also recognize
that the support of my parents in high school–driving me to theater practice,
paying for my voice lessons, buying me as many books as I could read–and their
continued bolstering of me in college has laid the groundwork for my academic
success and condence. I could not have succeeded in high school, college, and
gradute school, and then considered more education, without their emotional
and nancial support.
In the end, we each write our own stories; we are in charge of the choices we
make. One eminent psychologist said it best when he claimed, “We do not have
control, but we do have choices.” We do not control so many things: the decade
we are born, the parents we go home with, the teachers who educate us. Yet we
do have choices. We choose the clothes we wear, regardless of each decade’s
fashion frenzies; we choose how we relate to our parents; we choose whether or
not to study for the myriad tests and quizzes that pepper our twenty-rst century
educations. The outcome of this venture called life will always, at least partially,
elude us, but as human beings, we have been given the gift of daily, personal
choice. To me, that makes all the dierence.
Annotations
This response eectively and insightfully develops its point of view that “we
are responsible for how we lead our lives, but each one of us makes those
choices and selects our paths within a framework which we cannot control.”
Critical thinking and eective examples appear throughout the essay, but these
qualities are on full display in the second body paragraph. The writer skillfully
juxtaposes the inherited advantages of George W. Bush with the fortitude
of Oprah Winfrey in order to examine the interplay of privilege and personal
determination. The essay develops this idea even further in the next section,
acknowledging that ordinary lives also bear witness to the “complex relationship
between personal responsibility and predetermined circumstance.” Focused on
its argument, the writing exhibits deliberate organization and clear coherence,
as Rowling’s ideas are used as a thread throughout the essay to respond to
the prompt’s complexity. The response is cohesive from start to nish, and its
strong conclusion provides a sense of completeness. An eective quotation
provides an appropriate response to the prompt’s ultimate question (“We do not
have control, but we do have choices.”). The writer follows this with well-chosen
examples of outside inuences beyond our control (fashion, parents, teachers)
and contrasts them with corresponding choices (We choose the clothes we
wear . . . how we relate to our parents . . . whether or not to study), demonstrating
eective reasoning and reinforcing the overall position. The use of language is
skillful, with a variety of eective sentence structures (However, I also recognize
that the support of my parents in high school–driving me to theater practice,
paying for my voice lessons, buying me as many books as I could read–and their
continued bolstering of me in college has laid the groundwork for my academic
success and condence .....In the end, we each write our own stories; we are