SAT Essay Examples

So after all my blabbing about the importance of the actual writing vs. the examples, I'm going to switch gears and deal with the other side. Some of the SAT essay examples below have been used by various students of mine on high scoring essays (10-12), and some are simply my own recommendations. Many of them work for a wide range of topics, perhaps with the exception of the infamous March 2011 test... I'm also going to add them to my "How to Write the SAT Essay" page for permanent reference.

The list is not intended to be by any means comprehensive, so if you have an example you'd like to add, please don't hesitate to comment.

Literary

The World According to Garp (one of my favorite books, works for almost everything)
A Widow for One Year
All the King's Men
Crime and Punishment
Great Expectations
Frankenstein
To Kill a Mockingbird
Of Mice and Men
The Scarlet Letter
The Great Gatsby
1984
Brave New World
The Odyssey/The Illiad/The Aeneid
Any Shakespearean tragedy, esp. Hamlet and Macbeth
And if you're truly a kick-ass writer and want to have some fun... Harry Potter (yes, it can be done)

Historical

French Revolution
American Revolution
Civil War: 54th Regiment (Subject of the film Glory)
Ghandi
Civil Rights Movement: Rosa Parks, Malcolm X (not MLK!)
Mother Teresa
Harvey Milk
Nixon/Watergate Scandal
Cuban Missile Crisis
Roosevelt/New Deal
Johnson/Great Society
Abraham Lincoln
Harriet Tubman
WEB DuBois
Napoleon's Invasion of Russia /Hitler's Invasion of Russia
Peter the Great/Modernization of Russia

Scientific

Copernicus
Galileo
Newton
Thomas Edison
The rise of the Internet/Cell Phones
Alexander Fleming/Discovery of Penicillin
Genetic Testing (another example that works for tons of questions)
Genetically Modified Food
Grigori Perelman (recently proved the Poincaré Conjecture) -- really interesting story, great if you're interested in math

Current Events

Obama
Hillary Clinton
Stock Market Crash/Madoff
Japan Nuclear Disaster
Revolution in Egypt
Hurricane Katrina
War in Afghanistan/Iraq (no, you will not penalized for your political views)
AIDS Epidemic
And of course...Reality Television

For a full list of SAT Essay prompts since 2005, I would also highly suggest you check out the following site:

http://satninja.com/sat-essay-prompts