Paraphrases of the four November SAT essay prompts:

• Should our perceptions of beauty be influenced by the perceptions of beauty of other people?
• Is it necessary to praise or flatter people?
• Is conflict helpful?
• Do people now (i.e., did they not in the past?) use money (and the things that money can buy) to measure success instead of using more meaningful ways to measure success?

These essay topics are fairly standard for the SAT test and should not come as a surprise to anybody who has effectively prepared for the test. Yes, they may be difficult or confusing for some people, but not surprising.

I am preparing very general outlines of these SAT essay prompts, which I will post links to as I complete them.

Should we be influenced by what other people think is beautiful?

The first thing I notice about this question is that it uses the word should instead of the word are; in other words, instead of asking whether we are influenced by others' perceptions of beauty, it asks whether we should be influenced by them. Of course most people realize that our perceptions of beauty are in fact quite dependent on what others think, so perhaps it'd be too easy to ask simply whether we are or are not influenced by others' perceptions of beauty. But using the modal should also present problems--of course we should not be influenced by others (aren't we trained to think independently?), but we are.

Most of the people I know at least pay lip service to the idea that we should all form independent judgments of beauty. But the first rule of writing essays for ETS tests is that we must follow the prompt, although I must admit from reading dozens of officially-scored SAT essays (yes, my students show me the essays they wrote on "test day"), the SAT seems to be fairly lenient about what it will accept as a correct interpretation of the prompt.

For this SAT essay prompt, you could take several approaches. The most obvious approach, and the one I would take, would be to write an essay that says that people should not be influenced by others' perceptions of beauty, but they are. I would use examples to show how the public's opinions of beauty have shifted over the years as a direct result of clever marketing, specifically shaving habits of both women and men, and men's increasing use of hair products.

To play devil's advocate, you could also argue that people should be influenced by the opinions of others. I could imagine an essay that would detail the importance of conforming to society's norms in order to fit in. Of course, I don't agree with this stance, but since the SAT cannot lower your score based solely on your opinion, it could be possible. To stay on the SAT scorer's good side, though, perhaps you could mention that you hold these beliefs purely for purposes of the good of society--perhaps the collective knowledge of society should sometimes outweigh the opinion of the individual. For this one you could use a relatively simple example of your friends' talking you out of buying an overpriced outfit at an upscale designer clothing store. For example, you thought the tattered fur jacket looked good, even at $750, but your friends convinced you that it was ugly.