If you are writing an essay as part of an examination—in
particular a competitive exam—it doesn’t really matter
how good your essay is on objective merit.
You are screwed if your essay fails to make the examiner
sit up and read it through. Even that is not enough. Your
essay has to convince them that it is better than 90% of
the other pieces they have to grade, if that is the passing
mark. If the bar is higher (say only the top 5% pass—who
knows?), a 95 percentile cut-off would make this almost a
blood sport.
In a sport contest, demonstrating your superior prowess
amounts to a sharp focus on the mission of the game,
knowledge of all the rules in the playbook and finally a
fool-proof game plan.
In the essay contest, your mission is not to write a good
essay. It is to write an essay that beats 90% of other essays
in assessment. Moreover, no matter how well you write, it
is the examiner who awards the grade. If you have to
appeal to an examiner in haste who has 50 more scripts to
mark in the ongoing session after assessing your essay—
which is script number 38—what tactics can you bank on?
What care should you take to avoid frustrating the
examiner, generally speaking? What kind of blunders in
your style, structure or presentation would stereotype your
essay in negative terms?
To speak constructively, how do you envisage
distinguishing your performance from all the others
auditioning against you?