No one expects you to write a polished essay in 25 minutes so plan on writing your best first draft. The graders know a draft always contains a mistake or two, but if you consistently make a lot of errors, your essay won’t receive a high score.
Fortunately, scores are given for an overall impression of a rough draft so if you don’t have time to write a conclusion or if you start out slowly, it won’t count against you. Of course, it’s always better to have a complete essay and you may not get a high score if you run out of time to write a conclusion, but at least you will pass. Whatever you do, don’t spend a lot of time rewriting as you go along. Graders are going to be looking for what has been done well, rather than picking out all the mistakes. If you don’t have anything on paper, what do they have to judge?
One note about handwriting: While graders are told to ignore the quality of your handwriting, keep in mind that it is impossible to evaluate what you cannot read. All the witty reparte in the world is worthless if it is packaged in an illegible scrawl.
Keep a Balanced Attitude
Another major mistake John made was wasting his energy on negativity. There are no stupid topics, just stupid attitudes. Life is going to be full of hoops to jump through. Instead of dwelling on how stupid they are, just jump through them with grace, or better yet, use them to learn something. On the other hand, there is such a thing as too much confidence. Instead of leaving early, John should have spent those last five minutes checking his work. Topics may seem lame, but the testmakers purposely choose general themes that anyone can write about. You can use this to your advantage by taking that general theme and narrowing it down to your field of expertise.