In 2021, College Board officials announced sweeping revisions to the SAT college entrance exam. Among the key changes is that the dreaded five-paragraph essay portion of the test is now scrapped.¹

Research from MIT professor Les Perelman—long a harsh critic of the College Board essay—found that writing fat paragraphs with fancy words earned high essay scores, even if the writing wasn't very good. Higher still were scores that sprinkled in random, esoteric facts.

Perelman coached 16 students who were retaking the test after having received mediocre essay scores. He encouraged them to be long-winded and to fill up the entire test booklet—including the margins and back pages.

The Times reporter Todd Balf writes:

[Perelman] told them that details mattered but factual accuracy didn't. “You can tell them the War of 1812 began in 1945,” he said. He encouraged them to sprinkle in little-used but fancy words like “plethora” or “myriad” and to use two or three preselected quotes from prominent figures like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, regardless of whether they were relevant to the question asked.

So what happened?

Fifteen of the 16 students scored higher than the 90th percentile on the essay when they retook the exam.

And then Perelman said, “… and then I told them never to write that way again! (Because) no one is actually learning anything about writing.”²

* * *

Many of us learned in school to write what is commonly known as the five-paragraph essay. It's similar in format to the former SAT test, and it goes something like this:

1. Introduction: A thesis statement or a kind of mini-outline of what the essay will cover.
2. Body Paragraph One: The strongest argument, most compelling example, or cleverest point that dramatizes your thesis.

   Each body paragraph should start with a transition—a word or phrase like First or Another key point is.

   The rest of the paragraph should include at least four sentences in support of the first. The job of these sentences is to further explain your topic sentence to your reader.

   The last sentence has another job: It should include a transitional hook to tie into the second paragraph of the body.

3. Body Paragraph Two: The second-strongest argument, compelling example, or cleverest point.
4. Body Paragraph Three: The third (or weakest) argument, example, or point.
5. Conclusion: A restatement of the thesis that uses some of the original words to echo—but not duplicate—the opening paragraph, as well as a summary of the three main points.

Feels formulaic, right? It is.

Feels boring? That, too.

It might be a perfectly fine structure to help guide a classroom of middle school writers. (Some educators question its use at all. But that's a debate for another book, not this one.)

The problem with its use beyond school is that it's a template: so structured and mundane that it's dull to write and torture to read.

Worse still, it implies there is only one right way to write. It suggests that other approaches to writing are wrong.

There is no one way to write—just as there is no one way to parent a child or roast a turkey.

What you learned in school might've once been a helpful guideline. But it's time to shake it off. Let it go!

As Janis says in the movie Mean Girls: “That's the thing with five-paragraph essays. You think everybody is in love with them when actually everybody HATES them!”

Actually, Janis was talking about the school's mean girls—The Plastics. Not essays. But same idea.