essay on saturday

Essay on Saturday

A day at the beach is relaxing, the amusement park fun, but neither is more satisfying than a day spent working in my backyard. Saturday morning begins on my back porch where I slip on my old tennis shoes, stained green from years of cutting grass in them. Three stone steps lead down to the backyard, where warm sunshine filters through the tall pine trees surrounding it, providing light and shade . The sun in my backyard is as warm as the sun at any beach, but without the crowds to wade through and the seagulls to scare away from my ham sandwich, I am able to enjoy it without distraction . Unlike the beach, when I'm done for the afternoon, I don't have to clean sand from inside my 1970 burnt amber Dodge Dart. In the center of my garden …show more content…

Here the trees part and the sun gives full blessing to the grass, turning the water and nutrients I've laid down into a lush carpeting softer than any rug from the Orient. As with every Saturday, I start by mowing the lawn. The stout aroma of freshly cut grass fills my backyard and will linger there until the morning. Once I finish , I take off my shoes and put them back on the porch, ready for next weekend. I like to walk around in the yard in my bare feet and wiggle my toes in the plush grass I've worked hard to nurture. The hummingbirds and chickadees return to my haven from wherever they go when I'm making too much noise for their comfort. I listen to them as I rest for a moment under a large pine near the back fence. I keep a large glass of ice on the first step up to the porch, and as it melts during the day, I have cold water to drink. This beats a five-dollar bottle of water and a rock-hard bench at the amusement park any day. I spend the rest of the afternoon tending the flowers that decorate the raised beds encircling the lawn. My bare hands sift through the rich, dark soil I brought in one wheelbarrow at a time. The azaleas respond to my care with beautiful fragrances and brilliant colors. Each rose, marigold, and aster is placed purposefully to affect a masterpiece of color. The African violets are strokes of purple across the canvas of my garden. Stark white daisies create a contrasting

Turban Monologue

A soft, warm breeze brought the smell of rain and wet dirt through my open window. The wind carried summer and spring and winter and fall with it, filling my lungs with the purest air I'd ever breathed. The wind carried no pollution, no smoke, only pure, clean air, untainted by human influence. The breeze seemed to come up from the depths of the earth. Everything was silent, and beautiful. I imagined rolling fields of grass that went on for miles, and when I opened my eyes, I looked down at the black, oily concrete and saw grass, pushing its way through faster than I ever thought possible. The concrete shattered and crumbled to dust as the grass overcame the cement streets and sidewalks. In a matter of minutes, all of the streets were gone, replaced by vibrant green grass that looked soft to the

Thomas J. Evans Trail Analysis

Instead of your heavy winter coat, you decide on a raincoat and boots for the upcoming rain. With the wet dirt and uncovered tree’s, earthly smells enclose your senses. Seeing the newly grown grass. Hearing the birds chirp after returning back to their homes. Critters have just begun to come out of hibernation and everything starts to become the active beaten path you used to know. As the clouds start to disappear and the sun comes out of hiding, trees and plants start to bloom with new life with the vibrant colors of summer. Leaving behind the pastel colors of spring, summer brings noisy vibrant colors to life. The animals wake and scamper across the cement pathway while the flowers open to the morning rays. Different smells meet you halfway to fill your nose with aromas that have not been discovered since last

Week 2 Essays

RATIONALE: Each fracture site would be coded separately. The C1 fracture would be coded with 805.01, and the C2 fracture with 805.02. As reported in the Indication section, this was an MVC of an unspecified nature, and the patient was the driver. E819 is the code for MVC of unspecified nature with the 4th digit of 0 to show the patient was driving.

Frankenstein Creative Writing

The rugged sea of the lawn illuminated the brisk zephyrs dancing. I saw each individual blade of grass flickering in the summer breezes. It was simple to watch specific pieces of grass because each one boasted a unique tint of green, a quintillion shades of green. The sky was as marvelous as ever. Colors that I could never begin to imagine were spattered, splashed, and speckled on the sky as if God himself held the palate in front of the empyrean canvas. It appeared as if the luminous sunset was a minuscule example of what heaven looked like. A mellifluous range of sounds could be heard. Cicadas buzzed, birds sang, and dogs barked.

Writing has many tools and devices that can be used to influence the purpose and meaning of the a piece of work. In the two pieces of work, "Private License Plate Scanners Amassing Vast Databases Open to Highest Bidders-which is written in a way that it is anti-license plate tracking- and "Who Has the Right to Track You?'-which is written to be for license plate tracking- many different tools and devices are used by the authors. These pieces of work describe the benefits and drawbacks of collecting data and tracking fellow citizens, but use different forms of pathos, ethos, and logos to portray what they are trying to say. Also, both articles state how many are opposed to this tracking, arguing that it is against the First Amendment,

Essay on Week 3

1. What are the current challenges facing United Way? What are key issues in the general and non-profit charitable giving industry environments that affect United Way’s operations?

Ocean City Essay

After traveling for 3-hours, my family arrived at our beach house in Ocean City Maryland. After making a quick trip for groceries, we decided to go to bed and set alarm clocks for early in the morning. After a good nights sleep, I woke up to the pleasant smell of bacon and eggs. After feasting on a delightful breakfast, my brothers and I began to get ready for the beach. We went down the creaky wooden stairs of our beach house and unlocked the storage room located beneath the home. I decided to carry both of the floral umbrellas while my brothers took the portable beach chairs. After grabbing all of our gear, we headed back up the weathered stairs and towards the distant sand dunes. As we approached the entrance of the sand dunes, the satisfying sounds of the ocean's waves started to become closer and closer. Once we traveled closer, the vivid orange sun began to ascend from the deep sea. At this early point in the morning, the sand walkway enclosed by

Creative Writing: A Separate Peace

Strutting through the familiar, gate worn by time, I spread my arms, taking in the saccharine aroma of the fresh grass. The remaining glimmers of the sun glisten on every blade that peeks through the moist soil, composing a sea of sparkling beauty, only comparable to a poem. The meadow is breathtaking this evening, as the sun sets behind the trees in the distance, leaving a glow of pinks, peaches, ambers, and crimsons behind as if a bowl of fruit had exploded in the sky.

Greek Mythology And The Lightening Thief

It is a lovely day out, the bright sun shining down, the smell of beautiful flowers, the

The View From Saturday Essay

Do you think that friendship and teamwork are related? Is Konigsburg implying that teams work more superior when they’re friends? In The View from Saturday, four intelligent individuals go off gaining new knowledge from their magnificent adventures, to later on using those resources to win the quiz bowl. Coincidence or not? The four kids, Noah, Nadia, Ethan, and Julian, or as they refer to themselves, The Souls, go through many hardships or complications, developing new relations towards each other, and having to go through personal mishaps. At the end of the book, The Souls had won the quiz bowl! But the question I’m pointing out is, did they win because of their partnerships, or had they won because of their intellects?

Fro From 'By Eudora Welty's A Love Story'

From the morning mist reclining on blades of grass, to cool winds sweeping through the forest trees

Ficus Elastica Monologue

Dandelions dismantled by the wind as fresh cut grass stuck to the bottom of my sneakers.

Blood Force Narrative

It was a beautiful day outside, the sun was out and there was a cool breeze that felt just right, beautiful leaves of orange, yellow and brown decorated the floor and the sky was very

Akaashi Research Paper

You sit together on the warm grass, bones worn out from the efforts of the week, fireflies dashing around matching the stars

Essay on Tuesday Siesta

Being a good mother is the ability to conduct the child from the place of uncertainty, insecurity and not knowing, to the inside of the enclosure where all is safe and understandable. Good mothers protect and provide for their family all costs. Though sometimes, that’s untrue. Sometimes a child might feel the need to help his impoverished mother out by any means necessary. Though their intentions are good, the public perceives their action as criminal. In the story “Tuesday Siesta” by author “Gabríel Garcia Márquez”, such a situation exists. A mother raised her son to the best of her ability and tried to keep him out of trouble. The town views her as a

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, how to write an sat essay, step by step.

SAT Writing , SAT Essay

Writing an SAT essay consists of four major stages :

Reading : 5-10 minutes
Analyzing & Planning : 7-12 minutes
Writing : 25-35 minutes
Revising : 2-3 minutes

There’s a wide time range for a few of these stages, since people work at different rates. Some people, for instance, will be a lot faster at reading than they are at planning, while it might be the other way around for others. You'll need to find the timing combination that works best for you through a little bit of trial and error.

Writing takes the large bulk of the 50 minutes, but reading and analyzing and planning are equally important parts of the SAT essay writing process.

Stage 1: Read the Passage (5-10 minutes)

There are a couple of different ways to read through the passage on the SAT essay, each with their own advantages. No matter which strategy you use, though, make sure to keep an eye on the time so you don’t run out of time for analyzing and writing!

If you can just read straight through the passage without getting too hung up on details, go for it. This strategy works well for students who are naturally fast readers and don't have trouble getting distracted under time pressure.

If you’re a slow reader, get anxious about reading in timed situations, or find that the subject matter of the article is confusing, you might want to try skimming the article. You can use similar strategies to those you might use on SAT reading passages .

In either case, you'll want to make sure you get a good idea of the way the passage is laid out before you do a detailed pass through it. Why?

You'll probably end up reading through parts of the passage multiple times to make sure you fully understand it. Giving the passage a quick read-through before you do any detailed analysis can help cement which parts you'll want to come back to and which parts aren't as important.

When you go back do a more detailed reading of the article, sure to keep an eye out for argument-building techniques and to try to remain objective . You may want to circle or underline examples of these techniques as you read, which leads right into the next stage of SAT essay writing.

Stage 2: Analyze and Plan (7-12 minutes)

Many students resist planning on the SAT Essay because it already feels like there's not enough time to read and write, let alone take away some of that precious time for planning. But take it from us: you're better off with a plan. This is because the SAT essay graders look for a clear structure : introduction, conclusion, and specific evidence in between. It's almost impossible to create this kind of structure and still write quickly without a plan

You can write all over the passage as you analyze it – circle or underline key points , scribble in the margins, etc. This way, when you go back to quote the author in your essay, you’re not searching the text for the quote or supporting detail.

One way to mark up your passage is by numbering your examples and then circling and numbering any evidence from the passage you’ll be referring to in each paragraph. Another option is to write a brief description of the details from the passage in your planning and outlining, along with the location of the details. Taking this time during the analyzing and planning stage will end up saving you time in the long run.

I personally find it helpful to take notes as I read the passage and then organize them into an essay outline . Below are the TOTALLY LEGIBLE notes I took as I was analyzing the passage for the essay prompt:

As I was reading the passage, I scribbled down key details and the way I’d use them to support my thesis in the essay. For instance, I wrote, “ last paragraph – We need…we need (x4) -> overall use of “we” drawing reader into his POV ” in my notes. This describes what I want to talk about (the author's use of the word "We" and "We need"), what it means (it draws the reader into agreeing with his point of view), and where this is illustrated in the passage (last full paragraph).

I then organized these notes into some semblance of an outline I could use to plan the organization of my essay.

Here's a (rough) transcription of my outline:

Intro Facts/evidence -first paragraph stats and facts - to show issue is real, lend credibility -by not explaining has a couple of effects ->forces reader to draw own conclusions/think about which draws them into the argument ->alt makes reader look to author in rest o/article (b/c had facts at first + so can be trusted) Reasoning -acknowledges counterargument -so very easily could’ve gone on a rant abt twitter which would’ve undercut argument, disconnected from reader -instead, provides examples of when social media has been helpful (Arab Spring) -counterargument is more powerful as a result - take his “unease” more seriously Diction/style -“We” draws reader in, makes author sympathetic (not lecturing) -contrasts b/t ideal + real, b/t prof + amateur engage reader in the comparison, force to admit author is right -language elsewhere reinforces the idea that prof journalism under siege, words like “assailing” and “eroding” Conclusion

You can see that in the section labeled “Diction,” the first point is "We" draws reader in, makes author sympathetic (not lecturing)" .

You can combine these two steps if you’re comfortable enough doing it; I just find that separating them takes the pressure off to make sure that I take notes in an organized fashion.

Stage 3: Write Until 2-3 Minutes Are Left (25-35 minutes)

Once you have your analysis and planning done, it’s time to write like the wind. If you’ve taken notes and planned effectively, you should be able to jump right in and not have to go back and forth too much between the text and your essay.

Body Paragraphs

For most people, writing body paragraphs is easier than writing introductions. If this is the case, start with the body paragraphs, and just leave 10 lines or so at the top of the page to add the introduction later. One example should take up 1-2 paragraphs.

Let's use a methodical structure to try out a body paragraph about how the author uses a counterargument to add support to his own claim. The sample paragraphs below are all taken from an essay that I handwrote (and planned) in the 50-minute time limit.

Sample Body Paragraph

Start with a transition:

In addition to employing facts to his argument’s advantage, Goodman also cunningly discusses the counterargument to his position.

Then (briefly) introduce your topic:

By writing about how social media and man-on-the-ground reporting has assisted the state of foreign news reporting, Goodman heads off naysayers at the pass.

Explain the example’s context and relationship to your thesis:

It would have been very easy for Goodman to ignore the whole issue of citizen reporting, but the resultant one-sided argument would have been much less convincing. Instead, Goodman acknowledges things like “the force of social media during the Arab Spring, as activists convened and reacted to changing circumstances.” As a result, when he partially refutes this counterargument, stating the “unease” many longtime profession correspondents feel over the trend of ‘citizen journalism’ feel, the reader agrees.

Clearly state, in one sentence, how it is proof of your thesis:

Knowing that Goodman takes the power of social media seriously will make the reader more inclined, in turn, to take Goodman’s concern about the limits of social media seriously.

When you put all these pieces together, it’s a winning body paragraph. We start with a smooth transition from the introduction (or previous body paragraph), give enough background to understand why the example is relevant, and then connect it back to the thesis for the knockout punch.

Try to read through this again so the structure really makes sense to you.

Notice how this is formulaic – every one of your body paragraphs can be written in this structure , and you’ll get an excellent score! Having a structure like this will make many students less anxious about the new SAT essay.

You’d then go through the above process with the other 1-2 examples. In some cases, one very good example of the way the author builds his/her argument can be enough, if you can write 2-3 relevant paragraphs about it without repeating yourself. But having two examples is usually safer, because it gives you a better chance to show how well you've understood the passage.

Introduction and Conclusion

After finishing your body paragraphs, don't forget your introduction and conclusion paragraphs . Both should briefly mention the author’s argument and the examples you're using to support your thesis, but everything else is up to you. Some students write about the concept in general, and others just try to restate the thesis in different ways. Even a couple of sentences is better than nothing—try to scribble something in even if you're running out of time.

Sample Introduction Paragraph

In the article “Foreign News at a Crisis Point,” Peter S. Goodman eloquently argues the point that news organizations should increase the amount of professional foreign news coverage provided to people in the United States. Goodman builds his argument by using facts and evidence, addressing the counterarguments, and couching it all in persuasive and compelling language.

Stage 4: Revise (2-3 Minutes)

Much like planning on the SAT essay, revision seems unnecessary to most students. But trust us, it will help your score. There are two reasons for this:

Revising helps you change up your vocabulary and fix mistakes and/or illegible words
If you know you’ll revise, you can write much faster because you don’t have to worry about making it perfect

On the SAT essay, you can cross out words that you don’t want the grader to read. You don’t need to waste time erasing them, unless you want to replace them with something else.

So what do you do when you revise? Well, let’s take the body paragraph we wrote earlier and revise it. New text is bolded .

In addition to employing facts to his argument’s advantage, Goodman also cunningly discusses the counterargument to his position. By writing about how social media and man-on-the-ground reporting has assisted had some positive impact on the state of foreign news reporting, Goodman heads off naysayers at the pass. It would have been very easy for Goodman to ignore elide over the whole issue of citizen reporting, but the resultant one-sided argument would have been much less convincing. Instead, Goodman acknowledges things like “the force of social media during the Arab Spring, as activists convened and reacted to changing circumstances.” As a result, when he partially refutes this counterargument, stating his the “unease” many for longtime profession correspondents feel over the trend of ‘citizen journalism’ feel, the reader agrees. is much more likely to believe him. After all, Goodman acknowledges that social media does have some power. Knowing that Goodman takes the power of social media seriously will make the reader more inclined, in turn, to take Goodman’s concern about the limits of social media seriously.

At this point, you’ll have a complete winning essay.

Want to see what this essay looks like put all together? Read our article on how to get a perfect 8 on the SAT essay .

Our goal here was to show you how formulaic the SAT essay can be. By making the essay more predictable, you’ll go into every test with a game plan in mind , making the essay much easier (and less scary!).

"Guys guys guys! I figured out a plan for the SAT essay!"

Where to Go From Here

Now you know how to write an SAT essay. To put this information to good use, you need to practice with real SAT essay prompts . We’ve written the most comprehensive guide to SAT essay topics and prompts here .

Aiming for a perfect SAT essay score? Read our guides to get strategies on how to get an 8/8/8 on your SAT essay .

And if you haven’t read our 15 SAT essay tips article yet, do so now!

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Our classes are entirely online, and they're taught by SAT experts . If you liked this article, you'll love our classes. Along with expert-led classes, you'll get personalized homework with thousands of practice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step, custom program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next.

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Laura graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a BA in Music and Psychology, and earned a Master's degree in Composition from the Longy School of Music of Bard College. She scored 99 percentile scores on the SAT and GRE and loves advising students on how to excel in high school.

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The Optional SAT Essay: What to Know

Tackling this section of the SAT requires preparation and can boost some students' college applications.

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Even though an increasing number of colleges are dropping standardized test requirements, students who must write the SAT essay can still stand to gain from doing so.

Although the essay portion of the SAT became optional in 2016, many students still chose to write it to demonstrate strong or improved writing skills to prospective colleges.

In June 2021, the College Board opted to discontinue the SAT essay. Now, only students in a few states and school districts still have access to — and must complete — the SAT essay. This requirement applies to some students in the SAT School Day program, for instance, among other groups.

How Colleges Use SAT, ACT Results

Tiffany Sorensen Sept. 14, 2020

High school students having their exam inside a classroom.

Whether or not to write the SAT essay is not the biggest decision you will have to make in high school, but it is certainly one that requires thought on your part. Here are three things you should know about the 50-minute SAT essay as you decide whether to complete it:

To excel on the SAT essay, you must be a trained reader.
The SAT essay begs background knowledge of rhetoric and persuasive writing.
A growing number of colleges are dropping standardized test requirements.

To Excel on the SAT Essay, You Must Be a Trained Reader

The SAT essay prompt never comes unaccompanied. On the contrary, it follows a text that is about 700 words long or approximately one page. Before test-takers can even plan their response, they must carefully read and – ideally – annotate the passage.

The multifaceted nature of the SAT essay prompt can be distressing to students who struggle with reading comprehension. But the good news is that this prompt is highly predictable: It always asks students to explain how the author builds his or her argument. In this case, "how” means which rhetorical devices are used, such as deductive reasoning, metaphors, etc.

Luckily, the author’s argument is usually spelled out in the prompt itself. For instance, consider this past SAT prompt : “Write an essay in which you explain how Paul Bogard builds an argument to persuade his audience that natural darkness should be preserved.”

Due to the essay prompt’s straightforward nature, students should read the passage with an eye toward specific devices used by the author rather than poring over “big ideas.” In tour SAT essay, aim to analyze at least two devices, with three being even better.

The SAT Essay Begs Background Knowledge of Rhetoric and Persuasive Writing

Since your SAT essay response must point to specific rhetorical devices that the author employs to convince the reader, you should make it a point to intimately know 10-15 common ones. The more familiar you are with rhetorical devices, the faster you will become at picking them out as you read texts.

Once you have read the passage and identified a handful of noteworthy rhetorical devices, you should apply many of the same essay-writing techniques you already use in your high school English classes.

For instance, you should start by brainstorming to see which devices you have the most to say about. After that, develop a concise thesis statement, incorporate quotes from the text, avoid wordiness and other infelicities of writing, close with an intriguing conclusion, and do everything else you could imagine your English teacher advising you to do.

Remember to always provide evidence from the text to support your claims. Finally, leave a few minutes at the end to review your essay for mistakes.

A Growing Number of Colleges Are Dropping Standardized Test Requirements

In recent years, some of America’s most prominent colleges and universities – including Ivy League institutions like Harvard University in Massachusetts, Princeton University in New Jersey and Yale University in Connecticut – have made submission of ACT and SAT scores optional.

While this trend began as early as 2018, the upheaval caused by COVID-19 has prompted many other schools to adopt a more lenient testing policy, as well.

Advocates for educational fairness have long expressed concerns that standardized admissions tests put underprivileged students at a disadvantage. In light of the coronavirus pandemic , which restricted exam access for almost all high school students, colleges have gotten on board with this idea by placing more emphasis on other factors in a student’s application.

To assess writing ability in alternative ways, colleges now place more emphasis on students’ grades in language-oriented subjects, as well as college application documents like the personal statement .

The fact that more colleges are lifting their ACT/SAT requirement does not imply that either test or any component of it is now obsolete. Students who must write the SAT essay can still stand to gain from doing so, especially those who wish to major in a writing-intensive field. The essay can also demonstrate a progression or upward trajectory in writing skills.

The SAT essay can give a boost to the college applications of the few students to whom it is still available. If the requirement applies to you, be sure to learn more about the SAT essay and practice it often as you prepare for your upcoming SAT.

13 Test Prep Tips for SAT and ACT Takers

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Persuasive Essay on Should We Have Saturday School

Kids in America don’t always love going to school, but deep down in their hearts, they know it’s good for them. It would benefit every child in our country if it was decided to have school on Saturdays as well. By going to school an extra per week, pupils will experience more academic growth. With extra time together, the children have the opportunity to improve their social skills. The physical health of the kids will improve by attending class an extra day per week. Having school on Saturdays will help children in many ways.

One reason to have school on Saturday is that students would learn more. School on Saturday would give students more time to accomplish more work since they are in school for more hours. If the students accomplish their work, they will be smarter. The Wall Street Journal reported that students in China attend school 41 days more per year than American students, and score higher in international tests in math and science. With Saturday school, American adolescents will get more time in school with more time to review and practice, so they would likely get better grades on tests. All of that review and practice would lead to better PSSA scores for the learners, and that could lead to better opportunities for college. Beyond tests, pupils could have more time to explore and learn a different subject, like music or art. There would be plenty of time for students to join band, chorus, orchestra, or art club, instead of trying to have them before school or squeezing them into a busy schedule. Students’ learning will certainly increase if there is school on Saturday.

Not only will student learning improve, but school on Saturday will improve student health. With another day of school, children will stop staying up late on the weekend. Although they might be disappointed, when they sleep, their body repairs and reenergizes itself. During that sleep, the children will become healthier. Also, with more time at school, pupils would have the opportunity to have physical education more frequently. Most students love gym class, but more importantly, they will get more frequent exercise, which will make them healthier. New guidelines from the National Health and Human Services Department recommend that children have exercise for at least an hour a day. Having another day of school could allow children to get this in Physical Education class and recess. Finally, on Saturdays, many students sit at home, bored and playing video games. At school, their brains will be active and not rotting away from mindless activities. Many people may not realize it, but school on Saturday will keep students healthier.

Healthier students are important, but it’s also important for students to spend time in school to develop social skills. Scholastic.com reports that studies show the most important skills to learn at the beginning of a year are social skills, such as cooperation and communication. Having school on Saturday will help children develop those skills. Children would also have time for more social activities, such as recess and group work. That time will give them a chance to make new friends. Of course, being in those activities will allow children to meet others that they do not know, and they will make new friends. School counselors work with pupils in group settings to help with social learning, and being in school on Saturday would give them the opportunity to meet with more children. Finally, a student will get to know their teacher better. The student will feel more comfortable asking their teacher questions. Being in school for an extra day will benefit a student’s social skills.

Ultimately, school on Saturdays would be beneficial for students. By giving students an extra day, they would have the opportunity to learn and accomplish more in school. Students’ physical health will also be improved by extending school time to Saturdays. Not only that, but students’ social skills will soar as well as provide them with the chance to develop a better relationship with their teachers. Students build the future of America. For their bright future and the future of the country, it’s time to give back with an extra day in school.

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Guest Essay

How the SAT Changed My Life

An illustration of a man lying underneath a giant SAT prep book. The book makes a tent over him. He is smiling.

By Emi Nietfeld

Ms. Nietfeld is the author of the memoir “Acceptance.”

This month, the University of Texas, Austin, joined the wave of selective schools reversing Covid-era test-optional admissions policies, once again requiring applicants to submit ACT or SAT scores.

Many colleges have embraced the test-optional rule under the assumption that it bolsters equity and diversity, since higher scores are correlated with privilege. But it turns out that these policies harmed the teenagers they were supposed to help. Many low-income and minority applicants withheld scores that could have gotten them in, wrongly assuming that their scores were too low, according to an analysis by Dartmouth. More top universities are sure to join the reversal. This is a good thing.

I was one of the disadvantaged youths who are often failed by test-optional policies, striving to get into college while in foster care and homeless. We hear a lot about the efforts of these elite schools to attract diverse student bodies and about debates around the best way to assemble a class. What these conversations overlook is the hope these tests offer students who are in difficult situations.

For many of us, standardized tests provided our one shot to prove our potential, despite the obstacles in our lives or the untidy pasts we had. We found solace in the objectivity of a hard number and a process that — unlike many things in our lives — we could control. I will always feel tenderness toward the Scantron sheets that unlocked higher education and a better life.

Growing up, I fantasized about escaping the chaos of my family for the peace of a grassy quad. Both my parents had mental health issues. My adolescence was its own mess. Over two years I took a dozen psychiatric drugs while attending four different high school programs. At 14, I was sent to a locked facility where my education consisted of work sheets and reading aloud in an on-site classroom. In a life skills class, we learned how to get our G.E.D.s. My college dreams began to seem like delusions.

Then one afternoon a staff member handed me a library copy of “Barron’s Guide to the ACT .” I leafed through the onionskin pages and felt a thunderclap of possibility. I couldn’t go to the bathroom without permission, let alone take Advanced Placement Latin or play water polo or do something else that would impress elite colleges. But I could teach myself the years of math I’d missed while switching schools and improve my life in this one specific way.

After nine months in the institution, I entered foster care. I started my sophomore year at yet another high school, only to have my foster parents shuffle my course load at midyear, when they decided Advanced Placement classes were bad for me. In part because of academic instability like this, only 3 percent to 4 percent of former foster youth get a four-year college degree.

Later I bounced between friends’ sofas and the back seat of my rusty Corolla, using my new-to-me SAT prep book as a pillow. I had no idea when I’d next shower, but I could crack open practice problems and dip into a meditative trance. For those moments, everything was still, the terror of my daily life softened by the fantasy that my efforts might land me in a dorm room of my own, with endless hot water and an extra-long twin bed.

Standardized tests allowed me to look forward, even as every other part of college applications focused on the past. The song and dance of personal statements required me to demonstrate all the obstacles I’d overcome while I was still in the middle of them. When shilling my trauma left me gutted and raw, researching answer elimination strategies was a balm. I could focus on equations and readings, like the scholar I wanted to be, rather than the desperate teenager that I was.

Test-optional policies would have confounded me, but in the 2009-10 admissions cycle, I had to submit my scores; my fellow hopefuls and I were all in this together, slogging through multiple-choice questions until our backs ached and our eyes crossed.

The hope these exams instilled in me wasn’t abstract: It manifested in hundreds of glossy brochures. After I took the PSAT in my junior year, universities that had received my score flooded me with letters urging me to apply. For once, I felt wanted. These marketing materials informed me that the top universities offered generous financial aid that would allow me to attend free. I set my sights higher, despite my guidance counselor’s lack of faith.

When I took the actual SAT, I was ashamed of my score. Had submitting it been optional, I most likely wouldn’t have done it, because I suspected my score was lower than the prep-school applicants I was up against (exactly what Dartmouth found in the analysis that led it to reinstate testing requirements). When you grow up the way I did, it’s difficult to believe that you are ever good enough.

When I got into Harvard, it felt like a miracle splitting my life into a before and after. My exam preparation paid off on campus — it was the only reason I knew geometry or grammar — and it motivated me to tackle new, difficult topics. I majored in computer science, having never written a line of code. Though a career as a software engineer seemed far-fetched, I used my SAT study strategies to prepare for technical interviews (in which you’re given one or more problems to solve) that landed me the stable, lucrative Google job that catapulted me out of financial insecurity.

I’m not the only one who feels affection for these tests. At Harvard, I met other students who saw these exams as the one door they could unlock that opened into a new future. I was lucky that the tests offered me hope all along, that I could cling to the promise that one day I could bubble in a test form and find myself transported into a better life — the one I lead today.

Emi Nietfeld is the author of the memoir “ Acceptance .” Previously, she was a software engineer at Google and Facebook.

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What We Don’t Remember about Saturday Night Fever

Saturday Night Fever | art by Tony Stella

Please be advised that the following essay discusses sexual assault.

W hen the Me Too movement hit its peak I had a dozen long phone calls with women I’ve known, with whom I’ve shared work or school experiences, as we sussed out the finer points of sexual harassment. The country was crackling with a million phone calls and emails like this, women desperate to share: the pat on the ass that was not our fault, the unwelcome kiss that we were sure we somehow invited. All these events clicked into a pattern because our definition of harassment was shifting.

A similar moment occurred in the mid-to-late 1970s, shortly after the passage of Roe v. Wade , when Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will couched rape as a political issue, when the first statutes criminalizing marital rape were enacted, and when campus feminist groups began to popularize the term date-rape. Rape no longer meant only the unknown assailant jumping out of the bushes. Rape occurred between acquaintances, on dates, and within marriage. The discussion reframed rape not as an act of desire, but as a method to police women.

The blockbuster film Saturday Night Fever , which came out in 1977, can be read as a product of this rapidly evolving discussion. Like amber traps a dragonfly, Saturday Night Fever catches, mid-flight, the moment of ‘70s zeitgeist that accommodated various—and conflicting—definitions of rape. Molly Haskell wrote during this period that “The closer women come to claiming their rights and achieving independence in real life, the more loudly and stridently films tell us it’s a man’s world.” When Michael Corleone shut the door on Kay at the end of The Godfather , she says, it’s as if filmmakers were shutting women out of films for the decade. Saturday Night Fever shows us both the feminist impulse and the backlash. It shows us a strong and assertive female character, and then it assaults her. Stephanie’s decision to open her door to her assailant at the movie’s close may say even more about the ambivalent role of women in ‘70s film than Kay’s isolation.

My interest in Saturday Night Fever intensified when I put it on the syllabus for a course I taught a couple of years ago on films of the 1970s. I thought the story of Tony Manero, the disco king from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and his upwardly-mobile dance partner, Stephanie, would be an ideal last assignment after a semester of hard work—something light and enjoyable, a palate-cleanser. As a teenager, I saw the movie in the theaters with a boyfriend. Everyone went to see it. It was fun. But the movie I watched in preparation for my class was not at all the movie I remembered. Yes, there are moments of elation, and there are some funny lines. But there is also the unabashed racism of the main characters, the grim hopelessness of Tony’s work and home life, the casual gay-bashing, the joyless and exploitative sex, and the rape. Not one, but two rapes, in very quick succession near the end of the movie: Tony’s attempted rape of Stephanie, and also his friends’ gang-rape of Annette, the girl who loves him. Saturday Night Fever is not fun. It’s brutal.

How had I so grossly miscalculated? Partly due to Saturday Night Fever ’s afterlife. As with every popular film, the apparatus of its memory of it has taken on its own life: the phenomenally popular soundtrack album, the poster of John Travolta in his white jacket. The film is wrongly credited with sparking the disco culture; it’s more accurate to say that it marks the moment when disco—up to that moment a megaphone for voices that were queer, black, or female—became accessible to straight white men, and thus the moment marking its decline.

Part of my errant memory may be due to the split personality of the movie itself. Indeed, there are two movies duking it out for supremacy. On one hand is the lavish vision of producer Robert Stigwood, and on the other the working-class sensibility of screenwriter Norman Wexler. Stigwood was a music producer and agent who longed to break into film and who had a genius for promotion. It was he who insisted on casting John Travolta, the young breakout star of the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter and an unlikely teen idol. And Stigwood presciently decided that, rather than stack the soundtrack with popular disco hits from reliable (Black) acts like Kool & the Gang or Gloria Gaynor, he would commission new songs from the moribund talent signed to his stable, namely a forgotten Aussie boy band that had recorded a couple of mournful ditties in the 1960s. Screenwriter Norman Wexler was a cranky leftist who had penned the explosive movies Joe and Serpico , in which toxic masculinity and racism collide against the backdrop of a crime-ridden, recession-era New York. (Tellingly, Wexler seems to have modeled Saturday Night Fever ’s most loathsome character—a pretentious music producer who hopes to break into film—on Stigwood.)

But my greatest miscalculation is due to the fact that I simply did not remember Tony’s assault on Stephanie as attempted rape. Hours after the assault, she refuses to open her door to him, conceding only after he profusely apologizes. I hadn’t remembered the assault as rape even though Stephanie mutters, “First time I let a known rapist in my apartment.” It’s an astounding line of dialogue, given how much credence was still, in 1977, given to the notion that a girl like Stephanie was ultimately responsible for leading on a boy. Today, Tony’s crime strikes us as unambiguous, and the difference in our response then and now registers just how much our definition of rape has evolved.

A refresher for those who haven’t seen the movie, or have forgotten: Saturday Night Fever is the story of a 19-year-old Italian American who clerks in a paint store. His father is a laid-off construction worker, his mother is querulous and depressed, and their relationship is punctuated with slaps and insults. Their despair deepens when Tony’s favored brother quits the priesthood. Tony finds relief only on the weekends, when he and his buddies—Joey, Double J, Gus, and the unhappy Bobby C.—dress up and hit the local disco, a shabby affair with the aspirational name 2001 Odyssey. They are “the faces,” the kings of the disco floor, especially Tony. Gearing up for a lucrative dance contest, Tony discards Annette, the neighborhood girl who pines for him, in favor of the ambitious and elusive Stephanie.

Race is central to the frustration of Tony’s gang, who feel they’ve gotten a raw deal. In the disco scenes, the camera lingers on 2001 Odyssey’s one Black regular, imitating the angry glare of the locals. Tony first notices Stephanie because she and her partner are the only dancers who don’t stomp off the floor when the DJ puts on a salsa record. The Italian Americans feel their claim to Bay Ridge is under attack by Black and Puerto Rican trespassers. When Gus is hospitalized after a street fight, the gang, acting on little evidence, viciously attacks a Puerto Rican social club.

Indeed, it is Tony’s confusion about race and identity that sparks his rage at the film’s climax, and, indirectly, his assault of Stephanie. On the night of the big dance contest, a Black couple and a Puerto Rican couple outdance the home team (although Tony—and by extension the movie—only recognizes the Puerto Ricans’ superior talent), eliciting a hostile reaction from the 2001 crowd. When the prize money unsurprisingly goes to Tony and Stephanie, Tony is furious, and hands the trophy and prize money over to the Puerto Rican couple. “You deserve it,” he says.

This is an extraordinary moment of self-awareness. Tony, we would say today, has become cognizant of his own privilege, and he refuses to cooperate with the system that grants it. But it is at this very moment that Tony orders Stephanie into Bobby C.’s car and tries to rape her.

It’s hard to say if Wexler would have read Susan Brownmiller. But Against Our Will was one of those books whose reach extended far beyond its readership. Building on work begun by Susan Griffin in her 1970 Ramparts article, Brownmiller’s 1975 book is generally credited as the first attempt to examine a history of rape, and to discuss it as an assertion of power, rather than sexuality. Its importance cannot be overstated, and Brownmiller’s battle cry—that rape is the means by which all men oppress all women—resonated powerfully.

However, the book has some wild weaknesses, particularly on issues of class and race. Brownmiller is widely quoted as saying, “The typical American rapist might be the boy next door.” What is not quoted is the next sentence: “Especially if…the neighborhood you live in happens to fit the socioeonomic description of lower class or bears the appellation of ‘ghetto.’” Brownmiller defends her race and class bias by quoting police statistics, even though she admits elsewhere in the book that rape is rarely reported and even more rarely ends in conviction; it never occurs to her that arrests and convictions might be disproportionately meted out against Black and working-class men.

Thus she quotes at length, and without irony, the criminologist Marvin Wolfgang, whose “Subculture of Violence” gained currency in the 1960s:

Within the dominant value system of our culture there exists a subculture formed of those from the lower classes, the poor, the disenfranchised, the Black, whose values often run counter to those of the dominant culture, the people in charge. The dominant culture can operate within the laws of civility because it has little need to resort to violence to get what it wants. The subculture, thwarted, inarticulate and angry, is quick to resort to violence; indeed, violence and physical aggression become a common way of life. Particularly for young males.

Like Brownmiller’s, Wolfgang’s statistics fail to take into account bias among police, courts, or accusers. Indeed, institutional power does not enter into his analysis. But this ideology was common in the postwar period, even before Brownmiller adopted it specifically to discuss violence against women. We see its influence throughout movies of the ‘70s—for instance, Scorsese’s movies, where men use their fists whenever language fails them. We see it earlier too, like in West Side Story , where gang members excuse their violence—including sexual assault—because, as they say, “we’re depraved on account of we’re deprived.”

At the time, Brownmiller had her detractors, even among progressives who questioned her methods as well as her conclusion that the frequency of rape is unchanging throughout human history. Writing in the feminist journal Signs , Edward Shorter maintains that, given the rise and fall of incidents of rape (again, he is working on the notion that rapes are reported equally across classes), “‘sexual frustration’ works as a better primary explanation than ‘politics.’”

How would ‘70s audiences have interpreted the violence against Stephanie’s body? Her assailant is a working-class man, ineffectual at expressing dominance. He has just been surpassed by people of color at what he supposedly does best—dancing. Unable to understand the changing world around him or to articulate his confusion, he exerts his dominance over a woman. “Everybody’s gotta dump on somebody, right? Of course,” Tony says as he leads Stephanie to Bobby C.’s car. “My pa goes to work and gets dumped on, so he comes home and dumps on my mother, of course, right? And the spics they gotta dump on us so we gotta dump on the spics, of course.” This monologue would corroborate the Brownmiller/Wolfgang view, that rape is variation of the aggressive acting out of men oppressed by capitalism.

Or is he just sexually frustrated? This would be the view put forward by Shorter. During the dance contest, Stephanie, who has previously shown no romantic interest in Tony, shares a soft-focus, slow-motion kiss with him to the backbeat of the Bee Gees’ “More Than a Woman.” Is the movie saying that Tony has been, to use his word, cockteased to the point of rape?

How a viewer reads this may depend on which movie she has been tracking—producer Stigwood’s disco musical or Wexler’s kitchen-sink drama. And that may also determine how we read the ending, whether it’s happy or just dimly hopeful. I remember my boyfriend at the time saying he believed there was romance in the future for Tony and Stephanie, and I argued that it was impossible. Through her very last line in the movie, Stephanie insists she just wants to be friends; in fact, she sees it as a test of Tony’s growth if he can “stand being friends with a girl.” But I was listening to the screenplay; my boyfriend was listening to the soundtrack. And during the montage of Tony, glumly riding the subway after Bobby C.’s death, waiting for daybreak so he can show up at Stephanie’s apartment, the Bee Gees ask “How Deep Is Your Love?” Presumably, of Stephanie, as if to say, “How deep is your love, Stephanie? Deep enough to forgive Tony for trying to rape you?” If you see this as a love story, Tony’s violence against Stephanie is a bump on the road to maturity.

If you see this as a story about class and race, however, the assault takes on a Wolfgangian ideology; Tony pummels Stephanie the way his father pummels his mother, because they’re both going nowhere. The end is downbeat. Tony may want to move up in the world, as Stephanie has, and leave his idiot friends behind, but he possesses, as she bluntly points out, absolutely no work skills. Still, he recognizes his sins, and believes he is different from his “asshole” friends who rape Annette, also in the backseat of Bobby C.’s car.

Because the rape of Annette is uninterrupted, it is coded differently than Tony’s attack on Stephanie. And the disturbing subtext is that Stephanie is just tougher than Annette. On the night of the dance contest, Annette, consumed by jealousy, drinks heavily and pops pills. She makes out with Joey hoping Tony will notice. When Joey escorts Annette to the car, Tony half-heartedly tries to stop him. Joey fights him off, saying—not untruthfully—“You don’t give a shit about her.”

Annette’s emotional fragility, her drunkenness, her initial compliance, her lack of inner resources would all point to a narrative of blaming the victim. And the audience might have interpreted this narrative were it not for Donna Pescow’s delicate performance. Director John Badham keeps the camera close on Annette’s face, as she careens from jolly acquiescence to fear. By the time Joey scrambles into the front seat so Double J can take his turn, she is in a full panic. Badham cuts away only to show Tony’s agonized helplessness. Travolta registers the many ways Tony feels responsible. His unrelenting shabby treatment of Annette demolished her self-esteem and signaled her worthlessness to Joey and Double J, and he realizes his assault on Stephanie, minutes earlier, was every bit as violent. But even then, Tony lacks the emotional intelligence to own up to his culpability in Annette’s assault. “Proud of yourself now?” he asks Annette after Double J peels himself from her. “Is that what you wanted? Good. Now you’re a cunt.” Annette, disheveled and shaken in the back seat, is shocked, and so are we.

Pescow’s performance as Annette is so finely tuned we see on her face the moment sexual compliance becomes rape. And as we watch, we realize the movie is taking on an issue that, in 1977, was even more hotly contested than Stephanie’s acquaintance rape. Annette is drunk. She is in no shape to offer consent. And, mid-coitus, she changes her mind.

Had Annette’s story ended here, audiences might have remembered her gang rape as a condemnation of the brutal aggression of Tony’s friends, the gang of “assholes” from which he longs to separate. But the next few minutes include a strange coda for Annette, who, distraught after Bobby C.’s fall from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, seeks comfort in Joey’s arms. We last see them leaving the fatal site together, in an embrace.

The message here seems to be that Bobby C.’s death has softened both Tony and Joey. Of course, it’s their mistreatment of Bobby C., rather than their violence against women, they seem to regret most, their repeated and callous disregard of his calls for help. But we are asked to believe that as they take stock of their misbehavior they become better men, non-raping men. In this Wolfgang-influenced world of aggressive working-class men, rape is a childish thing that grown men learn to set aside. And Saturday Night Fever remains a movie about men, and ultimately rape is something they must learn to endure.

Every critic of Saturday Night Fever has pointed out the glaring weakness at the center of the movie, the casting of Karen Lynne Gorney in what should have been the career-making role of Stephanie. On paper, Stephanie is the most complex character in the film: pretentious and smart, vulnerable and witty, selfish yet compassionate. Unfortunately, Gorney just doesn’t have the depth to pull it off, and it’s tempting to think what a more inflected, tough New York actress of her generation—Lorraine Bracco, say, or Ellen Barkin—might have done with the part, someone whose magnetism matches Travolta’s. The gulf between the charisma of Gorney and Travolta means we will always remember this as Tony’s story.

In her article “Hitchcock’s Blackmail and Feminist Interpretation,” Tania Modleski says that “rape and violence, it would appear, effectively silence and subdue not only the woman in the films—the one who threatens patriarchal law and order through the force of her anarchic desire—but also the women watching the films.” But Stephanie is not subdued, and by extension, neither are we, and it is in this way Saturday Night Fever marks the beginning—however slight—of change. It is clear in that last scene that she is calling the shots, and that Tony’s only hope is not only to refrain from violating her, but to emulate her. Everyone remembers the picture of Tony alone on the dance floor, in his white polyester suit. We would remember a very different movie if instead we kept pictures of Stephanie and Tony, in the same frame: a story of two kids, one of whom had the moxie and smarts to make it out of Brooklyn.

Thank you for this essay. The rape of Annette is horrifying and will always be on my mind for this supposedly celebrated movie

I was 14 years-old when the movie came out, and practically every kid I knew went to see it. I didn’t though, because my parents wouldn’t allow me to see an R-rated film. I didn’t get around to watching it until literally about 30 years later, although, of course, I knew a lot about it. Or thought I did. My jaw dropped over the gang rape. I was absolutely flabbergasted that the picture could be as huge as it was, yet not a single person who spoke to me about it over years ever mentioned this scene! Honestly, as a piece of narrative, the movie would work. No one says you have to love or agree with realistically-portrayed characters. You don’t watch Taxi Driver and root for Travis. The problem with Saturday Night Fever is that we’re very clearly supposed to be rooting for Tony, and pleased that he seems to be moving up in life at the end of the film. But his behavior is absolutely repellent. It’s just stunning to me.

There’s one central theme of this essay that just doesn’t work, “Indeed, it is Tony’s confusion about race and identity that sparks his rage at the film’s climax, and, indirectly, his assault of Stephanie.”

Tony was an Italian first, and American second, in that part of town. He was also a target of racism and prejudice. Him and his gang were in an ongoing battle with other gangs, which were typically divided by race and ethnicity. This is clear when his friend gets assaulted by a rival gang, that’s either the “Barracudas” or the “Puerto Ricans”. He’s not discriminating against other groups based on their race, so much as based on their own ethnic and gang identify.

He wasn’t upset about ‘race’ in that way, and his feelings at the end of the movie are a lot more complicated than that. He was mostly upset that Stephanie lied to him and wasn’t as good as she pretended to be. He’s mad because he lost respect for Stephanie, he thought she was perfect, but when he found out she was sleeping around to get job opportunities, his opinion of her changed. He didn’t dance well because he didn’t respect her.

This movie is about a group of people that are discriminated against by “white males”, even if by today’s standards, we’d consider them “privileged.” Remember, he lives with his unemployed parents in a bad end of town, with other poor Italians and competes directly against other groups that live in poverty. They reference he’s in an Italian part of town also when he gets the pizza at the start. Stephanie was a white American character, and she looked down on him. She was privileged and lived in Manhattan in a nice apartment.

I also think you missed a key point on Annette’s rape, “And, mid-coitus, she changes her mind.” She had no issue sleeping with the friends in the back of the car, she fully intended to do so and took drugs and drank intentionally for that night. She wasn’t even upset at the start, she was enjoying the sex. She didn’t change her mind per say, the issue started when he didn’t ‘pull out’, she was too drunk to explain she wasn’t on birth control.

Watch that scene again. Once the first friend is about to ‘finish’, she realizes she’s not on birth control and then wants them to stop. Bobby C’s death is foreshadowing the fate of his other friends once they realize their mistake. Bobby C’s death also isn’t because no one listened to him, that’s just what he says. It’s an issue about his decision on the morality of getting an abortion for his own selfish desire to hang out with his friends. His hesitation in the gang fight are because of his knowledge he could be a father.

I mean, this movie isn’t a movie about a good group of people having fun at the disco. I had the same impression as you about this movie before I watched it. It’s about a group of poor Italians making mistakes in their youth, the dancing is just a theme to get through the drama. I don’t think the attacks on blacks or gays were intentional to be funny, I think it was queues to demonstrate they were assholes as a result of discrimination against Italians.

l always thought there was another rape scene. The one with the faceless/ nameless girl in Bobby C’s car. We don’t know when things start to go awry or why, but she is in the backseat with Joey, when Tony is called to intervene. Joey is incredibly loud while having sex with her which draws a crowd making their sexual encounter public. When Joey finishes he asks for her name, she scrambles out of the car. l always wondered, was she their voluntarily,did she change her mind when they started drawing attention from the small crowd. There are a lot of questions that go unanswered. l saw this when l was really young in a neighborhood theater that didn’t check or care if you were too young. l know because l saw worse movies in that theater. But, as l watched that scene it always felt like a rape scene, because she was allowed to leave only after Joey reached orgasm. And, the men just stood there, unconcerned.

Alcohol is a factor, as well. In the scene you mention, I recall that there was also a woman outside the car (on the left) watching and laughing.

You are correct. Annette is enjoying it with Joey but only when she realizes she could get pregnant and he was going to finish in her that her moood changes and it carries over into the next guy because at this point she is no longer interested. The second guy was the rapist. The first guy was in a grey area for the time period. A girl getting drunk at the time was a sexual signal that she was fine to get laid. There have been so many hookups of drunk girls questioning later why a guy didnt have sex with her if he was decent enough to refuse at the time. It was just seen as a rite of sex at the time. But the second guy is clearly raping her.

The Tony and Stephanie attempted rape was indeed attempted assault. But it was a clumsy and let’s face it – if TOny really wanted to rape her, he wouldnt have stopped at a shot in the balls. THats why I called it an assault and more of a weak desperate attempt to have sex and an impetus to see if Stephanie is really into him because he could not figure out why else they were together. And I liked how the Stephanie character handles it taking the power from Tony in that situation and at the end, she is in the stronger position. If that’s not female empowerment, I dont know what else is. Now, the actress could have been a better actress chosen than Karen Lee G. How Deep is Your love is a great song, but misplaced on the train ride at the end. There is no love from either side and Tony is clear about going to make amends not trying to get her to forgive him so he can get back with her as possible lovers.

One possible reason for the film’s lighter than deserved reputation may be the prevalence of the PG and edited for TV versions. The PG version was six minutes shorter, and the edited for TV version replaced some darker scenes with lighter material not in the original release. The Restricted and PG versions both came out on home video. This was not unusual in the 1970s and 1980s. Sometimes it’s not just nostalgic memory and greater awareness that makes films different than we remember – we literally saw different films back then.

And this film happens to have been (the late)Gene Siskel’s favorite film,believe it or not(knowing how uptight Gene was against films that showed such things).

So I’ve read this essay twice because I love this movie dearly and I’m always up for hearing any argument for or against it. But this piece takes a really strange turn during the paragraph about Karen Lynn Gorney. Personally her performance is one of things I love most about the movie, and I think she more than holds her own with Travolta. Of course she’s a bit rough around the edges, but doesn’t that actually work in the story’s favor? It makes her feel more real, more authentically “Brooklyn” than, uh, Ellen Barkin ever would’ve done. And I know the comment about “every critic” calling her out as a “glaring weakness” is amped-up for effect, but it’s wildly misleading and just plain wrong, given how she was praised repeatedly by the likes of Gene SIskel and Laurence Olivier. But the part that really feels out-of-line here is saying that Stephanie SHOULD HAVE BEEN a career-making role. First off, the movies are filled with one-time great performances by actors/actresses who didn’t/couldn’t go further, for any number of reasons, and your implication that Gorney didn’t get more starring roles just cuz she sucked is pretty lame. Cuz it’s entirely possible that she didn’t get more work because she was TOO GOOD as Stephanie! She wasn’t a classic beauty and she had a very credible, street-smart energy and Hollywood has proved time and time again that it has absolutely no idea what to do with such things. (See Bette Midler’s post-Rose movies.) I find it very odd that such a feminist essay would not only fail to consider this but then go on to pin the movie’s supposedly fatal flaw on an actress who can’t be shoehorned into anyone’s sanctimonious notions of what’s right or wrong. And if that’s not troubling enough, then you suggest this story wouldn’t been less of a boys’ tale if Gorney weren’t such a horrible actress? Talk about blaming the victim…

I just want to note that this film is an early example of what later became more prevalent, featuring an anti-hero as the protagonist. We were not yet desensitized by anti-heroes from exposure to such characters as Tony Soprano and Walter White. We know Tony is a horrible person. He has horrible friends, he’s rude to women, he mistreats Annette … he’s awful. But at the end, we get a signal that he, too, has realized this and is ready to grow as a person.

I just rewatched SNF for the first time in decades and was newly horrified. Like the author here, I did not experience the film as disturbing on first viewing, 40+ years ago. I think Travolta’s proximate appearance in Grease caused some of us to commingle the tone of the two films into some vague nostalgic cotton-candy fantasia, especially as the ’70s receded. But in the light of present day I find Saturday Night Fever pretty horrifying, and the (brilliant) Bee Gees soundtrack is superseded for me by Wexler’s frightening depiction of unedited white male rage / racism / misogyny / sexual violence. Professor Karlin crystallized my own reappraisal in superb terms.

I do agree with the commenter above who says Gorney actually more than holds her own as Stephanie (as does Pescow as Annette) — the film is entirely Tony’s journey, not a two-hander, and I think Gorney is brilliantly subordinate here to Travolta’s force without sacrificing her self-respect.

So today, the day after watching the film as a middle-aged white male and then lying awake half the night turning it over in my head, I went looking for contemporary criticism of SNF and found this perceptive essay

My takeaway every-time I watch this movie is Stephanie. In the very end she has an older gentleman “friend” that helps her navigate her way in this new world. He is a predator and she is fresh meat. It immediately makes me think of quid pro quo. Stephanie tells Tony “He helps me man! Or else I would be walking around saying I dunno, I dunno”. Throughout the movie, in my opinion, she portrays to be someone she is not. Trying to impressive Tony and the boys with her “elaborate” lifestyle but in reality she is just as lost as Tony in this giant world that will eat her up. Stephanie is the saddest character to me and lacks true conviction of who she is while trying too hard to convey maturity over everyone else.

I love your pieces! They dig deep into films and you don’t stay at the surface. I respect that!

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When you watch this film through non outraged at everything 2023 eyes, it’s a great, lighthearted movie. It must be so exhausting looking for offense under every rock and around every corner. You can’t hold 1970s Brooklyn to a 2023 standard much the same you can’t hold 1492 or 1861 America to it, either.

Pummeled? I’ve watched SNF a skillion times. I’ve never seen Tony’s father “pummel” his mother, and I did not see Tony “pummel” Stephanie! Where did you get your copy of SNF?

I was born in 1976, so I didn’t see this movie when it was first released. Instead, I saw it when I was about 10 +/- yrs old. Idk if it’s due to my age when I saw it or maybe because society’s definition of rape had already evolved quite a bit by the time I saw it but whatever the reason, Annette’s rape scene is the only part of the movie that I really remember. Hearing people talk about this movie with such affection over the years, like it was just a fun, light-hearted flick with a great soundtrack, has always made me feel a bit crazy. Almost like I’d seen a different movie than everyone else. So, I enjoyed your essay very much and it helped me feel a bit less crazy. Lol Since I’ve only seen SNF that one time, maybe I’ll watch it again sometime. Just to see how it effects me as a 47 yr old woman vs a 10 yr old kid.

Apparently the reason most of us don’t remember the rape scene is because it was deleted in the theatrical release. It wasn’t until later when an extended version was available on tape that we see this scene. It is horrible to watch and detracts from the aura of the movie and the music.

I have seen this movie several times, the first being when it debuted and I was 12. I never recognized the rape scenes; I found this article after watching it two days ago and was so disturbed by what I saw and that I missed it so many years ago when I was a preteen girl. Great article!

Essay on How I Spent My Weekend

Students are often asked to write an essay on How I Spent My Weekend in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on How I Spent My Weekend

My relaxing saturday.

My weekend began with a lazy morning. I stayed in bed until late, enjoying the warmth of my blanket. For breakfast, I had my favorite pancakes with syrup. Then, I played video games which was super fun. In the afternoon, I helped my mom in the garden, planting new flowers.

On Sunday, I woke up early and went cycling in the park with my dad. It was refreshing and the park was full of life. After lunch, I finished my homework. In the evening, we all watched a funny movie and laughed a lot. My weekend was simple but very enjoyable.

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Paragraph on How I Spent My Weekend

250 Words Essay on How I Spent My Weekend

My weekend began with the warm rays of the sun gently waking me up. I stayed in bed a little longer, enjoying the comfort of my cozy blanket. After getting up, I ate a breakfast of pancakes and honey. With a full stomach, I spent the morning reading my favorite comic book and playing with my dog, Max. He is always full of energy and loves to catch the ball. In the afternoon, I helped my mom bake cookies. The smell of chocolate and vanilla filled the house. It was a quiet and peaceful day.

Sunday Fun Day

On Sunday, I went on an adventure with my family. We drove to a nearby park where the grass was green and the flowers were blooming. I ran around, flew my kite, and even had a picnic with sandwiches and lemonade. My sister and I played tag and laughed a lot. Later, we all went on a nature walk and saw birds, squirrels, and a little pond with ducks. Before going home, we had ice cream cones which melted quickly in the sun but tasted delicious.

Getting Ready for School

As the sun began to set on Sunday, I organized my school bag and prepared my uniform. I also checked my homework to make sure everything was done. Feeling ready for the week ahead, I went to bed early. I fell asleep quickly, dreaming about the fun I had and the new adventures that the next weekend might bring.

500 Words Essay on How I Spent My Weekend

My relaxing weekend.

Weekends are a time for rest and fun. This past weekend was special for me because I did many things that made me happy. I want to share with you how I spent my time from Friday evening to Sunday night.

Friday Evening: Movie Night

My weekend started on Friday after school. I had no homework, so I decided to watch a movie. I chose a funny cartoon because laughter is the best way to begin the weekend. I made popcorn, grabbed a cozy blanket, and sat on the couch. The movie was about a talking dog that goes on adventures, and it made me laugh a lot.

Saturday Morning: A Trip to the Park

On Saturday morning, I woke up early. The sun was shining, and the birds were singing. After breakfast, my family and I went to the nearby park. The park has a big playground with swings and slides. I played there for hours, running around and enjoying the fresh air. My parents sat on a bench, watching and sometimes joining in the fun.

Saturday Afternoon: Baking Cookies

After lunch, my mom and I baked cookies. We mixed flour, sugar, eggs, and chocolate chips in a big bowl. I helped by stirring the mix and then placing small balls of dough onto the baking tray. The best part was the smell of cookies baking in the oven. We all had cookies and milk for a snack, and they were delicious.

Saturday Evening: Reading Time

In the evening, I picked a new book to read. It was a story about a young detective solving mysteries. I read for a couple of hours, lost in the exciting world of the book. Reading is one of my favorite hobbies because it’s like going on an adventure without leaving home.

Sunday Morning: Playing Soccer

On Sunday, I played soccer with my friends at the school ground. We made two teams and played a match. I scored a goal, and my team won. Playing soccer is fun, and it’s good exercise too.

Sunday Afternoon: Homework and Study

After the soccer game, I returned home to do my homework. I sat at my desk and worked on math problems and wrote an essay for English class. Doing homework on Sunday helps me prepare for the week ahead. It’s not as fun as playing or watching movies, but it’s important.

Sunday Evening: Family Dinner

To end the weekend, my family had a big dinner together. We had my favorite food, spaghetti, and talked about our weekend. It’s nice to spend time with family and share stories.

Conclusion: A Weekend Well Spent

In conclusion, my weekend was full of different activities that I enjoyed. From watching movies and playing at the park to baking cookies and reading a book. I also made sure to play with my friends and finish my school work. Spending time with my family was the perfect way to finish my weekend. I went to bed feeling happy and ready for the new week. This was how I spent my relaxing weekend.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers

By Adam Gopnik

A blackandwhite collage of photographs of Adolf Hitler making various gestures.

Hitler is so fully imagined a subject—so obsessively present on our televisions and in our bookstores—that to reimagine him seems pointless. As with the Hollywood fascination with Charles Manson , speculative curiosity gives retrospective glamour to evil. Hitler created a world in which women were transported with their children for days in closed train cars and then had to watch those children die alongside them, naked, gasping for breath in a gas chamber. To ask whether the man responsible for this was motivated by reading Oswald Spengler or merely by meeting him seems to attribute too much complexity of purpose to him, not to mention posthumous dignity. Yet allowing the specifics of his ascent to be clouded by disdain is not much better than allowing his memory to be ennobled by mystery.

So the historian Timothy W. Ryback’s choice to make his new book, “ Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power ” (Knopf), an aggressively specific chronicle of a single year, 1932, seems a wise, even an inspired one. Ryback details, week by week, day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, how a country with a functional, if flawed, democratic machinery handed absolute power over to someone who could never claim a majority in an actual election and whom the entire conservative political class regarded as a chaotic clown with a violent following. Ryback shows how major players thought they could find some ulterior advantage in managing him. Each was sure that, after the passing of a brief storm cloud, so obviously overloaded that it had to expend itself, they would emerge in possession of power. The corporate bosses thought that, if you looked past the strutting and the performative antisemitism, you had someone who would protect your money. Communist ideologues thought that, if you peered deeply enough into the strutting and the performative antisemitism, you could spy the pattern of a popular revolution. The decent right thought that he was too obviously deranged to remain in power long, and the decent left, tempered by earlier fights against different enemies, thought that, if they forcibly stuck to the rule of law, then the law would somehow by itself entrap a lawless leader. In a now familiar paradox, the rational forces stuck to magical thinking, while the irrational ones were more logical, parsing the brute equations of power. And so the storm never passed. In a way, it still has not.

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour Adam Gopnik considers Hitler’s rise to power.

Ryback’s story begins soon after Hitler’s very incomplete victory in the Weimar Republic’s parliamentary elections of July, 1932. Hitler’s party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (its German initials were N.S.D.A.P.), emerged with thirty-seven per cent of the vote, and two hundred and thirty out of six hundred and eight seats in the Reichstag, the German parliament—substantially ahead of any of its rivals. In the normal course of events, this would have led the aging warrior Paul von Hindenburg, Germany’s President, to appoint Hitler Chancellor. The equivalent of Prime Minister in other parliamentary systems, the Chancellor was meant to answer to his party, to the Reichstag, and to the President, who appointed him and who could remove him. Yet both Hindenburg and the sitting Chancellor, Franz von Papen, had been firm never-Hitler men, and naïvely entreated Hitler to recognize his own unsuitability for the role.

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The N.S.D.A.P. had been in existence since right after the Great War, as one of many völkisch , or populist, groups; its label, by including “national” and “socialist,” was intended to appeal to both right-wing nationalists and left-wing socialists, who were thought to share a common enemy: the élite class of Jewish bankers who, they said, manipulated Germany behind the scenes and had been responsible for the German surrender. The Nazis, as they were called—a put-down made into a popular label, like “Impressionists”—began as one of many fringe and populist antisemitic groups in Germany, including the Thule Society, which was filled with bizarre pre- QAnon conspiracy adepts. Hitler, an Austrian corporal with a toothbrush mustache (when Charlie Chaplin first saw him in newsreels, he assumed Hitler was aping his Little Tramp character), had seized control of the Party in 1921. Then a failed attempt at a putsch in Munich, in 1923, left him in prison, but with many comforts, much respect, and paper and time with which to write his memoir, “Mein Kampf.” He reëmerged as the leader of all the nationalists fighting for election, with an accompanying paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung (S.A.), under the direction of the more or less openly homosexual Ernst Röhm, and a press office, under the direction of Joseph Goebbels. (In the American style, the press office recognized the political significance of the era’s new technology and social media, exploiting sound recordings, newsreels, and radio, and even having Hitler campaign by airplane.) Hitler’s plans were deliberately ambiguous, but his purposes were not. Ever since his unsuccessful putsch in Munich, he had, Ryback writes, “been driven by a single ambition: to destroy the political system that he held responsible for the myriad ills plaguing the German people.”

Ryback skips past the underlying mechanics of the July, 1932, election on the way to his real subject—Hitler’s manipulation of the conservative politicians and tycoons who thought that they were manipulating him—but there’s a notable academic literature on what actually happened when Germans voted that summer. The political scientists and historians who study it tell us that the election was a “normal” one, in the sense that the behavior of groups and subgroups proceeded in the usual way, responding more to the perception of political interests than to some convulsions of apocalyptic feeling.

The popular picture of the decline of the Weimar Republic—in which hyperinflation produced mass unemployment, which produced an unstoppable wave of fascism—is far from the truth. The hyperinflation had ended in 1923, and the period right afterward, in the mid-twenties, was, in Germany as elsewhere, golden. The financial crash of 1929 certainly energized the parties of the far left and the far right. Still, the results of the July, 1932, election weren’t obviously catastrophic. The Nazis came out as the largest single party, but both Hitler and Goebbels were bitterly disappointed by their standing. The unemployed actually opposed Hitler and voted en masse for the parties of the left. Hitler won the support of self-employed people, who were in decent economic shape but felt that their lives and livelihoods were threatened; of rural Protestant voters; and of domestic workers (still a sizable group), perhaps because they felt unsafe outside a rigid hierarchy. What was once called the petite bourgeoisie, then, was key to his support—not people feeling the brunt of economic precarity but people feeling the possibility of it. Having nothing to fear but fear itself is having something significant to fear.

It was indeed a “normal” election in that respect, responding not least to the outburst of “normal” politics with which Hitler had littered his program: he had, in the months beforehand, damped down his usual ranting about Jews and bankers and moneyed élites and the rest. He had recorded a widely distributed phonograph album (the era’s equivalent of a podcast) designed to make him seem, well, Chancellor-ish. He emphasized agricultural support and a return to better times, aiming, as Ryback writes, “to bridge divides of class and conscience, socialism and nationalism.” By the strange alchemy of demagoguery, a brief visit to the surface of sanity annulled years and years of crazy.

The Germans were voting, in the absent-minded way of democratic voters everywhere, for easy reassurances, for stability, with classes siding against their historical enemies. They weren’t wild-eyed nationalists voting for a millennial authoritarian regime that would rule forever and restore Germany to glory, and, certainly, they weren’t voting for an apocalyptic nightmare that would leave tens of millions of people dead and the cities of Germany destroyed. They were voting for specific programs that they thought would benefit them, and for a year’s insurance against the people they feared.

Ryback spends most of his time with two pillars of respectable conservative Germany, General Kurt von Schleicher and the right-wing media magnate Alfred Hugenberg. Utterly contemptuous of Hitler as a lazy buffoon—he didn’t wake up until eleven most mornings and spent much of his time watching and talking about movies—the two men still hated the Communists and even the center-left Social Democrats more than they did anyone on the right, and they spent most of 1932 and 1933 scheming to use Hitler as a stalking horse for their own ambitions.

Schleicher is perhaps first among Ryback’s too-clever-for-their-own-good villains, and the book presents a piercingly novelistic picture of him. Though in some ways a classic Prussian militarist, Schleicher, like so many of the German upper classes, was also a cultivated and cosmopolitan bon vivant, whom the well-connected journalist and diarist Bella Fromm called “a man of almost irresistible charm.” He was a character out of a Jean Renoir film, the regretful Junker caught in modern times. He had no illusions about Hitler (“What am I to do with that psychopath?” he said after hearing about his behavior), but, infinitely ambitious, he thought that Hitler’s call for strongman rule might awaken the German people to the need for a real strongman, i.e., Schleicher. Ryback tells us that Schleicher had a strategy he dubbed the Zähmungsprozess , or “taming process,” which was meant to sideline the radicals of the Nazi Party and bring the movement into mainstream politics. He publicly commended Hitler as a “modest, orderly man who only wants what is best” and who would follow the rule of law. He praised Hitler’s paramilitary troops, too, defending them against press reports of street violence. In fact, as Ryback explains, the game plan was to have the Brown Shirts crush the forces of the left—and then to have the regular German Army crush the Brown Shirts.

Schleicher imagined himself a master manipulator of men and causes. He liked to play with a menagerie of glass animal figurines on his desk, leaving the impression that lesser beings were mere toys to be handled. In June of 1932, he prevailed on Hindenburg to give the Chancellorship to Papen, a weak politician widely viewed as Schleicher’s puppet; Papen, in turn, installed Schleicher as minister of defense. Then they dissolved the Reichstag and held those July elections which, predictably, gave the Nazis a big boost.

Ryback spends many mordant pages tracking Schleicher’s whirling-dervish intrigues, as he tried to realize his fantasy of the Zähmungsprozess . Many of these involved schemes shared with the patriotic and staunchly anti-Nazi General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord (familiar to viewers of “Babylon Berlin” as Major General Seegers). Hammerstein was one of the few German officers to fully grasp Hitler’s real nature. At a meeting with Hitler in the spring of 1932, Hammerstein told him bluntly, “Herr Hitler, if you achieve power legally, that would be fine with me. If the circumstances are different, I will use arms.” He later felt reassured when Hindenburg intimated that, if the Nazi paramilitary troops acted, he could order the Army to fire on them.

Yet Hammerstein remained impotent. At various moments, Schleicher, as the minister of defense, entertained what was in effect a plan for imposing martial law with himself in charge and Hammerstein at his side. In retrospect, it was the last hope of protecting the republic from Hitler—but after President Hindenburg rejected it, not out of democratic misgivings but out of suspicion of Schleicher’s purposes, Hammerstein, an essentially tragic figure, was unable to act alone. He suffered from a malady found among decent military men suddenly thrust into positions of political power: his scruples were at odds with his habits of deference to hierarchy. Generals became generals by learning to take orders before they learned how to give them. Hammerstein hated Hitler, but he waited for someone else of impeccable authority to give a clear direction before he would act. (He went on waiting right through the war, as part of the equally impotent military nexus that wanted Hitler dead but, until it was too late, lacked the will to kill him.)

The extra-parliamentary actions that were fleetingly contemplated in the months after the election—a war in the streets, or, more likely, a civil confrontation leading to a military coup—seemed horrific. The trouble, unknowable to the people of the time, is that, since what did happen is the worst thing that has ever happened, any alternative would have been less horrific. One wants to shout to Hammerstein and his cohorts, Go ahead, take over the government! Arrest Hitler and his henchmen, rule for a few years, and then try again. It won’t be as bad as what happens next. But, of course, they cannot hear us. They couldn’t have heard us then.

Ryback’s gift for detail joins with a nice feeling for the black comedy of the period. He makes much sport of the attempts by foreign journalists resident in Germany, particularly the New York Times’ Frederick T. Birchall, to normalize the Nazi ascent—with Birchall continually assuring his readers that Hitler, an out-of-his-depth simpleton, was not the threat he seemed to be, and that the other conservatives were far more potent in their political maneuvering. When Papen made a speech denying that Hitler’s paramilitary forces represented “the German nation,” Birchall wrote that the speech “contained dynamite enough to change completely the political situation in the Reich.” On another occasion, Birchall wrote that “the Hitlerites” were deluded to think they “hold the best cards”; there was every reason to think that “the big cards, the ones that will really decide the game,” were in the hands of people such as Papen, Hindenburg, and, “above all,” Schleicher.

Ryback, focussing on the self-entrapped German conservatives, generally avoids the question that seems most obvious to a contemporary reader: Why was a coalition between the moderate-left Social Democrats and the conservative but far from Nazified Catholic Centrists never even seriously attempted? Given that Hitler had repeatedly vowed to use the democratic process in order to destroy democracy, why did the people committed to democracy let him do it?

Many historians have jousted with this question, but perhaps the most piercing account remains an early one, written less than a decade after the war by the émigré German scholar Lewis Edinger, who had known the leaders of the Social Democrats well and consulted them directly—the ones who had survived, that is—for his study. His conclusion was that they simply “trusted that constitutional processes and the return of reason and fair play would assure the survival of the Weimar Republic and its chief supporters.” The Social Democratic leadership had become a gerontocracy, out of touch with the generational changes beneath them. The top Social Democratic leaders were, on average, two decades older than their Nazi counterparts.

Whales at a party complain about the lack of space.

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Worse, the Social Democrats remained in the grip of a long struggle with Bismarckian nationalism, which, however oppressive it might have been, still operated with a broad idea of legitimacy and the rule of law. The institutional procedures of parliamentarianism had always seen the Social Democrats through—why would those procedures not continue to protect them? In a battle between demagoguery and democracy, surely democracy had the advantage. Edinger writes that Karl Kautsky, among the most eminent of the Party’s theorists, believed that after the election Hitler’s supporters would realize he was incapable of fulfilling his promises and drift away.

The Social Democrats may have been hobbled, too, by their commitment to team leadership—which meant that no single charismatic individual represented them. Proceduralists and institutionalists by temperament and training, they were, as Edinger demonstrates, unable to imagine the nature of their adversary. They acceded to Hitler’s ascent with the belief that by respecting the rules themselves they would encourage the other side to play by them as well. Even after Hitler consolidated his power, he was seen to have secured the Chancellorship by constitutional means. Edinger quotes Arnold Brecht, a fellow exiled statesman: “To rise against him on the first night would make the rebels the technical violators of the Constitution that they wanted to defend.”

Meanwhile, the centrist Catholics—whom Hitler shrewdly recognized as his most formidable potential adversaries—were handicapped in any desire to join with the Democratic Socialists by their fear of the Communists. Though the Communists had previously made various alliances of convenience with the Social Democrats, by 1932 they were tightly controlled by Stalin, who had ordered them to depict the Social Democrats as being as great a threat to the working class as Hitler.

And, when a rumor spread that Hitler had once spat out a Communion Host, it only made him more popular among Catholics, since it called attention to his Catholic upbringing. Indeed, most attempts to highlight Hitler’s personal depravities (including his possibly sexual relationship with his niece Geli, which was no secret in the press of the time; her apparent suicide, less than a year before the election, had been a tabloid scandal) made him more popular. In any case, Hitler was skilled at reassuring the Catholic center, promising to be “the strong protector of Christianity as the basis of our common moral order.”

Hitler’s hatred of parliamentary democracy, even more than his hatred of Jews, was central to his identity, Ryback emphasizes. Antisemitism was a regular feature of populist politics in the region: Hitler had learned much of it in his youth from the Vienna mayor Karl Lueger. But Lueger was a genuine populist democrat, who brought universal male suffrage to the city. Hitler’s originality lay elsewhere. “Unlike Hitler’s anti-Semitism, a toxic brew of pseudoscientific readings and malignant mentoring, Hitler’s hatred of the Weimar Republic was the result of personal observation of political processes,” Ryback writes. “He hated the haggling and compromise of coalition politics inherent in multiparty political systems.”

Second only to Schleicher in Ryback’s accounting of Hitler’s establishment enablers is the media magnate Alfred Hugenberg. The owner of the country’s leading film studio and of the national news service, which supplied some sixteen hundred newspapers, he was far from an admirer. He regarded Hitler as manic and unreliable but found him essential for the furtherance of their common program, and was in and out of political alliance with him during the crucial year.

Hugenberg had begun constructing his media empire in the late nineteen-teens, in response to what he saw as the bias against conservatives in much of the German press, and he shared Hitler’s hatred of democracy and of the Jews. But he thought of himself as a much more sophisticated player, and intended to use his control of modern media in pursuit of what he called a Katastrophenpolitik —a “catastrophe politics” of cultural warfare, in which the strategy, Ryback says, was to “flood the public space with inflammatory news stories, half-truths, rumors, and outright lies.” The aim was to polarize the public, and to crater anything like consensus. Hugenberg gave Hitler money as well as publicity, but Hugenberg had his own political ambitions (somewhat undermined by a personal aura described by his nickname, der Hamster) and his own party, and Hitler was furiously jealous of the spotlight. While giving Hitler support in his media—a support sometimes interrupted by impatience—Hugenberg urged him to act rationally and settle for Nazi positions in the cabinet if he could not have the Chancellorship.

What strengthened the Nazis throughout the conspiratorial maneuverings of the period was certainly not any great display of discipline. The Nazi movement was a chaotic mess of struggling in-groups who feared and despised one another. Hitler rightly mistrusted the loyalty even of his chief lieutenant, Gregor Strasser, who fell on the “socialist” side of the National Socialists label. The members of the S.A., the Storm Troopers, meanwhile, were loyal mainly to their own leader, Ernst Röhm, and embarrassed Hitler with their run of sexual scandals. The N.S.D.A.P. was a hive of internal antipathies that could resolve only in violence—a condition that would endure to the last weeks of the war, when, standing amid the ruins of Germany, Hitler was enraged to discover that Heinrich Himmler was trying to negotiate a separate peace with the Western Allies.

The strength of the Nazis lay, rather, in the curiously enclosed and benumbed character of their leader. Hitler was impossible to discourage, not because he ran an efficient machine but because he was immune to the normal human impediments to absolute power: shame, calculation, or even a desire to see a particular political program put in place. Hindenburg, knowing of Hitler’s genuinely courageous military service in the Great War, appealed in their meetings to his patriotism, his love of the Fatherland. But Hitler, an Austrian who did not receive German citizenship until shortly before the 1932 election, did not love the Fatherland. He ran on the hydrogen fuel of pure hatred. He did not want power in order to implement a program; he wanted power in order to realize his pain. A fascinating and once classified document, prepared for the precursor of the C.I.A. , the O.S.S., by the psychoanalyst Walter Langer, used first-person accounts to gauge the scale of Hitler’s narcissism: “It may be of interest to note at this time that of all the titles that Hitler might have chosen for himself he is content with the simple one of ‘Fuehrer.’ To him this title is the greatest of them all. He has spent his life searching for a person worthy of the role but was unable to find one until he discovered himself.” Or, as the acute Hungarian American historian John Lukacs, who spent a lifetime studying Hitler’s psychology, observed, “His hatred for his opponents was both stronger and less abstract than was his love for his people. That was (and remains) a distinguishing mark of the mind of every extreme nationalist.”

In November of 1932, one more Reichstag election was held. Once again, it was a bitter disappointment to Hitler and Goebbels—“a disaster,” as Goebbels declared on Election Night. (An earlier Presidential election had also reaffirmed Hindenburg over the Hitler movement.) The Nazi wave that everyone had expected failed to materialize. The Nazis lost seats, and, once again, they could not crack fifty per cent. The Times explained that the Hitler movement had passed its high-water mark, and that “the country is getting tired of the Nazis.” Everywhere, Ryback says, the cartoonists and editorialists delighted in Hitler’s discomfiture. One cartoonist showed him presiding over a graveyard of swastikas. In December of 1932, having lost three elections in a row, Hitler seemed to be finished.

The subsequent maneuverings are as dispiriting to read about as they are exhausting to follow. Basically, Schleicher conspired to have Papen fired as Chancellor by Hindenburg and replaced by himself. He calculated that he could cleave Gregor Strasser and the more respectable elements of the Nazis from Hitler, form a coalition with them, and leave Hitler on the outside looking in. But Papen, a small man in everything except his taste for revenge, turned on Schleicher in a rage and went directly to Hitler, proposing, despite his earlier never-Hitler views, that they form their own coalition. Schleicher’s plan to spirit Strasser away from Hitler and break the Nazi Party in two then stumbled on the reality that the real base of the Party was fanatically loyal only to its leader—and Strasser, knowing this, refused to leave the Party, even as he conspired with Schleicher to undermine it.

Then, in mid-January, a small regional election in Lipperland took place. Though the results were again disappointing for Hitler and Goebbels—the National Socialist German Workers’ Party still hadn’t surmounted the fifty-per-cent mark—they managed to sell the election as a kind of triumph. At Party meetings, Hitler denounced Strasser. The idea, much beloved by Schleicher and his allies, of breaking a Strasser wing of the Party off from Hitler became obviously impossible.

Hindenburg, in his mid-eighties and growing weak, became fed up with Schleicher’s Machiavellian stratagems and dispensed with him as Chancellor. Papen, dismissed not long before, was received by the President. He promised that he could form a working majority in the Reichstag by simple means: Hindenburg should go ahead and appoint Hitler Chancellor. Hitler, he explained, had made significant “concessions,” and could be controlled. He would want only the Chancellorship, and not more seats in the cabinet. What could go wrong? “You mean to tell me I have the unpleasant task of appointing this Hitler as the next Chancellor?” Hindenburg reportedly asked. He did. The conservative strategists celebrated their victory. “So, we box Hitler in,” Hugenberg said confidently. Papen crowed, “Within two months, we will have pressed Hitler into a corner so tight that he’ll squeak!”

“The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the tools to its own destruction,” Goebbels said as the Nazis rose to power—one of those quotes that sound apocryphal but are not. The ultimate fates of Ryback’s players are varied, and instructive. Schleicher, the conservative who saw right through Hitler’s weakness—who had found a way to entrap him, and then use him against the left—was killed by the S.A. during the Night of the Long Knives, in 1934, when Hitler consolidated his hold over his own movement by murdering his less loyal lieutenants. Strasser and Röhm were murdered then, too. Hitler and Goebbels, of course, died by their own hands in defeat, having left tens of millions of Europeans dead and their country in ruins. But Hugenberg, sidelined during the Third Reich, was exonerated by a denazification court in the years after the war. And Papen, who had ushered Hitler directly into power, was acquitted at Nuremberg ; in the nineteen-fifties, he was awarded the highest honorary order of the Catholic Church.

Does history have patterns or merely circumstances and unique contingencies? Certainly, the Germany of 1932 was a place unto itself. The truth, that some cycles may recur but inexactly, is best captured in that fine aphorism “History does not repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes.” Appropriately, no historian is exactly sure who said this: widely credited to Mark Twain , it was more likely first said long after his death.

We see through a glass darkly, as patterns of authoritarian ambition seem to flash before our eyes: the demagogue made strong not by conviction but by being numb to normal human encouragements and admonitions; the aging center left; the media lords who want something like what the demagogue wants but in the end are controlled by him; the political maneuverers who think they can outwit the demagogue; the resistance and sudden surrender. Democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It dies in bright midafternoon light, where politicians fall back on familiarities and make faint offers to authoritarians and say a firm and final no—and then wake up a few days later and say, Well, maybe this time, it might all work out, and look at the other side! Precise circumstances never repeat, yet shapes and patterns so often recur. In history, it’s true, the same thing never happens twice. But the same things do. ♦

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What is Holy Saturday? What the day before Easter means for Christians around the world

Easter Sunday is this upcoming weekend, which means the preceding Saturday is known as Holy Saturday.

According to Britannica, Holy Saturday is a Christian religious observance that ends the Lenten season. The observance "commemorates the final day of Christ's death," according to Britannica, which many Christians traditionally associate with his "triumphant descent into hell or 'to the dead.'" The day comes between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Easter is an important holiday for the millions of people around the world who follow the Christian faith as the day celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The holiday occurs after a 40-day period known as Lent.

Church services, reflection and prayer are some ways that people observe the holiday. Others enjoy a more secular celebration of Easter filled with bunnies, baskets and colorful eggs.

Good Friday: Are banks, post offices, UPS and FedEx open? Here's what to know

When is Holy Saturday? When is Easter?

This year, Holy Saturday is on Saturday, March 30, 2024. Easter Sunday is on Sunday, March 31, 2024.

Why is Easter so early in 2024?

Easter's date changes depending on the year. The holiday is one of several "moveable feasts" in the liturgical year, the History Channel reports. Others include Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday .

Easter is observed on the first Sunday following the Paschal full moon , which is the first full moon on or after the spring equinox . Since Western Christianity uses the Gregorian calendar, Easter typically falls on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25, according to the History Channel.

In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the date of Easter also varies. The branch follows the Julian calendar, meaning orthodox Easter falls between April 4 and May 8, the History Channel reports. This year, it will take place on Sunday, May 5, 2024.

Contributing: Olivia Munson, USA TODAY

Gabe Hauari is a national trending news reporter at USA TODAY. You can follow him on X @GabeHauari or email him at [email protected].

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Chief Electoral Officer Anupam Rajan has said that as per the election schedule of Lok Sabha Elections-2024, the process of filing nomination papers for the second phase is going on. In the second phase on Saturday, 7 candidates submitted their nomination papers. So far 8 candidates have filed nomination papers.

Chief Electoral Officer Rajan said that the affidavits and other information of the candidates who have filed nomination papers is available on the link of the Election Commission of India website https://affidavit.eci.gov.in/. He said that the last date for filing nomination papers is April 4. The nomination papers will be scrutinized the next day on April 5. Candidates who have filed the nomination papers will be able to withdraw their names till April 8. Voting for the second phase will be held on April 26. Counting of votes for all phases of voting will take place on June 4.

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Essay On Saturday Night Fever

Saturday Night Fever, The Bee Gees, disco balls, and all night long dancing might be a couple thing you think of when you think of disco fever. Disco is remembered by all-night parties and it the dancing fever brought with it, but disco was a short lives craze in the 70’s. So how did disco die? Rock fans had a crucial part in the destruction of disco. With the death of disco, punk takes to lead in the world of music. Before the death of disco rock fans and disco fans clashed and the outcome was both good and bad. In the 70’s dance fever caught everyone with discos danceable beat. Discos popularity took off because of the freedom it gave people. Famous disco songs had themes of homosexual pride allowing the gay community to have more freedom to be themselves. The group most famous for their work toward gay equality was The Village People. The dancing fever craze helped a lot of dance clubs pop up. The dance club you were allowed in to depend on your statues and your ability to dance. The book list one of the most exclusive clubs to be Studio 54. As disco started to fall the movie Saturday Night Fever helped disco …show more content…

Rock fans were being outraged by their favorite bands jumping on the disco trend, and they decided something had to be done. Steve Dahl is a prime example of this hate, and even started the Disco Sucks campaign. The Disco Sucks campaign lead to violent riot and rallies against disco. While disco was blurring lines between blacks and white and gay and straight, the hatful environment against disco promoted segregation. This created a push to go back to the roots of rock and roll, but it also created a group angry rock super fans, this lead to the natural progression from disco to punk. Even though disco and punk seem very different, they have a lot in common. Both focus on the music and not the lyrics, and both are wrote and composed to appeal to the

Early Rock N Roll Pioneers

According to artists in that era, Rock n’ Roll was associated with some level of ruggedness and unruliness. Rock n’ Roll also provided an opportunity for people to escape from prevailing challenges and further challenge the status quo. African-Americans played an important role in the development of Rock ‘n’ Roll by infusing elements of the sounds hummed during cotton picking and Black gospel music with country music and other progressive styles of the time (Blues and Jazz). The music had an impact on people’s attitude by introducing an unprecedented level of confidence, especially among the youth. White people were also introduced to a new style of dance that required movement of the waist and the legs, which

Essay On Edward Scissorhands

Often the people that stand out from the crowd at younger ages are the people that will do incredible and amazing things. When Burton was young he was an outsider giving him time to become great at what he loves, he spent his time drawing and writing some of his childhood work that inspired films that he is recognized. Burton uses long shot, flashbacks, and low key lighting in both Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Edward Scissorhands to show the characters insecurities about the obstacle of society. Burton uses longshot in both Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Edward Scissorhands, long shot is first used when the families are standing outside the factory waiting to be let in. it is used to show the nervous attitudes that everyone has about the factory and once again expressing what is unknown about the ginormous factory.

The Roaring Twenties Research Paper

But what many people wanted to do was dance. The Charleston, the cakewalk, the black bottom, and the flea hop were among the many dances they were around during this time. Jazz music was everywhere. Jazz bands played in music halls and on the radio but this caused issues among the older generation because of the message they believed the music was sending; but the younger generation didn't care. All they cared about was the freedom they felt on the dance floor.

70s Music Research Paper

According to Lawrence (2003), “It was amazing that in such a short period of time discotheques had become so much more acceptable to the general public. ”(p. 181) From all the anxieties and issues of the decade, many used dancing and going out

Counterculture During The 60s

Because of the many different movements going on in the 60s, many songs had lyrics in them that talked about the movements. Also during the 60s there were many different types of music formed. One of the most popular ones was Rock. Rock had many different types. People would create these different types of rock by using different instruments, and different types of music.

Punk Rock Movement

The music industry has played a large role in shaping the society in which people live in today. Music has the ability to not only impact an individual’s life but society as a whole. One genre/subgenre in particular that was able to cause dramatic change within the US itself was punk rock. Punk rock, which could be consider a subgenre of rock n roll or a genre of its own, came into the popular music scene in the 1960s and 70s and played a huge role in shaping the lives of many Americans especially those whose voices were not heard in the mainstream. Throughout history and still in today’s society many groups of people go unheard and are not respected as they should be under the constitution.

How Did The Radio's Impact On American Culture

Radio and Television The music of the 1960s and 1970s definitely had an impact on culture and society in the United States. Protest music, specifically, brought ideas, as well as problems, to the attention of many Americans. Radio stations across the nation were a big part of the spread of protest music. Radio experienced a boom after World War II.

Influence Of Rock Music In The 1960s

Rock music in the 1960s was egalitarian, eclectic, and real based on a number of reasons. To explain the 'real' piece of rock music in the 1960s, one would have to know that there was war going on overseas that didn't make sense to Americans as to why it was going on (the Vietnam war). There was also still severe inequality between blacks and whites causing protests to occur via the Civil Rights movement, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. There was inequality between women and mens rights. These issues caused dissatisfaction to occur in the American people.

How Did Rock And Roll Have Survived If There Were No Racial Division In The 1940s

History of Rock Music: Exam #2 Rock and roll would not have survived if there were no racial division in the 1940s. Because “rock ‘n roll” had such an overwhelming influence on social interactions of both black and white teens alike, the genre forced record labels to sign black artists because their music became so popular and profitable. Rock and roll influenced not only daily life, but fashion, and attitudes. When segregation became unlawful in 1954, it gave freedom to both black and white artists. While many white parents tried to prevent their teens from listening to rock and roll in the 1950s and 1960s, television and radio made it impossible to prevent their children’s exposure.

Punk Rock Influence On American Culture

Punk "started out as a music-based subculture” (LeBlanc 33). The evolution of Rock music began in the 1950’s with Rock and Roll. Rock and Roll introduced people like Elvis Presley. After Rock and Roll, Folk Rock was introduced including Neil Young. Then there was Blue’s Rock, which included BB King.

Conformity In The 1950's Essay

Rock and Roll was a very popular cultural aspect of the 50s. It originated from African American culture then the whites interpreted it. One of the first singers to do this was the very king of rock and roll himself, Elvis Presley. Many adults hated this new music and wanted to ban it. A huge part of it was censored, for example on the Ed Sullivan show, Elvis had to wear a tuxedo and wasn’t allowed to dance because his moves were “sexually inappropriate”.

Cultural Impact Of Rock And Roll

En Masse, Rock and Roll has influenced various areas of the youth culture amid the 1960’s, dominating many areas of the world. The popularity and international outlook for rock music resulted in a compelling impact on society as Rock and Roll influenced everyday fashions, attitudes, and behaviors. Drawing on many different styles, this genre of music excited a worldwide generation of young listeners, while, at the same time, distressing musical, cultural, and social authorities. Presently, it is tough to fully understand the bitter criticism the new music generated in its entirety. Rock music gave shape to many different counter-cultural movements which engulfed the world.

Michael Jackson And Madonna Capitalized On The Rise Of Music Essay

The American underground punk scene was started between the years1967 and 1975. During this time most of the rock scene was listening to psychedelia and main stream rock music. During this time period is when the American

Media's Influence On Punk Music

I. Punk music, it has a reputation for being chaotic and rebellious. But how did punk music start? In the 60s, rock music was “feel-good”, which young adults did not enjoy. These young adults wanted to take a stand against the status quo, and be themselves. They wanted to go against the mainstream music scene and all that it stood for.

The Grunge Pop Culture

Fans stayed faithful to their bands but like before Grunge became underground, bands went back to playing in bars and clubs with a small group of fans. The grunge look was no longer in and the days of designer grunge clothes was over. The pop culture phenomenon was gone, dead to most. It went back to being the "Seattle sound" that it had started as. Grunge's short life in the spotlight was over.

More about Essay On Saturday Night Fever

Essays on Saturday

15 samples on this topic

Writing tons of Saturday papers is an inherent part of modern studying, be it in high-school, college, or university. If you can do that on your own, that's just awesome; yet, other learners might not be that lucky, as Saturday writing can be quite laborious. The directory of free sample Saturday papers introduced below was put together in order to help flunker students rise up to the challenge.

On the one hand, Saturday essays we publish here clearly demonstrate how a really well-written academic paper should be developed. On the other hand, upon your demand and for an affordable cost, a competent essay helper with the relevant academic background can put together a high-quality paper example on Saturday from scratch.

Difference In Gender And Play In Playgrounds Report To Use For Practical Writing Help

This report is based on the difference in the behaviour of boys and girls when in the park space and green space of playground. The analysis is also done on one weekday and one weekend to determine the variations in the behavioural difference between boys and girls. This report analyses the importance of discovering the gender disparities in their rate of play in both the green space and the park space of the playground.

Waterborne Disease And Its Effects On Public Health {type) To Use As A Writing Model

Introduction

Good Should Students Have To Wear Uniforms? Essay Example

Purpose: To Persuade

Specific Purpose: To persuade my audience that school children do not need to wear uniform Thesis Statement: I want to persuade my audience to abolish school uniforms among school going children because 1) it limits the ability of school children to express themselves in color 2) removing the requirement to wear uniforms enhances children’s esteem and 3) the benefits associated with abolishment of school uniforms are many.

Exemplar Essay On What Is Negotiation? To Write After

Business Negotiation Skills Improvement Conference

Negotiation is a method by which people settle differences. The purpose of negotiation is bringing people to compromise or reaching agreements, and avoiding argument and dispute. It is a professional communication and could be improved by skills.

Purpose of conference (Workshop)

The Human Observation Project: Essay You Might Want To Emulate

Antitrust law case study examples, penalty rates essay example, dd/mm/yy report to use for practical writing help.

Executive Travel Report

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv (Israel) Fast Facts Status Financial center of Israel and 2nd most populous city Time zone UCT/GMT +3 hours

Political system Democracy

Main religion Judaism Language(s) Hebrew, Arabic, English Currency exchange rate 1 ILS = 0.26 USD; Inverse 3.76 USD

Arriving to Ben-Gurion International Airport (Tel Aviv)

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The Name Of The University Research Paper Examples

Thomas Nast

Thomas Nast was born in Germany in 1840, and he moved to the United States at the age of six. Initially he used to do illustrations to support his family that was going through acute financial crisis. Nast started his work as an illustrator when he was 15. At that time he was working as an illustrator for a magazine called Leslie’s Weekly New. His earning was $4 a week. In the year1862, during Civil War, he took a job of a war reporter in Harper’s Weekly Magazine.

Thomas Nast stereotypes the Irish as

Proper Essay Example About My Family Origin

History of illustration research paper example, good example of a look at the work of alfred stieglitz essay, example of research paper on why do we study the ancient literature.

275 words = 1 page double-spaced

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Holy Saturday 2024: History, Significance, and Quotes

Holy Saturday, also known as Easter Saturday or Black Saturday, is observed on the day after Good Friday and just before Easter Sunday.

Holy Saturday, also known as Easter Saturday or Black Saturday, is observed on the day after Good Friday and just before Easter Sunday. This day, marked on March 30 this year, holds profound significance within the Christian calendar, particularly for Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant traditions.

History and Meaning

According to the Gospels, Holy Saturday follows the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, during which his body was placed in a tomb provided by Joseph of Arimathea. It is closely associated with the concept of the Harrowing of Hell, where Jesus, while in the tomb, descended into the realm of the dead to free the righteous souls held captive since ancient times. This event symbolizes Jesus' triumph over sin and death, culminating in his resurrection on Easter Sunday.

Significance of Holy Saturday

Holy Saturday serves as a day of solemn reflection and anticipation. It embodies a period of mourning and uncertainty for Jesus' disciples and followers, who grappled with the shock and grief of his death, coupled with the dashed hopes of their expectations.

For Jewish adherents of Jesus, Holy Saturday coincides with the Sabbath, a day of rest and worship according to Jewish tradition.

Observances of Holy Saturday typically include quiet contemplation and preparation for Easter. Many churches conduct special services like the Easter Vigil, marked by readings, prayers, and the symbolic lighting of candles to celebrate Jesus' resurrection.

Quotes Reflecting Holy Saturday 2024

“In the silence of Holy Saturday, when time stops and all is dark, God keeps vigil with us, waiting to break through with resurrection light.”
“Holy Saturday is the time to reflect on the immense love of Christ, who willingly endured death to save us all.”
“On this Holy Saturday, we remember that even in the darkest moments, God is at work, preparing to bring forth new life and hope.”
“Holy Saturday teaches us the importance of patience, trust, and faith as we await the fulfillment of God’s promises.”
“In the silence of Holy Saturday, we find the space to contemplate the depth of God’s love and the power of His resurrection.”

Sayings for Holy Saturday 2024

“Let us enter into the spirit of Holy Saturday, embracing the silence and waiting with hopeful hearts for the dawn of Easter.”
“On Holy Saturday, we stand at the threshold of resurrection, holding onto faith and trusting in God’s plan.”
“As we observe Holy Saturday, may we remember that even in the darkest moments, God is at work, bringing forth light and new life.”
“Holy Saturday invites us to pause, reflect, and prepare our hearts to receive the joy of Easter with renewed faith and gratitude.”
“May the peace of Holy Saturday fill your soul and lead you to a deeper understanding of God’s love and mercy.”

Blessings for Holy Saturday 2024

May the blessings of Holy Saturday bring you comfort, strength, and renewed hope as you await the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
May the grace of God be with you on this Holy Saturday, guiding you through the silence and preparing your heart for the joy of Easter.
May the peace of Christ fill your home and heart on this Holy Saturday, reminding you of His presence and love for you.
May the light of God’s love shine upon you on this Holy Saturday, illuminating your path and leading you to the joy of Easter morning.
May the blessings of Holy Saturday deepen your faith, inspire your prayers, and fill you with anticipation for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This rewritten version maintains the essence of the original content while ensuring it is free from plagiarism.
Askari Jaffer
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More From Forbes

4 college admissions trends shaping top schools’ decisions in 2024.

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Locust Walk with students in fall, University of Pennsylvania, University City area, Philadelphia, ... [+] PA, USA

Ivy Day 2024, the day when top schools' admissions decisions are released, is a pivotal moment to explore the evolving landscape of college admissions and anticipate future directions. This year’s transformations are reshaping college application strategies in profound ways. Let's dive into the latest developments.

Return To Standardized Testing

The return to SAT and ACT requirements by institutions such as Dartmouth, Brown and MIT is a sign that many highly selective institutions may go back to requiring standardized tests. In a slight modification to the testing requirement, Yale’s test-flexible policy allows students to submit Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate scores in lieu of the standard SAT or ACT. This shift may be in response to a decline in college readiness benchmarks ; for instance, ACT exam scores are at their lowest in 30 years, even as GPAs in core subjects rise. This gap highlights a discrepancy between students' perceived readiness and their actual preparedness.

Although I foresee more colleges reinstating standardized testing requirements, I also expect the continuation of test-optional and test-blind policies. These policies serve not only to broaden application pools from underrepresented and disadvantaged groups but also as a strategy for financially challenged institutions to attract more applicants.

In other testing news, the College Board launched the first digital SAT earlier this month , introducing a significant shift from its traditional format. This new version is adaptive and adjusts the difficulty level of questions based on the student's responses, a departure from the fixed difficulty level of previous exams. Notably, students report that the math section was more challenging than anticipated, diverging from their experiences with practice exams. Unlike the SAT, which has transitioned to a fully digital format, the ACT continues to offer both digital and traditional paper-and-pencil options.

It's advisable for students to undertake diagnostic practice exams for both the SAT and ACT to ascertain which exam aligns better with their abilities. Should the practice scores be comparable, I recommend leaning toward the ACT. This preference stems from its stability in format over the years and the choice it offers between digital and paper-based exams.

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Given the evolving landscape of testing policies, including recent SAT modifications, students should embrace a two-pronged approach: rigorously prepare for standardized tests while remaining flexible to the possibility of not submitting scores where test-optional policies prevail.

Rethink The Importance Of The College Essay

Duke University has made significant changes to its admissions process by no longer assigning numerical ratings to applicants' standardized test scores and essays . This adjustment took effect in the current application cycle. Previously, Duke assigned values from one to five for essays and test scores, contributing to a holistic score on a 30-point scale. Now, the point system is applied only to curriculum strength, academics, recommendations, and extracurricular activities.

The move to eliminate numerical scores for essays arises from concerns about the rise in AI-generated submissions and the possibility of essays being ghostwritten. Christoph Guttentag, the dean of undergraduate admissions, noted that although essays play a pivotal role in comprehending an applicant's profile, their reliability as indicators of a student’s actual writing skills has diminished.

This adjustment is not a response to the Supreme Court's ruling against considering race in admissions decisions. Nonetheless, essays have frequently been a focal point in discussions about fostering diversity through admissions. It is expected that other institutions may similarly de-emphasize essays, thereby elevating the significance of academic transcripts, the depth of extracurricular activities, and the relevance and demand for the selected major .

Apply Early

The number of early applications (a combination of early decision and early action) has jumped by 1 million, a 60% increase, over the last five years according to Common Application data in a New York Magazine report . In contrast, applications filed during the regular decision period increased by 26% over the same timeframe. This suggests a growing trend among high school seniors to leverage early application options as part of their strategy for college admissions, reflecting the competitive nature of securing admission to top institutions.

Navigate The FAFSA Challenges

The recent overhaul of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid has led to significant delays, affecting students who rely on financial aid to make college decisions. This FAFSA situation has left many students in limbo, uncertain about their financial aid packages and, consequently, their college choices. Some colleges and universities are extending decision deadlines to accommodate the delays, but the fear remains that this could deter a significant number of students from matriculating.

Alongside the FAFSA, it is imperative for families to engage early with platforms such as the College Board’s CSS Profile. They can help unlock a broad spectrum of financial support options, from federal aid to merit-based scholarships offered by institutions. For example, utilizing tools like the Federal Student Aid Estimator and individual college’s net price calculators can provide early insights into eligibility for federal financial assistance, guiding strategic financial planning for college.

Master Your College Admissions Strategy

As the 2024 college admissions landscape poses its share of complexities, students and families are encouraged to embrace a multifaceted approach tailored to the evolving standards of higher education. From adapting to the reemergence of standardized testing requirements at esteemed institutions like Dartmouth, Brown, and MIT, to addressing the challenges posed by the digitalization of the SAT and the nuanced evaluation of college essays at Duke, it's clear that flexibility and strategic planning are paramount. Furthermore, the rise in early application submissions highlights the importance of proactivity and informed decision-making in securing a favorable college admission outcome. By fostering a thorough understanding of these trends and deploying an informed application strategy, students can enhance their prospects of achieving their academic and career aspirations in this dynamic admissions environment.

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The Saturday Essay
The Saturday Essay. Recommended Videos. Biden Approves $60 Million Federal Aid After Baltimore Bridge Collapse. 02:27. Former Crypto King Sam Bankman-Fried Sentenced to 25 Years. 01:23.
Essay on Saturday
Essay on Saturday. A day at the beach is relaxing, the amusement park fun, but neither is more satisfying than a day spent working in my backyard. Saturday morning begins on my back porch where I slip on my old tennis shoes, stained green from years of cutting grass in them. Three stone steps lead down to the backyard, where warm sunshine ...
Should Halloween Be on a Saturday?
When Halloween falls on a Saturday, you get to enjoy an entire day of spooky, sugary fun. Instead of sitting in class, you can carve a dozen pumpkins or host a scary movie marathon. ... Write the information you find on a piece of paper. You can use this information in an argument essay on this topic. This article was originally published in ...
Should I Take the SAT Essay? How to Decide
Taking the SAT with the essay will also cost you a bit more money. Taking the SAT without the essay costs $46, but if you choose to take the essay, it costs $14 extra, raising the total cost of the SAT to $60. However, if you're eligible for an SAT fee waiver, the waiver also applies to this section of the exam, so you still won't have to pay ...
What Is the SAT Essay?
College Board. February 28, 2024. The SAT Essay section is a lot like a typical writing assignment in which you're asked to read and analyze a passage and then produce an essay in response to a single prompt about that passage. It gives you the opportunity to demonstrate your reading, analysis, and writing skills—which are critical to ...
How to Get a Perfect 8|8|8 SAT Essay Score
The SAT Essay is scored separately from the rest of the SAT now, thanks to the changes that went into effect in March 2016.. While the essay is now optional (you don't automatically have to take it every time you take the SAT), s ome colleges still require students to submit SAT essay scores with their applications.Learning how to consistently write a perfect SAT essay will be a huge boost to ...
How to Write an SAT Essay, Step by Step
This is the argument you need to deconstruct in your essay. Writing an SAT essay consists of four major stages: Reading: 5-10 minutes. Analyzing & Planning: 7-12 minutes. Writing: 25-35 minutes. Revising: 2-3 minutes. There's a wide time range for a few of these stages, since people work at different rates.
The SAT
Students, find out when the SAT will be offered at your school and how you can prepare for test day. Learn about the test security and fairness policies for taking the SAT. Top. The SAT supports success in school and can help you on your path to college. Access your My SAT Dashboard to register or send SAT scores.
The SAT Announces Dropping Essay and Subject Tests
The essay section was introduced in 2005, and was considered among the most drastic changes to the SAT in decades. It came amid a broader overhaul of the test, which included eliminating verbal ...
PDF CHAPTER 14 About the SAT Essay
The SAT Essay is a lot like a typical writing assignment in which you're asked to analyze a text. To do well on the SAT Essay, you'll want to have a good sense of what the test asks of you as well as the reading, analysis, and writing knowledge and skills required to compose a response to the Essay prompt. This chapter is intended primarily ...
The Optional SAT Essay: What to Know
Here are three things you should know about the 50-minute SAT essay as you decide whether to complete it: To excel on the SAT essay, you must be a trained reader. The SAT essay begs background ...
Khan Academy
Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.
Persuasive Essay on Should We Have Saturday School
3. 📌Published: 01 April 2022. Kids in America don't always love going to school, but deep down in their hearts, they know it's good for them. It would benefit every child in our country if it was decided to have school on Saturdays as well. By going to school an extra per week, pupils will experience more academic growth.
What's on the SAT
The Math Section. The Math Section: Overview. Types of Math Tested. SAT Calculator Use. Student-Produced Responses. Top. Find out what's going to be on each section of the SAT so you can prepare for test day.
Everything You Need to Know About the Digital SAT
The SAT puts your achievements into context. That means it shows off your qualifications to colleges and helps you stand out. Most colleges—including those that are test optional —still accept SAT scores. Together with high school grades, the SAT can show your potential to succeed in college or career. Learn more about why you should take ...
Opinion
For a disadvantaged kid like me, the SAT was the one shot I had to prove my potential. ... Guest Essay. How the SAT Changed My Life. March 27, 2024. Credit... Matija Medved. Share full article. 405.
What We Don't Remember About 'Saturday Night Fever'
The blockbuster film Saturday Night Fever, which came out in 1977, can be read as a product of this rapidly evolving discussion. Like amber traps a dragonfly, Saturday Night Fever catches, mid-flight, the moment of '70s zeitgeist that accommodated various—and conflicting—definitions of rape. Molly Haskell wrote during this period that ...
Essay on How I Spent My Weekend
100 Words Essay on How I Spent My Weekend My Relaxing Saturday. My weekend began with a lazy morning. I stayed in bed until late, enjoying the warmth of my blanket. For breakfast, I had my favorite pancakes with syrup. Then, I played video games which was super fun. In the afternoon, I helped my mom in the garden, planting new flowers.
What were SAT Subject Tests?
February 23, 2024. SAT Subject Tests™ were standardized college admission tests in specific subjects. Students could choose to take these tests, in addition to the SAT, to showcase their strengths and interests. Previously called SAT II: Subject Tests, and before that Achievement Tests, each Subject Test examined students' understanding of ...
What I Do on Last Saturdays? Free Essay Example
Holiday: Parking Lot and Busy Saturday Morning. During my holiday season last year, I had an unforgettable experience that still remains fresh in my memory. I remember going to the shopping mall with my aunty in the early hours on a Saturday to do some shopping. Fortunately for us, we were able to secure a parking space on that busy Saturday ...
The Forgotten History of Hitler's Establishment Enablers
The N.S.D.A.P. had been in existence since right after the Great War, as one of many völkisch, or populist, groups; its label, by including "national" and "socialist," was intended to ...
Essay On The Saturday Boy
Essay On The Saturday Boy. 490 Words2 Pages. The Saturday Boy, An Inspiration To All! According to Common Sense Media, "The Saturday Boy is a deeply felt story of a boy unmoored. Powerful emotions are at play, but author David Fleming uses restraint to great advantage.". Some people may dislike The Saturday Boy because the plot is sad and ...
What is Holy Saturday? What to know about the last day of Holy Week
This year, Holy Saturday is on Saturday, March 30, 2024. Easter Sunday is on Sunday, March 31, 2024. Why is Easter so early in 2024? Easter's date changes depending on the year. The holiday is one ...
SAT Essay Scoring
Responses to the optional SAT Essay are scored using a carefully designed process. Two different people will read and score your essay. Each scorer awards 1-4 points for each dimension: reading, analysis, and writing. The two scores for each dimension are added. You'll receive three scores for the SAT Essay—one for each dimension—ranging ...
7 candidates file nomination papers on Saturday
Chief Electoral Officer Anupam Rajan has said that as per the election schedule of Lok Sabha Elections-2024, the process of filing nomination papers for the second phase is going on. In the second ...
Essay On Saturday Night Fever
Essay On Saturday Night Fever. 633 Words3 Pages. Saturday Night Fever, The Bee Gees, disco balls, and all night long dancing might be a couple thing you think of when you think of disco fever. Disco is remembered by all-night parties and it the dancing fever brought with it, but disco was a short lives craze in the 70's.
Saturday Essay Examples
On the one hand, Saturday essays we publish here clearly demonstrate how a really well-written academic paper should be developed. On the other hand, upon your demand and for an affordable cost, a competent essay helper with the relevant academic background can put together a high-quality paper example on Saturday from scratch.
Holy Saturday 2024: History, Significance, and Quotes
Holy Saturday, also known as Easter Saturday or Black Saturday, is observed on the day after Good Friday and just before Easter Sunday. This day, marked on March 30 this year, holds profound ...
Press Preview: Saturday's papers
Gillian Joseph takes a first look at Saturday's newspapers with deputy political editor of The Sun Ryan Sabey and columnist for The Guardian Zoe Williams.
4 College Admissions Trends Shaping Top Schools' Decisions ...
Unlike the SAT, which has transitioned to a fully digital format, the ACT continues to offer both digital and traditional paper-and-pencil options. ... Rethink The Importance Of The College Essay.