What to look for

Sample question from the new essay section of the Scholastic Achievement Test. Students will be given 25 minutes to respond. College Board officials said they have several potential essay questions for each test site:

Think carefully about the issue presented in the following quotations and the assignment below:

1. While secrecy can be destructive, some of it is indispensable in human lives. Some control over secrecy and openness is needed in order to protect identity. Such control may be needed to guard privacy, intimacy and friendship.

-- Adapted from Sissela Bok, ''The Need for Secrecy"

2. Secrecy and a free, democratic government, President Harry Truman once said, don't mix. An open exchange of information is vital to the kind of informed citizenry essential to healthy democracy.

-- Editorial, ''Overzealous Secrecy Threatens Democracy"

Assignment: Do people need to keep secrets or is secrecy harmful? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

SOURCE: College Board's SAT.