Writing feedback

Sharp feedback on the essay the SAT stopped scoring

The SAT Essay was discontinued in 2021 and the PSAT never had one — but rhetorical analysis, the AP Language argument, and your college application essay still live or die on the same skills. Paste your draft. Nudge Buddy asks the questions a demanding reader would and flags the phrases that sound machine-made — and you rewrite in your own words. It never writes, rewrites, or scores. The essay stays provably yours.

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What the read looks at

  • The rhetorical situation — author, audience, purpose, and the choices that serve them
  • Evidence and analysis — how each device actually moves the argument, not just that it's named
  • A thesis that makes a claim about strategy, not a summary of the passage
  • Structure that builds — each paragraph earning the next
  • Voice — a college essay that sounds like a person, not a template

Reads tuned to a specific rubric — AP Language's rhetorical-analysis criteria, for instance — run on our most advanced model as part of Pro. On the free plan you already get both lenses — Deep Read and Human Voice — 5 reads a day.

See Pro and plans

See what it looks like on a real draft:

Your draft
Why cities should price the curb

Every city already owns a scarce, valuable asset it gives away for free: the curb. Parking is priced as if land were infinite, and the result is predictable — drivers circling, buses stuck behind them, deliveries double-parked in the bike lane. In this rapidly evolving urban landscape, the fix is not more asphalt but a price that moves with demand. San Francisco tried it and the circling dropped. Ultimately, pricing the curb is not just about parking — it is about fairness, efficiency, and the future of our cities.

Strong instinct, thin evidence. The argument names a mechanism but never shows it working — and the closing paragraph slips into borrowed cadence.

Deep Read4 questions
Evidence
San Francisco tried it and the circling dropped
Dropped by how much, over what period, measured how? A reader who disagrees with you will stop exactly here.
Counterargument
a price that moves with demand
Who pays more under demand pricing — and what do you say to the shift worker who can't move their hours?
Scope
Every city already owns…
Every city? Does this hold for a town of 20,000 with empty curbs, or is your claim really about dense cores?
Stakes
buses stuck behind them
What does the delay actually cost riders in minutes or dollars? Right now the harm is described, not sized.
Human Voice2 tells
In this rapidly evolving urban landscape
A throat-clearing opener that could sit in front of any sentence about any city. It carries no information your reader doesn't already have.
FixCut it, or replace it with the specific change you mean — a year, a policy, a number.
it is about fairness, efficiency, and the future of our cities
The three-part abstract flourish is the single most common machine tell. Each noun is unarguable, which is why none of them persuade.
FixPick the one you can defend with the evidence you have, and end on it.

Common questions

Does this give me an official SAT essay score?

No — and no honest tool could. The SAT Essay was discontinued in 2021, so there is no live rubric or official score to hand you. What this mode does is rhetorical analysis and academic-essay coaching: it reads your draft the way a demanding reader would, asks where the argument thins out, and flags what sounds machine-made. You do the rewriting.

What about the PSAT essay?

The PSAT has no essay section — it never did, so there's nothing to grade there either. If you're prepping for the PSAT, the tool still helps with the writing underneath it: the rhetorical analysis you'll meet in AP Language, the argument structure, and the read-for-craft habit that carries into your college essays.

Is using this on my college essay cheating?

No. It writes none of your words. Letting an AI draft your essay is what puts words in your text that aren't yours — Nudge Buddy does the opposite: it only asks and points, so the essay you submit is provably your own.

So what is it actually good for?

Rhetorical-analysis practice (AP Lang and beyond), college application essays, and any argument you have to defend. It gives you a sharp Deep Read on the substance and a Human Voice pass on what sounds machine-made — free, 5 reads a day.

Related

Paste your draft and see where a reader would stall

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No card · 5 reads a day · your text never trains a model

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