Originally Posted by Aik Admi

Arsalan, how much did you score in essay? And also please share with us how much time did you allocate to making the outline... And do you do it on a rough paper first?

Originally Posted by Aik Admi

How much time did you allocate to making the outline?

Originally Posted by Demonstrative

Ummm, I don't remember it as such but I'll try to jot down the few points I could recall. I find banalities repulsive so I never had recourse to things like what is war, what is peace etc etc.

My outline followed more or less the pattern given below:

1. Intro
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

2. What makes a nation great:

"According to your thought, the greatness of nations lies in their politics, their parties, their conferences, their alliances and treaties.

But mine proclaims that the importance of nations lies in work—work in the field, work in the vineyards, work with the loom, work in the tannery, work in the quarry, work in the timberyard, work in the office and in the press."
-Kahlil Gibran
2.1 Labor (Hardwork implied)
2.2 Justice and Equity
2.3 Education
2.4 Economic Prosperity
....

3. How Wars Preclude Nations from becoming Great:
3.1 Diversion of Intellectual Capital
3.2 Diversion of Financial Capital
...

4. Examples from the Annals of History:
4.1 China:
4.2 Japan
4.3. Syria:
4.4. Egypt: The Rise and Fall
4.5 . Pakistan- Then and Now
"We blame our times, though we are to be blamed,
No fault has time but only us.
We scold the time for all the shame,
Did it have tongue, it would have scolded us."
- Imam Shafi

"Be still sad heart and cease repining,
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining."
- H W. Longfellow


5. Conclusion

It was something on these lines. I never expected to end it like that but for the want of time, I had to. Please note that I never incorporated any quotations in my outline (though I have seen candidates doing that quite often).

I don't think flowery expression is synonymous with those complex sentences. I started my essay with something like ...blood gushing through streets, smoke sucking through air, fire licking the buildings, whinning mothers, crying babies, weeping fathers and swirling bodies are the fruits of war (excuse me if it sounds meaningless here, not that it had any meaning there, lol).

Here is an example of a repulsive expression: The horrid and gruesome macabre that one witnesses in the restive and morose swathes of land are the upshot of the blood and carnage wreaked by wars and melees.

I hope I am clear.

Originally Posted by Cogito Ergo Sum

Demonstrative and others,

Please accept a sincere advice. Do not base your preparations for essay on your essay scores/performances of 2014. I knew some candidates who couldn't write three consecutive sentences without committing grammatical mistakes, and they passed 2014 essay! (I am not joking). All of them couldn't clear précis that year. This time they were confident (based on their 14' essays) to get through; but their essay scores are in single-digits and all of them have cleared précis.