Prior knowledge is when you come into any session with knowledge already gathered from a different resource. It's important when writing your gateway essay because you could always know more or all the details about what the gateway topic is. That is if it's not on the Roman Empire. Having prior knowledge for the gateway isn't really something you can earn points on with the gateway. Say that you know absolutely everything about the topic, but you don't know how to properly write it out on paper. That itself can take off many points, and the gateway seems more pointed to know how to write more than knowing what you need to know for each topic. Which is really dumb since most likely half of the school probably wants nothing to do with history;
