5 College Essay Topics You Should Never, Ever Write About

5 College Essay Topics You Should Never, Ever Write About How likely is that I will get into a school like Harvard? I have As and some high Bs in all of my classes I have over 100 hours of community service, a leadership role in a club, play varsity sports, and I did well on my PSATs (I haven't received my SAT scores yet). Also my financial background is that of lower income. Use a brief narrative or anecdote that exemplifies your reason for choosing the topic. In an assignment that encourages personal reflection, you may draw on your own experiences; in a research essay, the narrative may illustrate a common real-world scenario. Give some background information necessary for understanding the essay. If so, remember that you may at a later stage need to compress your introduction. The introduction states what’s at stake, and the body presents the evidence. In the case of an argumentative essay, the evidence might be research. In a more personal essay, it might be made up of the author’s own experiences. Your thesis statement comes at the end of your introduction. Here’s the thesis statement from the Skyline College example above. Remind the reader of how the evidence you’ve presented has contributed to your thesis. Don’t give details and in-depth explanations that really belong in your body paragraphs. You can usually postpone background material to the body of the essay. In a more technical paper, define a term that is possibly unfamiliar to your audience but is central to understanding the essay. It states the main point of the essay, which the author intends to make a case for. Once you have a clearer vision for your central idea or argument, it’s time to organize your info-dump. Prune out anything irrelevant and organize your outline into the classic structure. In order to comply with FTC guidelines we want to be transparent that ScholarshipOwl may get compensated by companies and/or partners based on an affiliate or advertiser partnership. We might get compensated for example for mentioning partners, by you, the user, making a clicking, purchasing, or signing up for a product or service through a tracking link. If your essay has a thesis, your thesis statement will typically appear at the end of your introduction, even though that is not a hard-and-fast rule. You may, for example, follow your thesis with a brief road map to your essay that sketches the basic structure of your argument. The longer the paper, the more useful a road map becomes. You may be the kind of writer who writes an introduction first in order to explore your own thinking on the topic. It is intended to provide opinions and educational information. It is not intended as individual advice and should not be taken as substitute for professional advice. We assume no responsibility for errors or mistakes. We reserve the right to make deletions, additions, or modifications to the content at any given time without prior notice. In some cases we may be compensated on an affiliate basis when users take certain actions. We partner with colleges to bring high quality programs online, at half the cost. The information provided on this blog is for informational purposes only.