Great College Essay Writing Tips

One of the most challenging tasks college students face is essay writing. Many students dread hearing the words and immediately freeze when they do. College essay writing is actually not that difficult. The problem is probably more psychological for students. This article will introduce a few college essay writing tips and hopefully show that essay writing needn't be such a traumatic experience.

Let's look at the layout of the essay. Let's make it as easy as possible by dividing the essay into three parts:

The first part is the introduction. Make it pretty simple and simply introduce the reader to your plans for the essay. Tell the reader what you are going to talk about in the essay and your own opinion statement, if applicable.

The next part of the essay will be the paragraphs that talk about what you said you'd talk about in the introduction. If you made an opinion statement, you will also use these paragraphs to show evidence, statistics, etc. to support your claims.

Finally, close the essay with a paragraph or two that recap what you just finished telling them. It will be similar to your introductory paragraph and your last words on the matter.

College Essay Writing Tips

Prior to writing your essay, you should make an outline of what you will be talking about. An outline will help you layout and organize your thoughts. Many people like to do outlines on paper. I prefer to use an app I found for my iPad which allows me to rearrange the different parts of my planned essay.

My favorite college essay writing tip is using free flow writing. Sometimes I get really "plugged" in the head and am not sure what to write about. I find that if I start typing anything that pops into my head, the road block is cleared and soon words related to the essay are flowing nicely.

The essay writing process is a much worse if you are writing about a topic that you have little or no interest in. In cases like these, one of my favorite college essay writing tips is to look to the internet to research my topic. I try to read about the background of the topic with the hope of finding an aspect of the topic that interests me. When I find something interesting about the topic, I zero in on that and focus my essay writing on that aspect. It does help to make the process a bit less painful.

The best thing to do, however, is to try to approach writing with an open mind and not see it as a nightmare. You'll soon find different aspects and topics of writing that are enjoyable to you and the pain of writing a college essay will fade away.