Dramatically Improve Any College Essay With These 5 Simple Tips
By: Alexandra Sol
Tags: Education, Self Improvement, Essay, College, Writing

Are you just about to submit your academic essay, but the deadline is still a few hours away? Don’t submit yet!

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Take a look at these five tips and see whether you can improve your essay within only a few hours.

I have been teaching philosophy at university for more than ten years now. I’ve been grading undergraduate essays for even longer. Writing an essay is hard work. Most students find it difficult to mold their ideas into an academic paper, especially during their first years when they are trying to figure out what the hell it is the professor wants.

You might have understood the material, done your research, even come up with thoughts of your own about the topic (woohoo!).

But is your essay actually an essay — or is it just an accumulation of related claims?

Here are some tips that can improve any essay. Yes. Any! Essay! Even the one about that topic you have never heard of before, because you slept through every single lecture! Here is what you need to do.

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1. Arguments, it’s all about arguments

An argument is a unit consisting of a conclusion and reasons that are offered as support for the conclusion. You might think arguments are only relevant to philosophers, but I cannot think of an academic subject that requires students to write argument-free essays.

In fact, your textbooks and suggested readings are full of arguments. “The economy crash happened, because…”, “Ethical Relativism is an implausible view, because…”, “Shakespeare should be interpreted as being a feminist, because…” Look out for arguments in your reading material. Then present these arguments as clearly as possible in your essay. What is the conclusion and what reasons are given for believing it?

Presenting others’ arguments in your essay is tremendously important. But it is not enough.

Your professor will want to see that you can do more than reproduce the learned material. They also want to see that you can evaluate it; that is, critically engage with it.

Now that you established that and why Buddhists believe that there is no self, do you agree? Why do you agree? Why not? Your evaluation of arguments drawn from the expert literature is the heart of your essay.

Don’t skip it, don’t be vague, don’t stay superficial, don’t try to guess what your professor wants to read. Take a risk and argue your brains out.

Pretend you are a lawyer in a courtroom.

You don’t want the jury to just blindly believe your conclusion. You want them to arrive at the same conclusion. That’s why you talk them through the evidence. In your essay, the “evidence” are the reasons for why any maximally rational reader should agree with your conclusion.

One word of warning: be cautious with appeals to authority. The fact that Nietzsche/Durkheim/Trump/Oprah/50Cent/your mom says so, is usually not a good reason for why a maximally rational reader should subscribe to the conclusion. Unless it’s a conclusion about them. Then maybe.

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2. Avoid Dogmatism

This assumes that you took the first tip to heart and you are trying to critically engage with the material you have read.

Believe me when I, as a philosopher, say that nothing is ever obvious. Do not dogmatically state your conclusion.

Acknowledge reasons that may lead sensible people to believe the opposite.

Acknowledge experiences and observations we all make that might warrant a different conclusion. Be charitable towards your “opponent” and assume that they are rational and well-informed.

Present the most plausible version of their arguments and objections. If you’re playing with a weak opponent, then winning isn’t really an achievement, is it? Reply to these arguments and objections by explaining why they are not as convincing as they might appear at first. Stay humble and be respectful.

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3. Explain technical terms

Sure, your professor spent the last semester talking about “experiential avoidance”, “possible worlds”, or “accentual verses”, but these are technical terms.

They are terms that are defined in a particular way within your discipline and this definition might differ from the meanings these terms have in an everyday context.

In your essay, you will have to explain these terms rather than simply assume that your reader knows what they mean.

Of course, since your reader is your professor or a teaching assistant, they will know what the terms mean. But they want to see that you, too, know how these crucial terms are defined within your discipline.

And don’t underestimate the power of giving one or two examples to clarify a concept. Here is what I mean:

Experiential avoidance is “the attempt to escape or avoid certain private experiences, such as particular feelings, memories, behavioral predispositions, or thoughts”. Thus, you are engaging in experiential avoidance if you avoid writing your essay because doing so makes you doubt yourself. Or assume that whenever you try to argue for a particular position, thoughts and feelings of inadequacy arise in you. If this leads you to avoid arguing for your view, then you are displaying experiential avoidance.

By the way, since these are technical terms within your subject, you should never refer to Wikipedia, Merriam-Webster, the Oxford English Dictionary, or the Urban Dictionary in order to define them.

How many technical terms should you explain in your essay? It depends on the subject, topic, whether there are different definitions of the term floating around in your discipline, and whether you are writing an undergraduate or a graduate essay. One rule I would advise not to ignore is this:

you should at least explain any technical term that is mentioned in your title or in your essay question.

Being able to define technical terms also avoids one nasty pitfall: Jargonism. If you don’t know how to explain a word without using that same word, don’t use the word.

An essay is essentially a dialogue.

If your conversation partner doesn’t understand the language you are using, they will cut out. Save your monologue for your Youtube channel.

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4. Keep the focus

Yes, I know, you read all these articles and books and blogs and comments to blogs and now you have tonnes of thoughts in your head that just want out. But an essay is not the right place for it. (Maybe start your own blog?) You need to rigidly stay on topic. And I mean Rigidly! Capital “R”! Always ask yourself:

does this paragraph or even sentence directly support my answer to the essay question?

Do I need it to establish my conclusion or is it just interesting side noise? If the former, include it. If the latter, delete it. Right now!

If you are asked to set your own essay topic, think of your essay topic as a single question. For example, “Can I ever know that I am not in the Matrix?” Let your working title be that single question and let your writing be guided by the focus it creates. Avoid compound questions such as “Was Shakespeare a feminist and did he inspire other writers to become feminists?” Such a question will most likely result in an essay that lacks focus.

Don’t play detective in your essay, play lawyer. Tell your readers for what you are going to argue (introduction), then argue for it (main part), then tell them for what you have argued (conclusion).

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5. Locate the question within the debate

You are writing an academic essay, not an opinion piece for your local newspaper. You are contributing to an already existing debate. Help the reader understand this debate.

Present the main positions that people in your discipline hold when it comes to this debate. Doing so will show your reader that you are familiar with the current state of this debate within your subject, but it also gives them a better sense of where in your own view falls.

Explain to your reader why the question you are attempting to answer in your essay is important —

not just to you, but to a wider audience, the academic discipline, maybe even the whole of society.

You don’t need to spend one-third of your essay on justifying, well, your essay, but adding a few sentences on motivation suggests to the reader that you are not just writing this essay because you are “told to do so”, but because you can see a real value in engaging with the topic.

Just to be clear, you should not explain why you are interested in the topic or why you are keen to find an answer to a particular question. The task is to highlight why it is in your discipline’s/your community’s/society’s/the world’s interest to come up with answers.