essay about the school

Essay on My School for Students and Children

500+ words essay on my school.

Education is an essential part of our lives. We are nothing without knowledge, and education is what separates us from others. The main step to acquiring education is enrolling oneself in a school. School serves as the first learning place for most of the people. Similarly, it is the first spark in receiving an education. In this essay on my school, I will tell you why I love my school and what my school has taught me.

We have all been to school and we have loved each and every moment we have spent over there as those were the building blocks of our lives. A school is a place where students are taught the fundamentals of life, as well as how to grow and survive in life. It instils in us values and principles that serve as the foundation for a child’s development.

My school is my second home where I spend most of my time. Above all, it gives me a platform to do better in life and also builds my personality. I feel blessed to study in one of the most prestigious and esteemed schools in the city. In addition, my school has a lot of assets which makes me feel fortunate to be a part of it. Let us look at the essay on my school written below.

Why I Love My School?

From kindergarten through primary and secondary school, and subsequently, to faculty, school is a place where we always study, grow, and establish ourselves, socialize, be a friend, help others, and love and be loved. School is a buddy that will accompany us from the beginning of our youth till the conclusion of our lives. At school, we share all of our pleasures and sorrows, and we constantly rely on one another. This is made possible through the friendships we share. They assist us in effortlessly overcoming difficulties, sharing moments of enjoyment together, and looking forward to new paths.

My school strikes the perfect balance between modern education and vintage architecture. The vintage buildings of my school never fail to mesmerize me with their glorious beauty. However, their vintage architecture does not mean it is outdated, as it is well-equipped with all the contemporary gadgets. I see my school as a lighthouse of education bestowing knowledge as well as ethical conduct upon us.

Teachers have the power to make or break a school. The teaching staff is regarded as the foundation of any educational society. It is their efforts to help kids learn and understand things that instil good habits and values in their students. While some concepts are simple to grasp, others necessitate the use of a skilled teacher to drive the home the idea with each pupil.

In contrast to other schools, my school does not solely focus on academic performance. In other words, it emphasizes on the overall development of their students. Along with our academics, extra-curricular activities are also organized at our school. This is one of the main reasons why I love my school as it does not measure everyone on the same scale. Our hardworking staff gives time to each child to grow at their own pace which instils confidence in them. My school has all the facilities of a library , computer room, playground, basketball court and more, to ensure we have it all at our disposal.

For me, my school is more than simply an educational institution; it is also my second family, which I established during my childhood. A family of wonderful friends, outstanding teachers, and fond school memories. I adore my school because it is where I learn how to be a good citizen and how to reach my goals. School is the only place where we make friends without judging them. We feel comfortable spending time with those close friends no matter what the situation.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

What has My School Taught Me?

If someone asked me what I have learned from my school, I won’t be able to answer it in one sentence. For the lessons are irreplaceable and I can never be thankful enough for them. I learned to share because of my school. The power of sharing and sympathy was taught to me by my school. I learned how to be considerate towards animals and it is also one of the main reasons why I adopted a pet.

School is an excellent place to learn how to be an adult before entering the real world. Those abilities pay dividends whether you choose to be the bigger person in an argument or simply complete your domestic tasks. When you open your mind to new ideas, you gain a lot of influence in society. Picking up unexpected hobbies on your own will teach you more about what you like to do than simply completing things for a grade.

A school is a place where I developed my artistic skills which were further enhanced by my teachers. Subsequently, it led me to participate in inter-school completions through which I earned various awards. Most importantly, my school taught me how to face failures with grace and never give up on my ambitions, no matter what happens.

Schools also offer a variety of extracurricular activities such as Scouts and Guides, sports, N.C.C., skating, school band, acting, dancing, singing, and so on. Our principal also used to give us a short lecture every day for about 10 minutes about etiquette, character development, moral education, respecting others, and gaining excellent values. As a result, I can claim that what I am today is solely due to my school, which is the best institution in my opinion.

Teamwork is an important ability that schools teach. Schools are frequently the first places where youngsters have the opportunity to collaborate with children who are different from them. Collaboration is essential for the team and individual success. Students are taught that the success of a team depends on each individual component functioning together.

To sum it up, studying in one of the respected schools has helped me a lot personally. I will always be indebted to my school for shaping my personality and teaching me invaluable lessons. It has given me friends for life and teachers that I will always look up to. I aspire to carry on the values imbibed by my school to do well in life and make it proud.

Here is the list of Top Schools in India! Does Your School Tops the List?

FAQs on School

Q.1 Why must every child go to school?

A.1 It is essential for every child to go to school as the school teaches us lessons that cannot be acquired anywhere else. The experience is one a kind and along with education, we learn many other things like socializing, extra-curricular activities and more.

Q.2 What does school teach us?

A.2 School teaches us some of the great things like first of all, it gives us basic education. It teaches us to develop our skills like art, dance, public speaking and more. Most importantly, it teaches us discipline.

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Essay on My School

Here we have shared the Essay on My School in detail so you can use it in your exam or assignment of 150, 250, 400, 500, or 1000 words.

You can use this Essay on My School in any assignment or project whether you are in school (class 10th or 12th), college, or preparing for answer writing in competitive exams. 

Topics covered in this article.

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Essay on My School in 150-300 words

My school is a place that holds a special significance in my life. It is not just a building with classrooms, but a nurturing environment where I have spent some of the most formative years of my life. My school is a place where I have gained knowledge, formed lifelong friendships, and developed essential skills for my future.

The infrastructure of my school is impressive, with well-equipped classrooms, laboratories, and a library. It provides a conducive learning environment where teachers impart knowledge with dedication and passion. The school also offers extracurricular activities, including sports, arts, and cultural events, which have played a crucial role in my overall development.

What makes my school truly special is its sense of community and inclusivity. The teachers and staff foster a supportive and nurturing atmosphere, encouraging students to express themselves, share their ideas, and embrace diversity. The friendships I have formed in my school have been invaluable, providing me with a sense of belonging and support.

My school has not only focused on academic excellence but also on character building. It instills values such as discipline, respect, and empathy. The school encourages us to participate in social service activities and initiatives that contribute to the betterment of society.

In conclusion, my school holds a significant place in my heart. It has provided me with a platform to grow academically, socially, and emotionally. The knowledge, skills, and experiences gained from my school will continue to shape my future endeavors. I am grateful for the opportunities, guidance, and memories that my school has bestowed upon me.

Essay on My School in 350-450 words

My school is not just a building with classrooms and desks; it is a place that has shaped me into the person I am today. It is a community of educators, students, and staff who work together to create a nurturing environment for learning and personal growth.

The infrastructure of my school is impressive, with well-maintained classrooms, science and computer laboratories, a library, and sports facilities. The classrooms are equipped with modern teaching aids and technology, providing an interactive and engaging learning experience. The school library is a treasure trove of knowledge, offering a wide range of books, magazines, and resources that have expanded my horizons and fueled my curiosity.

However, it is the people in my school who make it truly special. The teachers are not just educators but mentors who are passionate about their subjects and dedicated to imparting knowledge. They go beyond textbooks, encouraging critical thinking, creativity, and independent learning. Their guidance and support have nurtured my intellectual curiosity and shaped my academic journey.

Moreover, my school emphasizes holistic development by providing opportunities for extracurricular activities. From sports to arts, music to drama, there is something for everyone. These activities have allowed me to explore my talents, develop new skills, and build confidence. The annual school events, such as cultural fests and sports meets, bring the entire school community together, fostering a sense of camaraderie and school spirit.

What sets my school apart is its strong sense of community and inclusivity. Students from diverse backgrounds come together, fostering an environment of respect, empathy, and acceptance. The school encourages participation in community service projects, instilling values of compassion and social responsibility. Through these initiatives, I have developed a sense of empathy and a desire to make a positive impact on the world around me.

In addition to academic and extracurricular pursuits, my school also prioritizes character development. It promotes values such as integrity, discipline, and teamwork. Through various initiatives, including leadership programs and mentoring, my school equips students with essential life skills that go beyond the classroom.

In conclusion, my school is not just a physical space; it is a vibrant community that has played a significant role in my personal and academic growth. The infrastructure, dedicated teachers, diverse opportunities, and inclusive environment have provided me with a solid foundation for success. The memories, friendships, and experiences gained from my school will always hold a special place in my heart, and I am grateful for the invaluable lessons and support that my school has provided me with.

Essay on My School in 500-1000 words

Title: My School – A Journey of Learning, Growth, and Community

Introduction :

My school is more than just a physical institution; it is a place that has played a pivotal role in shaping my identity, fostering my love for learning, and providing me with a strong foundation for personal and academic growth. It is a vibrant community where dedicated educators, supportive staff, and fellow students come together to create an environment conducive to learning, exploration, and holistic development. In this essay, I will take you on a journey through my school, highlighting its infrastructure, curriculum, extracurricular activities, and the sense of community that makes it truly special.

Infrastructure and Facilities

The infrastructure of my school is impressive, designed to cater to the diverse needs of students. The well-maintained classrooms are spacious and equipped with modern teaching aids, including smart boards and multimedia projectors, enabling interactive and engaging learning experiences. The science and computer laboratories are equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, providing hands-on opportunities to explore and experiment. The school library is a haven of knowledge, with an extensive collection of books, magazines, and digital resources that have expanded my horizons and deepened my love for reading.

In addition to academic facilities, my school also boasts well-maintained sports facilities, including a sports ground, basketball court, and indoor sports arena. These facilities provide ample opportunities for students to engage in physical activities, promoting a healthy and active lifestyle.

Dedicated Educators and Supportive Staff

The heart of my school lies in its dedicated and passionate educators who go above and beyond their role as teachers. They serve as mentors, guiding us on our educational journey and nurturing our intellectual curiosity. Their commitment to their subjects, innovative teaching methods, and willingness to support and encourage students have had a profound impact on my love for learning. The teachers create a supportive and inclusive classroom environment, where each student feels valued and respected.

The supportive staff, including administrative personnel, librarians, and maintenance staff, play a crucial role in ensuring the smooth functioning of the school. Their dedication and commitment contribute to the overall positive atmosphere of the school, creating a sense of unity and collaboration.

Curriculum and Holistic Development

My school offers a comprehensive curriculum that emphasizes both academic excellence and holistic development. The curriculum is designed to foster critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills. It goes beyond textbook knowledge, encouraging us to explore real-world applications of what we learn.

The school provides a well-structured timetable that balances academic subjects, including mathematics, science, languages, and social sciences, with opportunities for artistic expression, physical education, and personal development. This well-rounded approach ensures that students have a holistic educational experience and are exposed to a range of disciplines and perspectives.

Extracurricular Activities

My school recognizes the importance of extracurricular activities in nurturing talents, developing leadership skills, and promoting teamwork. The school offers a diverse range of activities, including sports, arts, music, dance, drama, and debate. These activities provide a platform for students to explore their passions, develop new skills, and showcase their talents.

Participating in extracurricular activities has not only broadened my horizons but also helped me build confidence, resilience, and a sense of discipline. Through sports, I have learned the value of teamwork, sportsmanship, and perseverance. In the arts, I have discovered my creativity and developed an appreciation for various forms of expression.

Sense of Community

What sets my school apart is the strong sense of community and belonging that permeates every aspect of school life. The school fosters an inclusive environment where students from diverse backgrounds come together, promoting mutual respect, understanding, and cultural appreciation. This sense of community has enabled me to develop meaningful friendships and connections that extend beyond the classroom.

The school organizes various events and celebrations, such as annual days, cultural festivals, and community service initiatives. These events bring the entire school community together, promoting camaraderie, teamwork, and a sense of pride in our school.

Conclusion :

My school is more than just a physical structure; it is a vibrant community where learning, growth, and friendship thrive. The infrastructure, dedicated educators, supportive staff, comprehensive curriculum, and wide range of extracurricular activities have provided me with a well-rounded education and countless opportunities for personal and academic development. The sense of community and belonging that permeates my school has created an environment where I feel valued, inspired, and motivated to reach my full potential. My school will always hold a special place in my heart, as it has nurtured my love for learning, shaped my character, and prepared me for a bright future.

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Essays About School: Top 5 Examples Plus Prompts

School education plays a significant role in forming who we are; if you are writing essays about school, read our guide for inspiration and writing prompts. 

School is a crucial part of one’s life, as it gives us the basic knowledge we need to be able to take on the world. It refers to the activity of being educated in class and the buildings where these activities occur. Children go to school to obtain basic knowledge, such as history, English, and mathematics and learn manners and helpful life skills. It is commonly divided into early childhood, primary, secondary, and tertiary education. 

Many current and former students regard school as a second home, as it gives shelter, knowledge, and a “second family” in the form of our classmates. They also nurture us, teach us lessons about life, help us discover our interests, and instill morals in us. Indeed, the schools we attend prove vital to our success. 

To start your essay, read these examples to write informative essays about school. 

1. Homeschool vs. Public School by Ramona Rice

2. essay on my school (author unknown), 3. 2020-2021 school year reflection by rasha al-najjar, 4.  what do i expect from elementary school not this. by laura eberhart goodman.

• 5. ​​My High School Reflections by Stella Santa Ana

1. Why Is School Important?

2. should schools require uniforms, 3. should there be a “no homework” policy in elementary school , 4. should classes be separated by sex, 5. is going to college necessary, 6. is bullying part of “school culture”, 7. what is the most important thing you have learned from school .

“And although homeschooled students can benefit from a more fitted education and concentrate on their own needs, their curriculum can become too narrowed, limiting all that they could obtain. In all, by limiting the knowledge of a student to only what their parents know, how could society ever grow and develop? A student needs to learn in an environment that will adequately prepare them for the ever-growing society and competitive work field.”

Rice compares being homeschooled to public school, highlighting its advantages and disadvantages. While homeschooling allows for a more flexible schedule and a more personalized study plan, there is no socialization and no pressure, two things that school accustoms students to for the future. It is also very limited, as parents rather than professionals teach students. Homeschooling has its advantages but is not ideal overall. You might also be interested in these essays about education .

“For me, my school is more than simply an educational institution; it is also my second family, which I established during my childhood. A family of wonderful friends, outstanding teachers, and fond school memories. I adore my school because it is where I learn how to be a good citizen and how to reach my goals. School is the only place where we make friends without judging them. We feel comfortable spending time with those close friends no matter what the situation.”

This essay discusses the importance of education and school. School gives us essential knowledge, the fundamentals of life, and friendships we will treasure forever. Contributing factors to the effectiveness of a school are the physical environment, teachers, classmates, and of course, quality of education. Finally, the school has become a second family to the author, as it gave them some of the best memories ever. 

“Hybrid is hard. Flipping lessons, teachers trying to build relationships with students they’ve never seen in person, and students who are at home alone through assignments is incredibly challenging. However, the struggle of keeping it all straight gave teachers an opportunity to reflect, tweak, and adjust lessons as they went.”

Al-Najjar explains the difficulties her school’s faculty encountered during the previous school year at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sudden change from an in-person to an online or hybrid set-up left many teachers and students confused and stressed, and although easier in some aspects; it proved difficult overall. As a result, the school year was tough, but Al-Najjar and her fellow faculty members learned a lot and planned to make the coming year more productive. 

“We aren’t expecting 8 and 9 year olds to vote in the next election, or pay their own car insurance, or stay out late with a boy that we hate, so why are we expecting them to sit for 6–7 hours a day and do paperwork? Why are we expecting them to be able to concentrate for hours at a time to take multiple choice tests? It’s not the right time for that. They aren’t ready, and they shouldn’t have to be ready.”

Goodman, a mother of elementary school students, laments the tiredness she sees on their faces when she picks them up. She wishes elementary schools would focus on creativity, morals and skills, and even fun; instead, she sees her kids bored and tired with school, as their school focuses too much on academics and “high standards.” Goodman provides excellent insight from the perspective of a mother, making her argument all the more effective. 

5. ​​ My High School Reflections by Stella Santa Ana

“Many people think that being alone and introverted is an abnormal behavior, but it’s actually one of the greatest assets you can achieve. If you can be alone and introverted and enjoy some quality time with yourself, if you can learn to befriend who you are and learn to love yourself for your faults, then you’re already ahead of most people in life. It’s in your best interest to become your own best friend, because only then can you really improve and become a better person.”

Santa Anna writes about several lessons she has learned throughout high schools, such as being careful with who you socialize with and avoiding procrastination. Most significantly, however, she discusses self-reliance. Only one person fully knows the real you: you. As a result, you should keep in touch with your emotions and avoid getting swayed by others so easily. If you can “become your best friend,” it is easier to succeed. 

Writing Prompts For Essays About School

There are many reasons for you to attend and take school seriously. Focus on one or more, explaining the importance of going to school. For example, you may mention the lessons you can learn, the skills you develop, and how schools prepare you for the future. 

Some schools, particularly religious institutions, implement strict uniform policies. Read about uniform requirements and decide whether you think students should be required to wear uniforms or not. Then, make your argument and support it adequately with credible sources. Be sure to include a rebuttal of the opposing viewpoint: describe it and explain why you disagree. 

Another topic you can consider for an interesting argumentative essay is a “no homework” policy in primary school. Some believe that kids this young should have as much free time as possible, while others want them to be prepared for the future rigor of class. Discuss whether you believe students should not be assigned homework and explain your position sufficiently. 

Some believe that males and females have different learning styles and should be separated in class to maximize teaching. In contrast, others believe this is unnecessary and unrealistic as men and women always work together. Decide on your position on this issue and try to persuade readers of it- give ample evidence for your argument and explain it in detail.

Looking for more? Check out these essays about classroom .

More and more job providers are removing the college degree requirement for applicants. With that being said, is getting a tertiary education still needed? In your essay, detail your position on this issue and support it with examples, statistics, and other credible research.

Bullying is, without a doubt, a grave issue at all school levels. However, some believe it is already institutional and cannot be entirely eradicated. Furthermore, some believe it can prepare students for the “real world.” Do you believe that the culture of bullying will persist, or is it unacceptable to just let it be? There is no wrong answer, as long as it is explained adequately. 

For your essay, reflect on a memorable experience from your school years, no matter how long ago or recent it may be. Why do you remember it as well as you do? Then, explain what you learned from it and how it has helped you become who you are today. 

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers .If you’re still stuck, check out our general resource of essay writing topics .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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How to Write an Essay about Your School

If you’re hoping to draft an insightful essay about your school, you’re in the right place! Writing an essay about your school offers an opportunity to share your experiences, the unique features of your school, and why it is important to you.

In this tutorial, I’ll guide you through five straightforward steps to pen such an essay effectively. Alongside these steps, we’ll craft a sample essay to demonstrate how you can apply these steps in practice. Ready to begin? Let’s dive in!

Step 1. Plan the word count for your essay’s paragraphs.

Planning the word count for each paragraph in your essay is a helpful initial step, which can make the writing process smoother and faster. Remember, a typical essay comprises three key parts:

• The introductory paragraph
• Three body paragraphs
• The concluding paragraph

For example, you want a 300-word paragraph. Here’s one way to distribute 300 words across five paragraphs:

That’s all you need for your essay — five solid paragraphs.

Step 2. Choose your central theme and supporting points.

Firstly, decide on a central theme that encapsulates your school experience. This will provide a coherent thread for your entire essay. When choosing your theme, think about what defines your school. What are the core values? What unique attributes does it possess?

For our sample essay, let’s use this as our central theme: “My school, Greenfield High, stands out for its emphasis on community, innovative teaching methods, and commitment to the arts.”

Next, we will apply the Power of Three to break down this main theme into three supporting points. The Power of Three is a three-part structure that aids you in crafting your body paragraphs.

In our case, we will focus on three features that define Greenfield High:

• Greenfield High fosters a strong sense of community.
• Innovative teaching methods are a hallmark of Greenfield High.
• Greenfield High shows a deep commitment to the arts.

With these in mind, we can now begin to write our essay!

Step 3. Write the introductory paragraph.

To write an introductory paragraph , you can follow the diagram below:

The introductory paragraph should begin with an engaging opener that sets the context for the essay. Following this, you should introduce your central theme and your three supporting points. Here’s our example:

Introductory Paragraph

“Schools can profoundly shape our lives, molding us through their unique cultures, methodologies, and focus areas. My school, Greenfield High, stands out for its emphasis on community, innovative teaching methods, and commitment to the arts. Its sense of community fosters cooperation and mutual respect among students, its innovative teaching methods stimulate our intellectual curiosity, and its commitment to the arts provides a rich, expressive outlet for students.”

Step 4. Write the body paragraphs.

Next, we’ll develop three body paragraphs to elaborate on our supporting points.

Each paragraph should begin with a topic sentence that summarizes the paragraph’s main idea, followed by explanation and examples.

Paragraph 1

“Greenfield High fosters a strong sense of community, which has deeply impacted my school experience. Its student-led initiatives and regular community outreach programs have taught us the value of teamwork and public service. For instance, our annual ‘Greenfield Gives Back’ campaign, where students volunteer in local charities, has not only benefited our local community but also fostered a sense of responsibility and empathy in us students.”

Paragraph 2

“The innovative teaching methods adopted by Greenfield High are another defining feature. Teachers often integrate technology into their lessons, enhancing our understanding and making the learning process more interactive. I remember how our geography teacher used virtual reality to explore different ecosystems, turning abstract concepts into immersive experiences.”

Paragraph 3

“Lastly, Greenfield High’s commitment to the arts is exceptional. The school offers numerous art programs and supports artistic events like art festivals and music competitions, providing students with opportunities to express themselves and develop their talents. For example, participating in our annual school musical has allowed me to explore my passion for performing arts and has greatly boosted my confidence.”

Notice how each body paragraph begins with a topic sentence, followed by further explanation and examples.

Step 5. Write the concluding paragraph.

The concluding paragraph is best written by paraphrasing the points made in your introductory paragraph. Avoid copying and pasting; instead, refer back to your introductory paragraph and restate the points in a new way. Let’s apply this method to our sample essay:

“Schools greatly influence our formative years through their unique characteristics. Greenfield High, with its emphasis on community, innovative teaching methods, and commitment to the arts, has shaped my educational journey in significant ways. Its strong sense of community has instilled in me the importance of cooperation and service. Its innovative teaching methods have fostered my intellectual curiosity. Finally, its dedication to the arts has allowed me to express myself creatively and grow my confidence.”

With this approach, writing the conclusion becomes quick and straightforward.

And there you have it! I hope you find this tutorial useful as you craft your own essay about your school.”

Tutor Phil is an e-learning professional who helps adult learners finish their degrees by teaching them academic writing skills.

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What My School Means to Me: Essays from 3 High Schoolers

How students at an unusual school think—and write—about their experience.

In January, I visited the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, a public residential high school in Greenville. Artistically talented students from around the state spend two or three of their high school years in dedicated pursuit of their art—dance, drama, music, visual arts, or creative writing—along with their academic curriculum. I wrote about it here .

I asked Scott Gould, a creative writing teacher at the school, if he would ask his students to write me a short essay about their school. This was a wide-open request; I wanted to hear whatever perspective the students wanted to offer about their experience at the school. Among the essays the students submitted, here are three of my favorites, unedited and untouched. I’d like to share them with you.

The first is by Cameron Messinides, a junior from Camden, SC:

Long-Distance My mother called on Sunday to tell me our herd of goats, previously twenty-one strong, had been reduced to three. Two feral dogs squeezed through a hole in the pasture fence and killed anything they could catch. My parents and brother arrived during the massacre. My father jumped the fence to chase the dogs and shot the slower one with a pistol. On his way back, he heard a few scattered bleats and followed the sounds. In a gully, he found two billies and the last nanny. They had survived by shoving themselves into an abandoned chicken coop. Afterwards, my family walked among the carcasses--once white, now bloodstained and caked with rain-softened clay. We wanted to find life, my mother said. They gave up at four in the afternoon, and my father and brother made a pile of the bodies in the woods, to be buried later. Phone calls like this are common now. I've been in a boarding school since August, and every weekend my mother seems to find something new to break to me. It's not always bad. The weekend before, she called to tell me my brother enrolled in a birding retreat on the South Carolina coastline. And before that, she told me about the new color she picked for the living room walls. I'm still not used to this kind of communication. I miss immediacy. A year ago, when I still lived with them, I would know all this. She wouldn't have to tell me two or three days later. I'd like to say I've adjusted, but I haven't. The Wednesday after the goats died, she called again. She told me she couldn't shake what she had seen. She worried. Would the dogs' owner show up? How about the surviving dog? What if he came back? She hadn't been sleeping, and when she did, she dreamt of the bloody bodies, the torn sides of a billy, the kids crushed into the mud. I told her I knew how she felt, but I don't. I don't think it's possible. She sent me only one picture of the scene, a close-up of the surviving nanny's nose, ripped open by the dog's teeth. The rest I have to imagine. I imagine the dogs—Brown? Black?—chasing the herd across a winter field, hooves and paws tearing up dead grass. I imagine stumbling kids. I imagine the deputy who arrived a few hours later, gray-haired and perhaps a slow talker. None of it is certain. I still sleep easily. That's the cost of our separation: her anxieties don't travel the phone lines, and I can't make myself care. But I want to care. Some days I only want to be home, in the ranch-style with green siding and the stump in the front yard, which is the only remnant of the rotting oak my family cut down without me. I'd walk to the pasture with my father, take the shovel he offers me, and dig with him, shoulder-to-shoulder, a hole big enough to put all eighteen dead goats under three or four feet of orange clay. Then, we return home, and I sit in the living room next to my mother, tell her she can sleep now. Even hours into the night, after she has gone to bed, I sit, surrounded by lamplight and the color of the freshly-painted walls, three coats of Townhouse Tan, and listen to my brothers. They lie side-by-side on the hearth, birder's guidebook open before them, and take turns whispering names to each other: bobwhite, cardinal, tufted titmouse.

Next, by Shelley Hucks, a senior from Florence, SC:

Florentine In the heart of South Carolina, the railroad tracks converge over swampland, and fields are laced with cotton in the Dog Days of early August. The summer heat rolls in, unstoppable and rests between cypress knees and Spanish moss. The place can’t decide what to be: it’s one-third urban, one-third rural, and one-third swamp. The people seem to fall victim to a cycle of poverty, of being at sixteen what their parents were at eighteen, what their own children will be at fourteen. It’s not easy to get out. The place is called Florence, and I lived there for sixteen years before moving three hours away to study creative writing at a boarding school. In upstate South Carolina is the Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. It’s situated just off Greenville’s downtown area, with Reedy River Falls Park in the school’s backyard. Downtown Greenville is an arts community, with performing centers and theaters, galleries, art festivals and craft fairs, and restaurants willing to provide venues for writing club readings or jazz band performances. Not only is the atmosphere different, but the entire landscape: from my dorm room, I can see the hazy silhouette of mountains. At the Governor’s School, I’ve studied under excellent teachers. I’ve been exposed to new authors and genres, learned to be curious, analytical, to believe in the deliberation of every line of poetry and each line of dialogue in a short story. I’ve learned to put my personal life into artistic context with the help of professionals. I’ve learned to become aware. To make something strange, beautiful, something important. And, something particularly valuable to me because of my immense pride in my hometown, I’ve learned to appreciate a strong sense of setting, the way characters can function in so many complex ways. I’ve learned how to convey Florence in words. Governor’s School has provided me with the training to write about the content that I grew up with, the material I naturally have to offer. Every story I write takes place in some type of Florence, with its tangible sensation of heat trapped in the swamp, the perpetual presence of desperation. All of my characters are based on Florentines: single mothers I’ve met at work, the mysterious neighbor who passed out already-opened Halloween candy, or the woman who showed up to church drinking hairspray. Going home on breaks, or for the summer, has altered my perspective of Florence. Instead of seeing tragic figures living in a never-changing place, I see characters full of complexities living in a place as undecided as they are. Once, the chain-link fence covered in hubcaps was ugly. But now I see it as armor, protecting the women on the porch, who sip sweet tea and watch another fistfight unfold in the street, those men who wordlessly understand the ritual required to live here.

Finally, by Jackson Trice, a senior from Simpsonville, SC:

Outside the Lines I forget how strange my school sounds to the rest of the world until I leave it. On a card at the front desk inside a college admissions building, I am told to write the name of my high school. The full name, South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, does not fit on the dotted line, and I have to draw an arrow to the back of the card, and write the rest there. When I say my school’s name out loud to family members, it sounds prestigious, almost regal. But on the first day of school here it is made clear that I was chosen based on potential, and not necessarily talent. It’s this ego smashing that happens throughout junior year that creates the atmosphere of Governor’s School. You don’t get “good,” you just make progress. You are not special, you’ve just been given an excellent opportunity. I don’t know how much Governor’s School has changed me until I meet up with friends from my old school at a football game during fall break. I live in Simpsonville, South Carolina only a fifteen minute drive from downtown Greenville. Still, all these kids know about my school are rumors. “I’ve heard the dancers are super catty,” one says. “I’ve heard there’s, like, crazy amounts of sex.” I answer, “Sometimes,” and “That’s a good joke,” respectively. I try to explain to them that yes, I have real school work on top of art work. No, I can’t have a boy in my dorm room—I can’t even have Advil. Hey, hey, there are a few republicans. Like, two, maybe? I quickly realize that the magic of this school is lost as soon as I try and pin words to it. I stop coming home for Friday night football games. I choose, instead, to stay on campus. There are two creative writing classrooms that make up our department. Each is packed with books and long desks and computers. Only creative writers are allowed in these rooms, and there’s a giddiness in the seclusion of it. Monday through Thursday, we stay in the rooms after hours to get work done, but on Fridays, we kick our shoes off and run around to celebrate the weekend. We lay on the desks and talk to each other and laugh until our sides ache. We share secrets and stories and we belong to these rooms, to the spines of our favorite books on the bookshelves. We belong to each other. There are, of course, the nights when AP Chemistry keeps me up until four in the morning. There are the days where workshop is brutal, and I never want to write another word again. There are those scary moments where I feel that the pressure is too much and I fantasize about going to regular school. Maybe then, I could learn to drive, go to real high school parties, eat my mother’s delicious food anytime I wanted. But then there’s a drama student playing guitar in the academic stairwell. The sound of his voice spins up the flights of stairs, bouncing off walls in wistful echoes. It calms me. There’s hot chocolate at the Starbucks across the street, and there’s the beauty of that street, which is lined with small trees dressed up in white Christmas lights, illuminating the sidewalk. There’s my friend who sits with me inside Starbucks and talks about Rilke and Miley Cyrus with equal insight and tenacity. When I return, there’s a group of students outside the residential life building, blocking the doors. They’re all dancing, and singing to the beat of their clapping hands, stomping feet: “You have to dance to pass. Dance, dance, to pass.” And because I can sense that there is something wonderfully magical about this place, I feel that I must obey them. It is only necessary. I am a terrible dancer, but in this moment, I dance shamelessly. When the crowd is satisfied with my moves, they cheer, and finally part, letting me into the building, welcoming me home.

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The Importance of School

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Published: Mar 6, 2024

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How to Write a Stellar “Why This College?” Essay + Examples

What’s covered:, sample “why this college” prompts, faqs about the “why this college” essay.

• Common Mistakes to Avoid

Good “Why This College?” Essay Examples

• Brainstorming for this Essay
• Outlining Your Essay
• Where to Get Your Essay Edited

One of the most common college essay supplements will ask you to answer the question: “Why This College?” These essays are looking to see whether you’re a good fit for the campus community, and whether the college is a good fit for you and your goals. 

In this post, we’ll show you a couple examples of these prompts, go over good and bad sample responses, and break down how to ensure yours is one of the good ones. 

Let’s start by taking a look at real prompts that fit under the “Why This College?” archetype: 

Tufts: Which aspects of the Tufts undergraduate experience prompt your application? In short, ‘Why Tufts?’ (150 words)

Northwestern: Other parts of your application give us a sense for how you might contribute to Northwestern. But we also want to consider how Northwestern will contribute to your interests and goals. Help us understand what aspects of Northwestern appeal most to you, and how you’ll make use of specific resources and opportunities here. (300 words)

As you can see, these prompts are basically asking why you want to attend the school in question. Northwestern spells it out even further, and specifically asks how you’ll use their resources to achieve your goals.

Both prompts have word counts that are much shorter than that of the Common App, which is typical of supplemental essays. These two word counts are pretty representative, and you can expect the “Why This College?” essay length to be 100-400 words on average. That’s not a lot of space for a pretty important question, so it’s especially vital to use the word count wisely.

What are colleges looking for in the “Why Us” essay?

Colleges want to admit students who will not only enroll (to protect their yield), but also thrive on their campus. They ask this question to see whether you’re truly interested in the school and whether it’s the right place for you. You can write a strong response by citing specific ways the college can support your goals, as well as demonstrating your enthusiasm.

Which colleges have a “Why This College?” essay?

This is one of the most popular supplements among colleges. Here is a selection of top schools that ask this question:

• Northwestern
• Boston University
• University of Michigan

Check out our essay guides for these schools for more in-depth advice on how to write these essays.

What kind of writing style should I use?

This is a straightforward question that generally has a short word count, so you don’t need to use a narrative form at all. You can simply explain what you like about the school and why, but try to use varied sentence structure and organize the essay around your major goals. 

You can start your essay with a story if you want, however. For example, if you visited campus and experienced a really interesting course, or sat in on a meeting of a club you liked, this can make for a strong anecdote to begin your essay. Just make sure that whatever story you tell has some substance, and isn’t just a narration of how nice it was to walk around campus.

Can I copy and paste my essay for other schools?

Absolutely not. If your essay is general enough to apply to other schools, you know you need to rewrite it. The resources you mention should be highly specific to the college you’re writing about.

Common Mistakes When Writing the “Why This College?” Essay

The most common mistake students make is listing generic characteristics that could apply to any school. This negatively impacts your application, since it sends the message that you didn’t do your research, and aren’t truly interested in the school.

Here’s an example of something NOT to list in your “Why this college essay.” We’ll take the example of Tufts since we shared the prompt in the beginning.

What NOT to write: I’m applying to Tufts because of its low student to faculty ratio, the strong math department, and its prime location in Medford, just a hop away from Boston. When I visited campus, the school already felt like home.

This example is bad because many schools have low student to faculty ratios and strong math departments. There are also a ton of schools in or near Boston, many of which have low student to faculty ratios and great math departments too, such as Boston College, Harvard, Northeastern, Boston University, etc. If your statements can apply to other schools, that’s definitely not a good sign (avoid things like location, weather, size, and ranking).

The student also uses an emotional appeal with the line “it felt like home,” which might sound nice, but it has no substance and can be written for any school. You should definitely avoid making any statements like these.

This example shows that the student really hasn’t thought much about their fit with Tufts, and that it probably isn’t their top choice. This will impact your application negatively, especially since Tufts is known for taking applicants’ demonstrated interest more seriously than other schools . So, if you show that you show little interest through your essay, you may end up waitlisted or rejected, even if your stats are excellent.

Another thing that this example gets wrong is that it doesn’t describe the student’s goals or interests at all. It’s important to not only talk about why you picked the school, but also how exactly those aspects will help you grow. Remember, this kind of prompt is two-fold: in addition to explaining why the school is a good fit for you, you want to show why you, out of the many thousands of applicants they get each year, are a good fit for them.

To summarize, the main mistakes to avoid are:

• Citing generic aspects of the school (location, weather, size, and ranking)
• Using empty emotional appeals
• Not describing your goals and interests

Now that we know what a bad example might look like, here’s an example of a rewrite to part of the Tufts essay:

What TO write: As a potential Applied Mathematics major, I hope to gain the tools to model political behavior. I’m especially interested in elections, and am looking forward to taking the course “Mathematics of Social Choice,” as the centerpiece of Social Choice Theory is voting. I would also love to take “Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos,” because it will teach me to use differential equations to predict chaotic behavior. 

This is a good example, as the courses listed are highly-specific to Tufts, as well as the student’s professional goals. We not only learned something about Tufts, but also the student. Keep in mind that this wouldn’t be a complete essay⁠—it’s just an example of good, specific resources to list, and how to connect them to your own interests. 

If you want an example of a complete essay, here’s this real student response for Boston University’s “Why This College?” prompt.

Prompt: In no more than 250 words, please tell us why BU is a good fit for you and what

specifically has led you to apply for admission.

Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) attracts me because of its support of interdisciplinary study among its wide array of majors. In fact, the CAS now offers a course that combines biology, chemistry, and neuroscience. As I hope to conduct medical research into brain disorders, I plan to pursue all three areas of study. These cross-disciplinary connections at BU will prepare me to do so.

CAS’s undergraduate research program would allow me to work with a mentor, such as Dr. Alice Cronin-Golomb or Dr. Robert M.G. Reinhart related to their research on neurological disorders. With them, I can advance the work I have already completed related to Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). In a summer class at our local university, my partner and I extracted data from fMRI and PET studies and inputted them into a coding program. We then created an indicator map, which we imported into another software program, AFNI, to display significant activity in the brain regions affected by DID. Seeing the representation of our data thrilled me because I knew it could eventually help people who live with DID. I want to experience that feeling again. Successfully analyzing these fMRI and PET studies and learning to code drives me to pursue more research opportunities, and this desire motivates me to study at a university that offers research opportunities to undergraduates. BU’s interdisciplinary approach to psychology and support for independent undergraduate undergraduate research will optimally prepare me for a career as a neurological researcher.

This student clearly outlines BU-specific resources (the interdisciplinary course and undergrad research program), plus how these resources align with their professional goals (to become a neurological researcher). They do “name-drop” professors, but since their work clearly relates to the student’s interests, it doesn’t look disingenuous, and shows that the student has done research on their fit with BU. The student also provides background on why they want to pursue research, and shows that they already have experience, which makes their interest in the undergrad research program more concrete.

The only thing missing from this essay is the student’s fit with BU in terms of extracurriculars and social life. “Why This College?” essays should also cover extracurriculars, as the residential college experience is about more than just class and homework. Admissions officers are also interested in how you’ll contribute to their broader campus community.

In general, these essays should be academic-leaning (especially if they’re under 250 words), but you should still address some social aspects of the college that appeal to you (we recommend about 70% academics, 30% social, with more or less focus on social aspects depending on the word count). Since the student probably already detailed their previous research in their Common App activities section, they could’ve just summarized their research background in one sentence, and used the space saved to talk about a specific social aspect of BU that interests them.

Here’s another sample essay, but for UPenn. This essay’s word count was much longer, so the student was able to really hone in on several specific aspects of UPenn.

Prompt: How will you explore your intellectual and academic interests at the University of Pennsylvania? Please answer this question given the specific undergraduate school to which you are applying (650 words).

Sister Simone Roach, a theorist of nursing ethics, said, “caring is the human mode of being.” I have long been inspired by Sister Roach’s Five C’s of Caring: commitment, conscience, competence, compassion, and confidence. Penn both embraces and fosters these values through a rigorous, interdisciplinary curriculum and unmatched access to service and volunteer opportunities.

COMMITMENT. Reading through the activities that Penn Quakers devote their time to (in addition to academics!) felt like drinking from a firehose in the best possible way. As a prospective nursing student with interests outside of my major, I value this level of flexibility. I plan to leverage Penn’s liberal arts curriculum to gain an in-depth understanding of the challenges LGBT people face, especially regarding healthcare access. Through courses like “Interactional Processes with LGBT Individuals” and volunteering at the Mazzoni Center for outreach, I hope to learn how to better support the Penn LGBT community as well as my family and friends, including my cousin, who came out as trans last year.

CONSCIENCE. As one of the first people in my family to attend a four-year university, I wanted a school that promoted a sense of moral responsibility among its students. At Penn, professors challenge their students to question and recreate their own set of morals by sparking thought- provoking, open-minded discussions. I can imagine myself advocating for universal healthcare in courses such as “Health Care Reform & Future of American Health System” and debating its merits with my peers. Studying in an environment where students confidently voice their opinions – conservative or liberal – will push me to question and strengthen my value system.

COMPETENCE. Two aspects that drew my attention to Penn’s BSN program were its high-quality research opportunities and hands-on nursing projects. Through its Office of Nursing Research, Penn connects students to faculty members who share similar research interests. As I volunteered at a nursing home in high school, I hope to work with Dr. Carthon to improve the quality of care for senior citizens. Seniors, especially minorities, face serious barriers to healthcare that I want to resolve. Additionally, Penn’s unique use of simulations to bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world application impressed me. Using computerized manikins that mimic human responses, classes in Penn’s nursing program allow students to apply their emergency medical skills in a mass casualty simulation and monitor their actions afterward through a video system. Participating in this activity will help me identify my strengths and areas for improvement regarding crisis management and medical care in a controlled yet realistic setting. Research opportunities and simulations will develop my skills even before I interact with patients.

COMPASSION. I value giving back through community service, and I have a particular interest in Penn’s Community Champions and Nursing Students For Sexual & Reproductive Health (NSRH). As a four-year volunteer health educator, I hope to continue this work as a Community Champions member. I am excited to collaborate with medical students to teach fourth and fifth graders in the city about cardiology or lead a chair dance class for the elders at the LIFE Center. Furthermore, as a feminist who firmly believes in women’s abortion rights, I’d like to join NSRH in order to advocate for women’s health on campus. At Penn, I can work with like-minded people to make a meaningful difference.

CONFIDENCE. All of the Quakers that I have met possess one defining trait: confidence. Each student summarized their experiences at Penn as challenging but fulfilling. Although I expect my coursework to push me, from my conversations with current Quakers I know it will help me to be far more effective in my career.

The Five C’s of Caring are important heuristics for nursing, but they also provide insight into how I want to approach my time in college. I am eager to engage with these principles both as a nurse and as a Penn Quaker, and I can’t wait to start.

This student takes a creative approach to the essay, by using the Five C’s of Caring as a framework. This technique works especially well since these qualities relate to the student’s future career in nursing. In addition to emphasizing the student’s creativity and passion for nursing, having the Five C’s in all caps at the start of each paragraph gives this long essay a clear, easy-to-read format.

What really makes the essay stand out is the depth of the student’s fit with UPenn, and how they’re able to also share more about who they are. The student lists specific courses, research opportunities, technology, and student groups. We also learn that they are a first-generation student, are passionate about increasing access to healthcare (particularly for LGBTQ+ people, minorities, and the elderly), care about health education, and are a feminist who staunchly defends abortion rights (this controversial topic could be risky, but since UPenn is a very liberal school, this should be fine).

Overall, this essay paints a vivid picture of how the student would engage academically at Penn, and we also see clearly how the student would pursue their intellectual passions outside the classroom. Since this essay prompt focused on “intellectual and academic interests,” there was no need to address other aspects of UPenn beyond those supporting their various interests in healthcare.

See more “ Why This College?” essay examples to understand what makes a strong response.

Brainstorming for the “Why This College?” Essay

Now that we’ve gone through a couple examples, you might be wondering how to get started yourself. 

Here are three steps we recommend to get your essay underway:

• Reflect on your academic and career goals
• Research unique opportunities related to your academic and extracurricular interests
• Pick your top academic reasons for applying, and your top extracurricular/social reasons

1. Reflect on your academic and career goals.

The driver behind this essay needs to be you , and not the school itself. Anyone can write nice things about the college, but only you can explain why you would be a good fit for it.

Ask yourself:

• What do you want to major in, if you know? If you’re undecided, what are the subjects you’re interested in?
• Which career do you want to pursue, or what are the potential options?
• What do you want to get out of college? Any particular skills or experiences?

Once you have a clear idea of your college plan, then you can dig into how the college can support your plan.

2. Research unique opportunities related to your academic, career, and extracurricular interests.

You might be wondering where you can find all these specific courses, clubs, and other resources. The school’s website is a good place to start, or if you have a general idea of what you’re looking for, you can even use Google with the school name in your search, such as “Tufts orchestra.” 

Take a look at the website of your department/major and dig into the courses, fellowships, internships, and other resources. For course syllabi, you can visit the website of the professor who’s teaching the course; they’ll often post more detailed information than the online course catalog, including readings and concepts to be covered.

Clubs may have their own websites, but you can also try to find their Facebook groups or Instagram pages, which might be more current and even show events they’re hosting⁠.

If you can, try to speak with a current student. Your school counselor may be able to connect you with one, or you can also reach out to the admissions office to see if they can connect you. If not, speaking with an admissions officer is also great, or you can try to find day-in-the-life videos on YouTube.

3. Pick your top academic reasons for applying, and your top extracurricular/social reasons.

Once you’ve done your research and found specific opportunities to cite in your essay, pick your top 1-3 academic reasons and top 1-3 extracurricular ones, depending on the word count. Going back to the Tufts essay, the good example we gave actually was already 65 words, and it was only able to mention two courses. 

Keep in mind that you not only have to describe resources specific to the school, but also how they’ll contribute to your goals. This personal aspect is just as important as the actual opportunities, so be sure to allot space to describe why exactly these resources make the school a good fit for you.

When it comes to academic reasons, you are free to list anything from special programs to unique majors to specific courses and professors. We want to caution you against “name-dropping” professors, however⁠—unless their work actually fits with your established interests and professional goals. Otherwise, it might seem like you’re being disingenuous.

We also want to reiterate that you should be sure to not only talk about academics in your essay, but also extracurriculars (unless the prompt asks you to focus only on academics, or if the word count is unusually short, i.e. 150 words or fewer). Again, college isn’t just about what you do in the classroom. Admissions committees want to be sure that accepted students will also contribute to the college community. 

Outlining Your “Why This College?” Essay

Once you’ve identified your goals and the resources to support them, it’s time to start writing. An easy format/outline for your essay would be:

• Introduction to your main goals and the why behind them (great spot for an anecdote). 
• Your first goal and how the school can support it.
• Your second goal and how the school can support it.
• Conclusion where you look towards the future and reaffirm how the college can get you there.

You can adjust the length of the essay by adding or subtracting the number of goals you write about. As noted above, r emember to include extracurriculars when sharing how the college can support your goals. You should plan to spend about 70% of your space on academic reasons, and 30% on extracurricular reasons.

Some students choose to use a more unconventional format, like the Five C’s of Caring essay above, and that works too if you want to show off your creative writing skills. Some examples include a letter to the school or a schedule of your day as a student at the college. These unconventional formats can be harder to pull off though, so only go that route if you’re confident in your writing. The letter format can be especially tricky since it’s easy to sound cheesy and overenthusiastic.

Regardless of the format you choose, remember these two things that your essay should do. It should:

• Reveal more about your goals and interests.
• D escribe how the school can help you develop your interests and reach your goals, by naming highly-specific and unique campus resources, both academic and extracurricular.

If your essay checks both of those boxes, you’re well on your way to making your candidacy more compelling to admissions officers!

Where to Get Your “Why This College?” Essay Edited

Do you want feedback on your “Why This College?” essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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Essay writing is an essential skill for every student. Whether writing a particular academic essay (such as persuasive, narrative, descriptive, or expository) or a timed exam essay, the key to getting good at writing is to write. Creating opportunities for our students to engage in extended writing activities will go a long way to helping them improve their skills as scribes.

But, putting the hours in alone will not be enough to attain the highest levels in essay writing. Practice must be meaningful. Once students have a broad overview of how to structure the various types of essays, they are ready to narrow in on the minor details that will enable them to fine-tune their work as a lean vehicle of their thoughts and ideas.

In this article, we will drill down to some aspects that will assist students in taking their essay writing skills up a notch. Many ideas and activities can be integrated into broader lesson plans based on essay writing. Often, though, they will work effectively in isolation – just as athletes isolate physical movements to drill that are relevant to their sport. When these movements become second nature, they can be repeated naturally in the context of the game or in our case, the writing of the essay.

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Planning an essay

The Boys Scouts’ motto is famously ‘Be Prepared’. It’s a solid motto that can be applied to most aspects of life; essay writing is no different. Given the purpose of an essay is generally to present a logical and reasoned argument, investing time in organising arguments, ideas, and structure would seem to be time well spent.

Given that essays can take a wide range of forms and that we all have our own individual approaches to writing, it stands to reason that there will be no single best approach to the planning stage of essay writing. That said, there are several helpful hints and techniques we can share with our students to help them wrestle their ideas into a writable form. Let’s take a look at a few of the best of these:

BREAK THE QUESTION DOWN: UNDERSTAND YOUR ESSAY TOPIC.

Whether students are tackling an assignment that you have set for them in class or responding to an essay prompt in an exam situation, they should get into the habit of analyzing the nature of the task. To do this, they should unravel the question’s meaning or prompt. Students can practice this in class by responding to various essay titles, questions, and prompts, thereby gaining valuable experience breaking these down.

Have students work in groups to underline and dissect the keywords and phrases and discuss what exactly is being asked of them in the task. Are they being asked to discuss, describe, persuade, or explain? Understanding the exact nature of the task is crucial before going any further in the planning process, never mind the writing process .

BRAINSTORM AND MIND MAP WHAT YOU KNOW:

Once students have understood what the essay task asks them, they should consider what they know about the topic and, often, how they feel about it. When teaching essay writing, we so often emphasize that it is about expressing our opinions on things, but for our younger students what they think about something isn’t always obvious, even to themselves.

Brainstorming and mind-mapping what they know about a topic offers them an opportunity to uncover not just what they already know about a topic, but also gives them a chance to reveal to themselves what they think about the topic. This will help guide them in structuring their research and, later, the essay they will write . When writing an essay in an exam context, this may be the only ‘research’ the student can undertake before the writing, so practicing this will be even more important.

RESEARCH YOUR ESSAY

The previous step above should reveal to students the general direction their research will take. With the ubiquitousness of the internet, gone are the days of students relying on a single well-thumbed encyclopaedia from the school library as their sole authoritative source in their essay. If anything, the real problem for our students today is narrowing down their sources to a manageable number. Students should use the information from the previous step to help here. At this stage, it is important that they:

●      Ensure the research material is directly relevant to the essay task

●      Record in detail the sources of the information that they will use in their essay

●      Engage with the material personally by asking questions and challenging their own biases

●      Identify the key points that will be made in their essay

●      Group ideas, counterarguments, and opinions together

●      Identify the overarching argument they will make in their own essay.

Once these stages have been completed the student is ready to organise their points into a logical order.

WRITING YOUR ESSAY

There are a number of ways for students to organize their points in preparation for writing. They can use graphic organizers , post-it notes, or any number of available writing apps. The important thing for them to consider here is that their points should follow a logical progression. This progression of their argument will be expressed in the form of body paragraphs that will inform the structure of their finished essay.

The number of paragraphs contained in an essay will depend on a number of factors such as word limits, time limits, the complexity of the question etc. Regardless of the essay’s length, students should ensure their essay follows the Rule of Three in that every essay they write contains an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Generally speaking, essay paragraphs will focus on one main idea that is usually expressed in a topic sentence that is followed by a series of supporting sentences that bolster that main idea. The first and final sentences are of the most significance here with the first sentence of a paragraph making the point to the reader and the final sentence of the paragraph making the overall relevance to the essay’s argument crystal clear. 

Though students will most likely be familiar with the broad generic structure of essays, it is worth investing time to ensure they have a clear conception of how each part of the essay works, that is, of the exact nature of the task it performs. Let’s review:

Common Essay Structure

Introduction: Provides the reader with context for the essay. It states the broad argument that the essay will make and informs the reader of the writer’s general perspective and approach to the question.

Body Paragraphs: These are the ‘meat’ of the essay and lay out the argument stated in the introduction point by point with supporting evidence.

Conclusion: Usually, the conclusion will restate the central argument while summarising the essay’s main supporting reasons before linking everything back to the original question.

ESSAY WRITING PARAGRAPH WRITING TIPS

●      Each paragraph should focus on a single main idea

●      Paragraphs should follow a logical sequence; students should group similar ideas together to avoid incoherence

●      Paragraphs should be denoted consistently; students should choose either to indent or skip a line

●      Transition words and phrases such as alternatively , consequently , in contrast should be used to give flow and provide a bridge between paragraphs.

HOW TO EDIT AN ESSAY

Students shouldn’t expect their essays to emerge from the writing process perfectly formed. Except in exam situations and the like, thorough editing is an essential aspect in the writing process. 

Often, students struggle with this aspect of the process the most. After spending hours of effort on planning, research, and writing the first draft, students can be reluctant to go back over the same terrain they have so recently travelled. It is important at this point to give them some helpful guidelines to help them to know what to look out for. The following tips will provide just such help: 

One Piece at a Time: There is a lot to look out for in the editing process and often students overlook aspects as they try to juggle too many balls during the process. One effective strategy to combat this is for students to perform a number of rounds of editing with each focusing on a different aspect. For example, the first round could focus on content, the second round on looking out for word repetition (use a thesaurus to help here), with the third attending to spelling and grammar.

Sum It Up: When reviewing the paragraphs they have written, a good starting point is for students to read each paragraph and attempt to sum up its main point in a single line. If this is not possible, their readers will most likely have difficulty following their train of thought too and the paragraph needs to be overhauled.

Let It Breathe: When possible, encourage students to allow some time for their essay to ‘breathe’ before returning to it for editing purposes. This may require some skilful time management on the part of the student, for example, a student rush-writing the night before the deadline does not lend itself to effective editing. Fresh eyes are one of the sharpest tools in the writer’s toolbox.

Read It Aloud: This time-tested editing method is a great way for students to identify mistakes and typos in their work. We tend to read things more slowly when reading aloud giving us the time to spot errors. Also, when we read silently our minds can often fill in the gaps or gloss over the mistakes that will become apparent when we read out loud.

Phone a Friend: Peer editing is another great way to identify errors that our brains may miss when reading our own work. Encourage students to partner up for a little ‘you scratch my back, I scratch yours’.

Use Tech Tools: We need to ensure our students have the mental tools to edit their own work and for this they will need a good grasp of English grammar and punctuation. However, there are also a wealth of tech tools such as spellcheck and grammar checks that can offer a great once-over option to catch anything students may have missed in earlier editing rounds.

Putting the Jewels on Display: While some struggle to edit, others struggle to let go. There comes a point when it is time for students to release their work to the reader. They must learn to relinquish control after the creation is complete. This will be much easier to achieve if the student feels that they have done everything in their control to ensure their essay is representative of the best of their abilities and if they have followed the advice here, they should be confident they have done so.

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• School Education /

Essay on My First Day in School: Sample in 100, 200, 350 Words

• Updated on  
• Jan 23, 2024

Essay on My First Day in School: The first day of school is often considered an important day in every child’s life. It is a time of a mix of emotions, like nervousness, excitement, homesickness, feelings of shyness, and likewise. But did you know these feelings are responsible for making our day memorable?

As children, we all are like a blank canvas, easily dyed into any colour. Our first day in school is like a new world to us. As a child, we all have experienced those feelings. So, to make you feel nostalgic and refresh those special feelings, we have brought some samples of essay on my first day in school.

Quick Read: Essay on Best Friend

Table of Contents

• 1 Essay on My First Day in School in 100 words
• 2 Essay on My First Day in School Sample in 200 Words
• 3 Essay on My First Day in Day in School in 350 Words
• 4 FAQs 

Essay on My First Day in School in 100 words

It was a cloudy day when I took my first step into the compound of my school. I was carrying a new backpack that was filled with notebooks. Though the backpack was a bit heavy, instead of focusing on the weight, I was excited about the beginning of my journey on my first day in school.

My classroom was at the end of the corridor. As I entered my classroom, my class teacher introduced me to the class and made me feel welcome. Activities like reading, solving problems in groups, and sharing our lunch boxes slowly and steadily transformed the new student with a sense of belonging.

The whole day progressed with mixed excitement as well as emotions. As the bell rang, declaring the end of the school day, the school felt like a world of possibilities where the journey was more than textbooks.

To improve your essay writing skills, here are the top 200+ English Essay Topics for school students.

Essay on My First Day in School Sample in 200 Words

It was a sunny day and the sun was shining brightly. With my new and attractive backpack, I was moving through the school gate. It was my first day in school and I was filled with nervousness and excitement. From the tower of the building to the playground everything was bigger than life. As a school student, I was about to enter a new world. 

The corridor was filled with the echo of students. As I entered the classroom, wearing a mix of curiosity and excitement, my classmates and class teacher welcomed me with a warm smile. After a round of introductions and some warm-up activities, strangers gradually started tuning into potential friends. At lunchtime, the cafeteria was filled with the smell of delicious food. However, I hesitated before joining the group of students but soon enough, I was laughing with my new friends and sharing stories. The unfamiliar were now my friends and transformed my mixed emotions into delightfulness. 

The bell rang for the next class and I stepped out for new learning in my new academic home. My first day of school had many memorable stories, with old subjects and new introductions of knowledge. The day was spent learning, sharing and making new memories. 

Also Read: Essay on Joint Family in 500+ words in English  

Essay on My First Day in Day in School in 350 Words

My first day in school started by stepping onto the school bus with a bag full of books and a heart full of curiosity. It was like I was starting a new chapter in my life. After travelling a long way back, I stepped at the gate of my school. The school gate welcomed me with open arms and greeted me with a sense of excitement as well as nervousness.

As I entered the classroom, I found many new faces. Arranging my stuff on the seat, I sat next to an unknown, who later on turned into the best friend of my life. I entered my class with a welcoming smile, and later on, I turned everything in with ease. During our lunchtime, the cafeteria was filled with the energy of students. 

At first, I hesitated to interact with the children, but later on, I was a part of a group that invited me to join the table. At lunchtime, I made many new friends and was no longer a stranger. After having delicious food and chit-chatting with friends, we get back to our respective classrooms. Different subjects such as mathematics, science, and English never left the same impact as they did on the first day of school. 

The teacher taught the lessons so interestingly that we learned the chapter with a mix of laughter and learning. At the end of the day, we all went straight to the playground and enjoyed the swings. Moreover, in the playground, I also met many faces who were new to the school and had their first day in school, like me.

While returning home, I realised that my first day was not just about learning new subjects; it was about making new friends, sailing into new vibrant classrooms, and settling myself as a new student. The morning, which was full of uncertainty at the end of the day, came to an end with exciting adventures and endless possibilities. With new experiences, I look forward to new academic and personal growth in the wonderful world of education.

Also Read: Trees Are Our Best Friend Essay

My first day of school was filled with mixed feelings. I was nervous, homesick, and excited on the first day at my school.

While writing about the first day of school, I share my experience of beginning my journey from home. What were my feelings, emotions, and excitement related to the first day of school, and how did I deal with a whole day among the unknown faces, these were some of the things I wrote in my first day of school experience essay. 

The first day of school is important because, as a new student, we manage everything new. The practice of managing everything is the first step towards self-responsibility.

Along with studying my favourite subjects, I share fun moments and delicious foods with my friends in school. 

Parents are filled with emotions on the first day of their child. As school is the place to gain knowledge, skills, and experience, parents try their best to give their children the best academics they can.

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Deepika Joshi

Deepika Joshi is an experienced content writer with expertise in creating educational and informative content. She has a year of experience writing content for speeches, essays, NCERT, study abroad and EdTech SaaS. Her strengths lie in conducting thorough research and ananlysis to provide accurate and up-to-date information to readers. She enjoys staying updated on new skills and knowledge, particulary in education domain. In her free time, she loves to read articles, and blogs with related to her field to further expand her expertise. In personal life, she loves creative writing and aspire to connect with innovative people who have fresh ideas to offer.

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My School Essay in English (100, 200, 300, 500 words)

Table of Contents

My School Essay 100 Words

My school is a place where I get educated; learn new subjects under the guidance of trained and skilled teachers. I study at a school that is near my home. It is one of the best schools in my entire town. The management of my school believes that it isn’t only academic excellence that we should be after, but also the overall personality development and evolving into a good and useful human being.

The school has two playgrounds – one is a tennis court and the other one is a cricket ground. We also have a nice swimming pool and a canteen. It also has a beautiful garden where students relax and play during recess. Even in games, sports and tournaments, it has made much progress. My school has won many trophies, shields, and medals in many extra-curricular activities. In debates also, the students of my school secure good positions. It is considered to be one of the best schools in my locality.

My School Essay 200 Words

The school is called the educational institution which is designed to provide learning spaces and create an environment for the children where the teaching of the students is under the direction and guidance of the teachers.

My School is one of the best educational institutions where I get an education and make progress towards the goals of my life and make me capable of achieving them. Besides education, there are several significant roles that my school plays in my life. My school is performing well in all fields. It develops my physical and mental stamina, instills confidence, and

gives me tremendous opportunities to prove my skills and talents in different fields. In the academic field, it has made a mark. Its students secure top positions in the board examinations.

I go to school with my other friends. We study in our school in a great friendly environment. We reach school at a fixed time. As soon as we reach we line up to attend the assembly. Attending the school assembly is a wonderful experience. I enjoy for being first in a row in a school assembly. As soon as the assembly ends we rush to our respective classrooms. We take part in all school activities. One of my school fellows is the best singer and dancer. She has recently won the best singer award at the annual arts festival. Our school organizes all-important national events like Independence Day, teachers’ day, father’s day, etc. My school also gives every student abundant opportunities to take part in extracurricular activities like sports and music.

All of us are proud of being a part of it. I am fortunate enough to be a student at this school. I love and am proud of my school.

My School Essay 300 Words

An institution where higher education is taught is commonly called a school, University College, or University. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compulsory. In these systems, Students progress through a series of schools. The names for these schools vary by country but generally include primary school for young children and secondary school for teenagers who have completed primary education.

My school is a place where I not only get educated but also get trained in other necessary competitive skills like sports, music, and dance. I am proud of my school because it provides us with all the basic facilities like a big playground, a central library, a big auditorium hall, a science lab, and a good computer lab. That is why my school is rated as one of the best schools in my entire area. My school has produced many great people in my country. It has a big and beautiful building that looks shiny from far away. I reach my target at a fixed time. I came to school with other friends of mine. We happily enter the schools with great confidence. We take part in a school assembly and then we move into our classrooms.

This all is done by a very efficient and well-trained teaching staff of my school. The best schools are those that make the students the best and the best school is made by the best teachers. We study under the guidance of the best teachers. My school has a dedicated teacher for all the subjects as well as extracurricular activities like music and sports. I consider my school as the best school because it supports and encourages every student to do their best and make progress. Fortunately, my school provides the best environment, the best teachers, and the best facilities.

Our Class teacher greets us daily and asks about us. He is quite a cool and kind man. He entertains us along with teaching his subject. We learn a lot of things like discipline, self-help, confidence, and cooperation here. As I enter my classroom I feel quite happy and relaxed.

My School Essay 500 Words

The place where children as the leaders of tomorrow study and where the future of the nation is shaped are called schools. Education is an essential weapon for tomorrow, so the good schools of today are important for the best future of a nation. Schools are the center of learning where we attend classes on various subjects, interact with the teachers, get our queries

answered, and appeared in exams. In my school, learning is more like a fun activity, because of the extra-talented teaching staff.

My school is a government primary school located on the outskirts of the city. Usually, when people think about a government school, they perceive it to be at an isolated location and have poor basic amenities and teaching facilities. But, despite being a government school, my school defies all such speculations. Teachers of my school are not only knowledgeable about the subjects they teach but also are skilled enough to teach through fun activities. For example, our physics teacher explains every concept by stating real-life examples that we could relate to. This way we not only understand the subject better. Moreover, not a moment I remember, when any teacher had ever replied rudely to any of the students. They always patiently listen and provide answers to all the queries posed to them. Learning at my school is fun and it is made possible only because of the teachers.

My school is very important in my life, in a way even more than my family. My family gives me love, care, and affection, and provides for all my other essential needs. But, all of this isn’t enough to make me a good human being and succeed in life.  Favorably, I am lucky enough to be enrolled in a prestigious school, and gaining a wonderful education, looking forward to realizing my dreams one day. The most necessary for success in life is education, and only my school provides it to me. Without my school and the education that it gives, I would be like a confused and wandering soul, almost aimless in life.

My school helps with my educational and overall personality development. It imparts education through classes, tests, and exams to teach me how to conduct myself confidently. It just feels so great to be in my school and be a part of everyday activities, be it lectures, sports, or Something else. While in school, I always feel happy, confident, enthusiastic, and loved. I make friends at school, those whom I will never forget and will always love them. My family supports my materialistic needs, but school is the place where my actual physical, social, and mental development takes place.  I know that every question that crosses my mind will be answered by my teachers. I also know that my school friends will always be at my side whenever I need them to be. As much as the studies, my school also stresses much on These activities as the management thinks that extracurricular activities are very essential for our overall personality development. My school provides dedicated teachers and staff for each extracurricular activity. We have a big sports ground with kits for all the major sports; a covered auditorium for dance and music and a separate basketball court.

The role my school plays in my personality development is fantastic. It not only imparts education in me but also teaches me how to conduct myself and how to behave decently and properly. I get trained in all the other necessary skills of life, like how to keep calm in challenging situations and help others as well. My school teaches me to be a good and evolved human being, to stay composed and progressive always. It also teaches me to be kind and generous to others and not differentiate them based on their caste, religion, ethnicity, or other divisions. These are some of the most essential personality traits that my school imparts to me, something that I will always be thankful for. Every time I think of my school, I think of it as a temple of education. A temple, where my soul meets education, making my life more meaningful and useful to society and the nation as well. It is a place where my aspirations get a wing and I get the strength and confidence to realize them. No other place in the entire world could replace my school and the role that it plays in my life. I will always be thankful to my friends, teachers, and the staff of my school, for making it such a comfortable and Educational place of learning.

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• Essay on My School Life in English for Students and Children

Best Things About the School Life for Students

School Life is the best time of our life as we make new friends, learn new things and build our career there. School time is the only time which we enjoy most, and when we enter college, we always miss our school life. School life teaches us lots of new things and prepares us to face all the challenges of life. I love my school life and really enjoy it. I have lots of friends, and all my teachers love me. I love my school and enjoy going there every day to meet my friends and learn new things. 

Everyone keeps on saying that school life is the best time of your life. When listening to these phrases from their elders, the school students think about what is good about this life. All we do in the entire day is to attend the classes and to do the homework. But once school life gets over, the students realise that school life was the best time of their life.

Apart from learning great things in school, you make new friends, play different sports and create memories for the rest of your life. The students also learn many life skills like teamwork, good manners, etc., and understand what they want to become in their life.

About My School and School Life

I study in the reputed private school in my city, and I am glad to be a student of this school. My school is one of the most renowned schools in my town. It is very beautiful and huge. My school has all the facilities for sports, study and other activities. Built-in a three-storey building, it is a Co-Ed and Senior Secondary School having Science, Arts and Commerce stream. The atmosphere at my school is delightful. We have a huge playing ground where we all students play different games like Badminton, Basketball, Cricket, etc. We have a separate Basketball and Tennis court, as well as a small and beautiful garden for kids.

The students practice these sports every day. The school also has a big swimming pool and sports area for indoor games. In this area, the students can play Table Tennis and Chess. There is also a big skating rink. Different physical training teachers train us for all these sports. These sports not only keep us fit but also increase our stamina and coordination.

School life is not just limited to studies and sports. There are also other activity rooms such as the music room, art room, and dance room. The Art room is a big hall with lots of colourful charts and various types of paints. The students can portray their imagination and can create beautiful art here. Dance and music are also very important in school life as they help the students express themselves in a new manner. The different movements in dance help the students in unwinding themselves.

My school has a big library where we all read different kinds of books, novels and comics. Apart from the library, my school has well-equipped scientific labs where we all practise various experiments of Chemistry, Physics and Biology. I have learned a lot of things in these labs. My school also has a big computer lab with trained technical staff that help us to learn everything about computers. I love playing on the computer and learning new things in the computer lab. In the computer lab, the students learn about using MS Word and PowerPoint. The computer lab is also called the ICT lab. The ICT teacher teaches the students about the internet and how to use it safely.

All the staff at my school are very polite, educated and experienced. Our teachers not only teach us but also prepare us for various competitions, and every year, my school wins many prizes in various competitions. I have even represented my school in a hockey championship and scored the second position.

The classrooms are big and decorated beautifully with different artwork done by the students. Various projects and models are kept in the classroom for the students to keep on revising their concepts. The teachers use smartboards, and every day a new word is taught to enhance the students’ vocabulary. Every day one student presents the ‘Thought for the Day’. These positive thoughts keep us motivated.

All the teachers at my school are very dedicated and punctual. They always teach us discipline and ask us to come to school on time. Our teachers love us, and they teach us in a very simple and easy way. Whenever we fail to understand anything, they try to make us understand it again without shouting at us. They give equal attention to all the students, and that is why my school has an excellent academic record. 

The teachers are well qualified. They use different techniques to teach us the concepts. The atmosphere in the school is fun-filled and fruitful at the same time. The school’s entire staff, from the security guard to the teachers, is very helpful and polite.

We learn many life skills also in school. Discipline, hard work, and punctuality are some of them. During sports classes, we learn teamwork and work together to win.

The best part of my school is its auditorium where all the school events and competitions take place. Our school auditorium is one of the best auditoriums in the town with a great sound and light facility. It is fully air-conditioned with lots of seats. Every year, my school organises an annual cultural festival which lasts for two days. Many cultural events take place within these two days like singing, dancing, debate competition, etc. I love to participate in a poem writing competition every year, and many times I have won prizes as well. Every year, the toppers of our school get awarded on this annual cultural day and we all students love to participate in various events of the annual cultural day.

We also have school assemblies in our Auditorium. Sometimes the students from other schools come and participate in the different competitions organised in our schools. These events are called inter-school competitions. These events are very good as we get to learn new things from other students and make many new friends.

Apart from the annual cultural day, my school is famous for organising one of the biggest annual sports meets. I love this annual sports meet because sports are my favourite. In this annual sports meet, various sports competitions are organised, and almost 50 schools participate in these competitions and win multiple titles. Me, my friends, and our seniors also participate in these competitions and make our school proud by winning in them. My school has great teachers, excellent faculty and all the facilities that one student needs to excel in his/her life.

The biggest reason behind the success and fame of my school is our Principal Sir. He is 50 years old, yet very active and disciplined. He has an attractive personality, and his knowledge is commendable. He loves all the students and always spare some time from his busy schedule to monitor the progress of all the students. I admire his personality and principles. He always encourages us to take part in various extracurricular activities, and it is the result of his support & dedication that the students of my school always perform better in all the competitions. We all are fortunate to have him as our Principal.

Principal sir awards the students who participate and win in different cultural and sports events. He has a good memory and remembers the name of every child. The students feel proud when Principal sir calls them by their names.

After each term, assessments are also being conducted in the school. The teachers prepare us for these assessments, and the results are also shared with the parents. The assessment is a good system as students understand the learning gaps and can work on them. The teachers are very helpful as they assist the students wherever it is required.

I love my school and my school life. Every day I learn new things here and enjoy it with my friends. All my teachers love me and always support me. I have learned discipline and punctuality from my teachers, and it will help me a lot in my future. I am proud to be a student at this school, and I will always miss my school after leaving it. My school life has taught me many things and given me some best friends who will be my friends forever. I wish all the success to my school and love everything about my school life. 

The different experiences which the students get in school life help them to become better human beings. When they leave school, they are not just taking the memories with them, but they take many friends, a career and good manners for life. It is the first place where the students come out of their family circles and create a new one with their teachers and friends. 

One should also remember that everyone is not privileged enough to get an education. If one gets this opportunity, then be grateful and work towards being a better human being. Cherish your school life and stay motivated.

FAQs on Essay on My School Life in English for Students and Children

1. Do you think Sports are important during school life?

2. What are life skills learnt during school life?

Some of the Life Skills learnt during school life are:

Punctuality

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How to Write Any High School Essay

Last Updated: March 22, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Emily Listmann, MA and by wikiHow staff writer, Hunter Rising . Emily Listmann is a private tutor in San Carlos, California. She has worked as a Social Studies Teacher, Curriculum Coordinator, and an SAT Prep Teacher. She received her MA in Education from the Stanford Graduate School of Education in 2014. There are 14 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 563,567 times.

Writing an essay is an important basic skill that you will need to succeed in high school and college. While essays will vary depending on your teacher and the assignment, most essays will follow the same basic structure. By supporting your thesis with information in your body paragraphs, you can successfully write an essay for any course!

Writing Help

Planning Your Essay

• Expository essays uses arguments to investigate and explain a topic.
• Persuasive essays try to convince the readers to believe or accept your specific point of view
• Narrative essays tell about a real-life personal experience.
• Descriptive essays are used to communicate deeper meaning through the use of descriptive words and sensory details.

• Look through books or use search engines online to look at the broad topic before narrowing your ideas down into something more concise.

• For example, the statement “Elephants are used to perform in circuses” does not offer an arguable point. Instead, you may try something like “Elephants should not be kept in the circus since they are mistreated.” This allows you to find supporting arguments or for others to argue against it.
• Keep in mind that some essay writing will not require an argument, such as a narrative essay. Instead, you might focus on a pivotal point in the story as your main claim.

• Talk to your school’s librarian for direction on specific books or databases you could use to find your information.
• Many schools offer access to online databases like EBSCO or JSTOR where you can find reliable information.
• Wikipedia is a great starting place for your research, but it can be edited by anyone in the world. Instead, look at the article’s references to find the sites where the information really came from.
• Use Google Scholar if you want to find peer-reviewed scholarly articles for your sources.
• Make sure to consider the author’s credibility when reviewing sources. If a source does not include the author’s name, then it might not be a good option.

• Outlines will vary in size or length depending on how long your essay needs to be. Longer essays will have more body paragraphs to support your arguments.

Starting an Essay

• Make sure your quotes or information are accurate and not an exaggeration of the truth, or else readers will question your validity throughout the rest of your essay.

• For example, “Because global warming is causing the polar ice caps to melt, we need to eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels within the next 5 years.” Or, “Since flavored tobacco appeals mainly to children and teens, it should be illegal for tobacco manufacturers to sell these products.”
• The thesis is usually the last or second to last sentence in your introduction.

• Use the main topics of your body paragraphs as an idea of what to include in your mini-outline.

Writing the Body Paragraphs

• Think of your topic sentences as mini-theses so your paragraphs only argue a specific point.

• Many high school essays are written in MLA or APA style. Ask your teacher what format they want you to follow if it’s not specified.

• Unless you’re writing a personal essay, avoid the use of “I” statements since this could make your essay look less professional.

• For example, if your body paragraphs discuss similar points in a different way, you can use phrases like “in the same way,” “similarly,” and “just as” to start other body paragraphs.
• If you are posing different points, try phrases like “in spite of,” “in contrast,” or “however” to transition.

Concluding Your Essay

• For example, if your thesis was, “The cell phone is the most important invention in the past 30 years,” then you may restate the thesis in your conclusion like, “Due to the ability to communicate anywhere in the world and access information easily, the cell phone is a pivotal invention in human history.”
• If you’re only writing a 1-page paper, restating your main ideas isn’t necessary.

• For example, if you write an essay discussing the themes of a book, think about how the themes are affecting people’s lives today.

• Try to pick the same type of closing sentence as you used as your attention getter.

• Including a Works Cited page shows that the information you provided isn’t all your own and allows the reader to visit the sources to see the raw information for themselves.
• Avoid using online citation machines since they may be outdated.

Revising the Paper

• Have a peer or parent read through your essay to see if they understand what point you’re trying to make.

• For example, if your essay discusses the history of an event, make sure your sentences flow in a chronological way in the order the events happened.

• If you cut parts out of your essay, make sure to reread it to see if it affects the flow of how it reads.

Community Q&A

• Allow ample time to layout your essay before you get started writing. Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 0
• If you have writer's block , take a break for a few minutes. Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 2
• Check the rubric provided by your teacher and compare your essay to it. This helps you gauge what you need to include or change. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 1

• Avoid using plagiarism since this could result in academic consequences. Thanks Helpful 5 Not Helpful 1

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/types-of-essays/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/thesis-statements/
• ↑ https://guides.libs.uga.edu/reliability
• ↑ https://facultyweb.ivcc.edu/rrambo/eng1001/outline.htm
• ↑ https://examples.yourdictionary.com/20-compelling-hook-examples-for-essays.html
• ↑ https://wts.indiana.edu/writing-guides/how-to-write-a-thesis-statement.html
• ↑ https://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/five_par.htm
• ↑ https://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/jason.laviolette/persuasive-essay-outline
• ↑ https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/paragraphs/topicsentences
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/transitions/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/ending-essay-conclusions
• ↑ https://libguides.newcastle.edu.au/how-to-write-an-essay/conclusion
• ↑ https://pitt.libguides.com/citationhelp
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/revising-drafts/

About This Article

Writing good essays is an important skill to have in high school, and you can write a good one by planning it out and organizing it well. Before you start, do some research on your topic so you can come up with a strong, specific thesis statement, which is essentially the main argument of your essay. For instance, your thesis might be something like, “Elephants should not be kept in the circus because they are mistreated.” Once you have your thesis, outline the paragraphs for your essay. You should have an introduction that includes your thesis, at least 3 body paragraphs that explain your main points, and a conclusion paragraph. Start each body paragraph with a topic sentence that states the main point of the paragraph. As you write your main points, make sure to include evidence and quotes from your research to back it up. To learn how to revise your paper, read more from our Writing co-author! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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The Lasting Value of the Personal Essay

This writing form has a value that goes beyond the college application as it nurtures self-reflection and inspires creativity.

I still remember my own personal essay that I wrote decades ago during my college admissions process. My essay focused on movies and how movies were a conduit of curiosity. It was also about the death of my father and how movies, in part, had provided a common ground for us—a connection. Although my essay, of course, was not the sole determining factor in my admission, it’s a predominant memory from that time of my life. To this day, I feel it had a persuasive effect on my admittance.

In fact, now looking back, I can’t recall my grade point average or my class rank or the final grade that my English teacher gave me on my literary analysis of Heart of Darkness. Even my exact SAT score, back then a real measure of academic aptitude, remains fuzzy to me all these years later, “shaded in wistful half-lights,” as described by Norman Maclean. I can, however, remember nearly every sentence, if not quite every word, of the personal essay I submitted to my first-choice college, which has undoubtedly, for me, over the years remained one of the most important pieces of writing I have ever produced.

The personal essay is an enduring literary genre and an art form that provides often-challenging material in English classes. In my Advanced Placement Language and Composition course, we frequently read works from an array of authors from various eras, including Michel de Montaigne, Virginia Woolf, E. B. White, Joan Didion, André Aciman, Brian Doyle, Dr. Oliver Sacks. These writers function as exemplars for my students to both analyze and model not only for their rhetorical value but also for their stylistic technique and philosophical ruminations.

Power of Personalization

One of the most predominant rhetorical strategies we recognize in these texts is personalization. And so Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth” has impacted my students throughout the years with its frank depiction of psychological tension, addressing philosophical themes on an existential level that never fail to capture their attention—so much so, that a group of students painted a mural on the wall outside my classroom, a visual interpretation of Woolf’s essay that they titled Memento Mori .

The candor and intimacy of Dr. Oliver Sacks’s depiction of his final days before his death from cancer have engendered numerous touching and insightful comments from my students during our Socratic seminars analyzing his almost unendurably moving personal essay, “My Periodic Table.” 

Students respond viscerally, it seems, to the personal. Sadly, many students have been touched by some of the same tragic subject matter that we analyze through these texts. During our seminars and journal assignments, my students have revealed their own personal connections to some of the personal essays we read in class, connecting, I think, to the shared experiences that we have all had throughout human history. 

Our students often find themselves facing a vortex of standardized tests, AP exams, and benchmarks throughout the school year, which often emphasize the formulaic. The active process of personal choice on topic and subject seems lost. So often my students ask me questions when writing an essay, seeking a particular answer, as if literary analysis were calculus. Missing is the creativity, the exploration of writing free from academic constraints like rubrics and scoring guides. Writer-editor Steve Moyer asserts in  Edsitement , “Nuanced thought... requires a greater gestation period than the nearly instant gratification made possible on Twitter.” I have witnessed this impatience from my own students.

There can be a restlessness in the writing process, a hesitancy for revision or drafting. Personal essays require self-reflection and a free-flowing freedom from rigid form that my students embrace in a way that they don’t with an argument or research-based essay. On more than one occasion during parent-teacher conferences, I have had parents tell me that their child used to love creative writing, but somewhere along the way, the rigor of school seemed to have killed it.

Personal essays, then, restore that creativity, since they encourage a freedom from form. Students can experiment with style and figurative language and syntax in ways that the traditional academic five-paragraph essay often thwarts.

Personal essays also allow teachers to really get to know our students, too. The inherent intimacy of a personal essay, the connection between the writer and the reader—in this case, a student and a teacher—provides insight into the concerns, the dreams, the emotions of our students in addition to allowing us to assess how they exercise their compositional skills, including imagery, syntax, diction, and figurative language. Here, then, a teacher has the best of both worlds. We’re able to both connect to our students on an emotional level and evaluate their learning on an academic level. Personal essays also serve as an emotional outlet. 

There seems to be a common assumption that personal essays for high school students serve only the college application process, so the process begins during their senior year. Personal writing, however, should occur throughout a student’s academic experience. The narrative essays that most elementary school students encounter evolve into the more ruminative, philosophical, and reflective personal writing they will encounter during their senior year from many of Common App essay prompts.

Many teachers implement journal writing in their classrooms that provides a firm foundation for the type of personal writing that the college admissions essay requires. In my own class of juniors, the last assignment we complete for the year is a personal essay. My intent is to help prepare them for the college essay they will write, hopefully, during the summer so that they will have a solid draft before the application process begins. 

Teaching our students this strategy in their own writing benefits them in their futures, not only for the imminent college application process but also for job interviews. For example, I was mentoring a student, a senior who had no desire to go to college, about the job interview process he would soon face after graduation. We rehearsed and practiced the types of questions he might encounter from a future employer. I encouraged him to remember the personal details of his experience, personalizing everything in a way that would allow him to ideally stand out as a job candidate.

Through personal essay writing, my overarching, grand ambition is to instill in my students ultimately a love of reflection, looking back on their experience, reminiscing on significant memories that linger, carefully considering the seemingly little moments that, only upon reflection, have an enormous impact on us.

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College admissions

Course: college admissions   >   unit 4.

• Writing a strong college admissions essay
• Avoiding common admissions essay mistakes
• Brainstorming tips for your college essay
• How formal should the tone of your college essay be?
• Taking your college essay to the next level
• Sample essay 1 with admissions feedback

Sample essay 2 with admissions feedback

• Student story: Admissions essay about a formative experience
• Student story: Admissions essay about personal identity
• Student story: Admissions essay about community impact
• Student story: Admissions essay about a past mistake
• Student story: Admissions essay about a meaningful poem
• Writing tips and techniques for your college essay

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Sample essay 2, feedback from admissions.

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What I’ve Learned From My Students’ College Essays

The genre is often maligned for being formulaic and melodramatic, but it’s more important than you think.

By Nell Freudenberger

Most high school seniors approach the college essay with dread. Either their upbringing hasn’t supplied them with several hundred words of adversity, or worse, they’re afraid that packaging the genuine trauma they’ve experienced is the only way to secure their future. The college counselor at the Brooklyn high school where I’m a writing tutor advises against trauma porn. “Keep it brief , ” she says, “and show how you rose above it.”

I started volunteering in New York City schools in my 20s, before I had kids of my own. At the time, I liked hanging out with teenagers, whom I sometimes had more interesting conversations with than I did my peers. Often I worked with students who spoke English as a second language or who used slang in their writing, and at first I was hung up on grammar. Should I correct any deviation from “standard English” to appeal to some Wizard of Oz behind the curtains of a college admissions office? Or should I encourage students to write the way they speak, in pursuit of an authentic voice, that most elusive of literary qualities?

In fact, I was missing the point. One of many lessons the students have taught me is to let the story dictate the voice of the essay. A few years ago, I worked with a boy who claimed to have nothing to write about. His life had been ordinary, he said; nothing had happened to him. I asked if he wanted to try writing about a family member, his favorite school subject, a summer job? He glanced at his phone, his posture and expression suggesting that he’d rather be anywhere but in front of a computer with me. “Hobbies?” I suggested, without much hope. He gave me a shy glance. “I like to box,” he said.

I’ve had this experience with reluctant writers again and again — when a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously. Of course the primary goal of a college essay is to help its author get an education that leads to a career. Changes in testing policies and financial aid have made applying to college more confusing than ever, but essays have remained basically the same. I would argue that they’re much more than an onerous task or rote exercise, and that unlike standardized tests they are infinitely variable and sometimes beautiful. College essays also provide an opportunity to learn precision, clarity and the process of working toward the truth through multiple revisions.

When a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously.

Even if writing doesn’t end up being fundamental to their future professions, students learn to choose language carefully and to be suspicious of the first words that come to mind. Especially now, as college students shoulder so much of the country’s ethical responsibility for war with their protest movement, essay writing teaches prospective students an increasingly urgent lesson: that choosing their own words over ready-made phrases is the only reliable way to ensure they’re thinking for themselves.

Teenagers are ideal writers for several reasons. They’re usually free of preconceptions about writing, and they tend not to use self-consciously ‘‘literary’’ language. They’re allergic to hypocrisy and are generally unfiltered: They overshare, ask personal questions and call you out for microaggressions as well as less egregious (but still mortifying) verbal errors, such as referring to weed as ‘‘pot.’’ Most important, they have yet to put down their best stories in a finished form.

I can imagine an essay taking a risk and distinguishing itself formally — a poem or a one-act play — but most kids use a more straightforward model: a hook followed by a narrative built around “small moments” that lead to a concluding lesson or aspiration for the future. I never get tired of working with students on these essays because each one is different, and the short, rigid form sometimes makes an emotional story even more powerful. Before I read Javier Zamora’s wrenching “Solito,” I worked with a student who had been transported by a coyote into the U.S. and was reunited with his mother in the parking lot of a big-box store. I don’t remember whether this essay focused on specific skills or coping mechanisms that he gained from his ordeal. I remember only the bliss of the parent-and-child reunion in that uninspiring setting. If I were making a case to an admissions officer, I would suggest that simply being able to convey that experience demonstrates the kind of resilience that any college should admire.

The essays that have stayed with me over the years don’t follow a pattern. There are some narratives on very predictable topics — living up to the expectations of immigrant parents, or suffering from depression in 2020 — that are moving because of the attention with which the student describes the experience. One girl determined to become an engineer while watching her father build furniture from scraps after work; a boy, grieving for his mother during lockdown, began taking pictures of the sky.

If, as Lorrie Moore said, “a short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage,” what is a college essay? Every once in a while I sit down next to a student and start reading, and I have to suppress my excitement, because there on the Google Doc in front of me is a real writer’s voice. One of the first students I ever worked with wrote about falling in love with another girl in dance class, the absolute magic of watching her move and the terror in the conflict between her feelings and the instruction of her religious middle school. She made me think that college essays are less like love than limerence: one-sided, obsessive, idiosyncratic but profound, the first draft of the most personal story their writers will ever tell.

Nell Freudenberger’s novel “The Limits” was published by Knopf last month. She volunteers through the PEN America Writers in the Schools program.

The Shenandoah County School Board’s Terrible History Lesson

O n May 10, 2024, 161 years to the day after General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s last breath fighting for the Confederate insurrection intended to continue enslavement of human beings in America, the Shenandoah County School Board voted 5-1 to restore his name on a high school in rural Virginia.

More than 50 concerned community members, students, and parents, including one of the first African Americans to integrate Stonewall Jackson High School in 1963, and hundreds of their supporters, continued to advocate a new reckoning of the county’s heritage of enslavement, segregation, and racial injustice. They affirmed the names a community committee selected in 2021 renaming the school as Mountain View High and another school named after Confederate generals Turner Ashby and Robert E. Lee as Honey Run Elementary.

But the school board heard none of it. Instead, the board sided with those idolizing the faith and loyalty of “heroes” like Jackson, condemning pandemic-related processes that did not take into account the voices of “we the people,” and complaining about “woke outsiders.” At the end of the board meeting, the board had delivered a disgraceful new chapter in our community’s history and a terrible lesson for the children they are sworn to educate.

Historians will debate the consequences of the board’s vote and perhaps whether the nation’s current political mood has rekindled racial tensions. But the school board members and their embittered supporters made it clear that the shadows of our segregated past still loom large.

For context, we should look at 2020, particularly the 8 minutes and 46 seconds of video that emblazoned the truth of racial injustice in America. After George Floyd’s murder by police in May of that year, national, state, and local leaders across the nation took up resolutions against racism, including Shenandoah County’s Board of Supervisors and the county School Board.

At around the same time in our mountain-cradled county, another incident reminded us of America’s lingering racial unrest: an encounter between a white mob and a black pastor in Edinburg, Va. On June 1, 2020, Pastor McCray approached a couple illegally dumping a refrigerator on his property, asking them to leave. They left, returned with three more people and began “attacking him physically, saying ‘they don’t give a darn’ about ‘my black life and the Black Lives Matter stuff,’ and telling him they would ‘kill’ him,” according to Associated Press reports. McCray put distance between himself and the mob by brandishing a gun that he was legally licensed to carry. When the police arrived, they arrested the Black man with the gun.

The Shenandoah County Sheriff later apologized for the incident, but it reinforces the need for formal resolutions against racism and leaders willing to make difficult decisions for a more inclusive community. The Shenandoah County School Board at the time agreed. They chose action, encouraged by then-Department of Education secretary Atif Qarni and then-Governor Ralph Northam, both of whom supported statewide removal of Confederate leaders’ names of public schools.

The 2020 school board, tying in as the next step to its June “Resolution condemning racism and affirming the division’s commitment to an inclusive school environment for all,” retired the names of Confederate leaders, and developed a process for community and student input into choosing more unifying public school names. On September 10, 2020, the then school board reaffirmed the foregoing motion, as well as moving forward with renaming the schools on southern campus. Community committees met during the next three months, with new names chosen at the January 14, 2021 meeting, after seven months of public input.

By 2024, recently elected school board members focused their arguments for restoration on the former board’s “secret” process during the COVID “plan-demic,” stating that community input was not taken into account at the time. Two years before, three current school board members ran on a campaign to restore the school’s Confederate leader names, an attempt that ended at the June 9, 2022 school board meeting with a 3-3 stalemate. The current board consists of three more new school board members, elected in the fall of 2023. Like many school boards around the nation, ours has committed to reversing civil rights often under the lost-cause banner of Confederate pride.

The memory of Stonewall Jackson High School as a whites-only public institution until its integration in 1963 is not a distant echo of history but an agonizing experience for many Black residents of Shenandoah County. These individuals are not just statistics in history books; they are our neighbors, friends, and family—and they were intentionally harmed in Shenandoah County as the Civil Rights movement gained momentum in the 1950s.

Read More: Confederate Monuments and Other Disputed Memorials Have Come Down in Cities Across America. What Should Take Their Place?

And now again in 2024. Dozens of citizens, alum, parents, and current students of the schools addressed the board, offering poignant testimony about lived experiences with institutionalized discrimination or in support of others who had. Approximately two-thirds of the speakers opposed back-naming the schools. For them, returning to Confederate leader names makes the damage linger.

Aliyah Ogle, a student who represented her school in three sports this year and would be attending the renamed high school next year, said it best: “I'm a black student and if the name is restored, I would have to represent a man that fought for my ancestors to be slaves. That makes me feel like I'm disrespecting my ancestors and going against what my family and I believe, which is that we should all be treated equally, and that slavery was a cruel and awful thing.”

Most of the board members could not have cared less about the county’s 252 year history. They were more concerned for judging the 2020 school board’s actions and recognizing the Confederate heritage of the county. Their brand of leadership consisted of telling the people they represent that we all have problems of one kind or another; it’s time to move on. “War is hell,” said Dennis Barlow, chairman of the Shenandoah County School Board. They were joined by two dozen pro-Confederacy speakers, claiming there is no evident racism in Shenandoah County, and never has been.

Board member Tom Streett used his decision to discuss pro-slavery General Jackson. “When you read about this man — who he was, what he stood for, his character, his loyalty, his leadership, how Godly a man he was — those standards that he had were much higher than any leadership of the school system in 2020,” Streett said.

Streett, however, neglected to mention that even Jackson’s descendants have weighed in on this legacy issue. For the past seven years, the general’s great-great grandsons, William Jackson Christian and Warren Edmund Christian, have said they support removing Confederate statues and other monuments—including in Shenandoah County this week—as “part of a larger project of actively mending the racial disparities that hundreds of years of white supremacy have wrought.” They added that they were “ashamed to benefit from white supremacy while our black family and friends suffer.”

Yet Shenandoah County’s school board and its grievance agenda does nothing to provide historical context, advance dialogue, or heal the feelings of well-meaning citizens. Using the same policy the 2021 school board used to name Mountain View and Honey Run, the 2024 board defiantly focused on undoing the decision and giving voice to the people they wanted to hear. The decision unfairly places our children as pawns on a rhetorical battlefield, keeping the board’s focus on vengeance and political control—not due process or heritage. But it’s more dangerous than just talk and hard feelings: The county remains on the radar of the Southern Poverty Law Center , which tracks white supremacists, including ongoing activity by the Patriot Front. To address this reality, we need better, sensible leadership from our school board. But for now, we must live with a stark reminder that elections have consequences.

Looking ahead, the many good people of our county will strive to ensure that our complete history, good and bad, remains available to students and the public. We must find a way to truly honor our whole heritage without insisting that students salute pro-slavery traitors or the treatment of their ancestors as subhuman property for almost 400 years.

If the U.S. Department of Defense can rename military bases once emblazoned with Confederate leaders’ names, then our public schools can do the same. After all, these are the spaces where the first lessons of civic duties are learned. History is complicated, no doubt, but there’s no better place to examine complex issues than in a good school. Other nations and communities reckon with difficult pasts. In Germany, for example, students still learn about Adolf Hitler, but they are not forced to wear sports jerseys and school-pride t-shirts that glorify symbols or names associated with murderous war crimes.

Our fight for what’s right in Shenandoah County is not over. We will continue to oppose historical injustices and help all constituencies in our community learn from the lessons of our past. As it has throughout our nation’s history, the work of decent people striving for a better, more united America will go on. We hope the school board here can find a way to join us along the way.

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What Helped These K-12 Leaders After School Shootings

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It’s been 20 years since Michael Bennett was shot in the hallway of Columbia High School in East Greenbush, N.Y.

The physical injury healed long ago, but the mental and emotional wounds fester, a lifelong trauma he must manage.

“I knew there were certain aspects of this that were going to be difficult, but no one really speaks to the aftermath of a situation like the one we went through,” Bennett, now the superintendent of schools in Greenville, N.Y., said during a webinar hosted by the National Association of Secondary School Principals on May 15. “All the lessons that I’ve learned were that my life was never going to be the same. I knew I was going to need to live with this new normal and I had to find a way to take care of myself.”

It’s a jarring reality that Bennett shares with hundreds of other teachers, students, and school leaders who have experienced shootings in their schools. School leaders—who are themselves victims as much as students, staff, and others who work at their schools—are tasked with leading students and staff through recovery, while trying to come to terms with their own emotions and trauma. Finding the right balance can be difficult, but leaning into support groups, seeking professional care, and making time for self-care can help, Bennett and other school leaders said during the NASSP event.

Although Bennett was a special education teacher at Columbia High when the shooting occurred and he didn’t lead the broader recovery process, he said the experience has influenced his leadership style in the jobs that followed.

In the aftermath of the Feb. 9, 2004 , shooting, Bennett, the only one physically injured at the school, took up running, an outlet that, when paired with therapy, “became a pathway to calm and to live somewhat productively.” It forced him to “listen to my body, my breathing, my surroundings, and took my mind off all the different things dancing around in my brain.”

But in the years that followed, Bennett’s anxiety worsened, and he developed panic attacks that “were becoming debilitating for me.”

His doctor in 2021 referred him to a therapist who specializes in treating post-traumatic stress disorder, and that has made all the difference, Bennett said.

“I will admit that I did not know a lot about the effects of PTSD, anxiety, and depression on a person,” he said. “As a special education teacher, I knew what I read and I knew what I saw on some of my students, but it was truly living with it that I gained an appreciation of how difficult it is to live with and how much it affects all aspects of my life.”

There’s ‘no timeframe on recovery’

Like Bennett, Kacy Shahid’s life “changed forever” when a shooting happened on her school’s campus.

Shahid, at the time the principal of Central Visual Performing Arts High School in St. Louis was in a meeting on Oct. 24, 2022, when a substitute teacher came in to say there was a safety concern in the building.

Shahid, now an assistant superintendent in Cahokia, Ill., didn’t know what the problem was, but the teacher’s body language told her everything she needed to know. She immediately called for a lockdown.

When she went into the hallway to investigate, she saw the shooter at the end of the hall, armed with an AR-15-style rifle. As she retreated and closed an office door, he began firing.

Shahid used her Apple Watch to call the police while she sheltered in place.

The story didn’t end when police arrived, exchanged gunfire with the shooter who later died, and cleared the building, though. Far from it.

A student and a teacher were killed , and several others were wounded. Even those who weren’t physically hurt, including Shahid, were left to deal with lasting mental and emotional wounds.

Shahid was diagnosed with PTSD and insomnia following the shooting and has experienced high blood pressure and body aches from the tension she feels to this day.

Still, as a school leader, she was part of the greater school community’s recovery, even as she struggled to process the events herself.

“I was on grid immediately after the shooting in a way that I thought I was supposed to as a leader of the school,” Shahid said. “I wasn’t acknowledging the symptoms of my body.”

To aid her recovery, Shahid was prescribed anxiety medication and leaned into regular exercise as an outlet for her feelings. She journaled and got regular massages to help with the muscle aches.

“There’s no timeframe on trauma, and there’s no timeframe on recovery, and I’m constantly learning,” she said.

A powerful support network

Not every school leader will experience a shooting in their building, but, unfortunately, some will.

So far in 2024, there have been 16 school shootings that have resulted in deaths or injuries, according to an Education Week analysis . Four people have been killed and 25 injured. Education Week has recorded 198 shootings since 2018 that have resulted in injuries or deaths.

The school leaders who have had to guide their communities after a shooting are members of a solemn group with a unique and binding experience, Bennett and Shahid said. It can be a sad realization to be a part of that group, but it’s also becoming a strong network of support.

NASSP in April 2019 launched the Principal Recovery Network, a national network of current and former school leaders who have experienced gun violence in their buildings. The group’s members reach out to school leaders across the country when they hear of gun violence in their community with the intent of offering support and guidance based on their own experiences.

Bennett is a founding member of the network and met with other school leaders in Virginia in late 2018 as the group was forming. Some gathered at a hotel bar, sharing stories of the shootings in their schools, death, and recovery efforts. At one point, Bennett felt out of place. After all, nobody died in the shooting at his school.

That’s when Frank DeAngelis, the principal of Columbine High School at the time of the 1999 massacre, stopped him.

“He reminded me that no one else sitting around the table had been shot and explained that our recovery stories are what bind us,” Bennett said. “It was at that point I knew I found my support and I realized I was going to be OK.”

The group helped Shahid navigate her personal recovery in the aftermath of the shooting and offered guidance for the many complicated logistics that followed—media interviews, reopening the building , commemorative events, and so on.

The camaraderie from the group was helpful, as was the outpouring of support from the local community and outside organizations and people more broadly, Shahid said.

“I realized I can’t do this by myself,” Shahid said. “Even my school staff couldn’t do it with just us because we were all victims. … I’m so thankful for the support.”

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The Case of Tinker V. Des Moines School District

This essay is about the landmark Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, which established the First Amendment rights of students in public schools. In 1969, the Court ruled that students do not lose their constitutional rights to free speech when they enter school, provided their actions do not cause substantial disruption. The case originated when students, including Mary Beth and John Tinker, wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War and were suspended. The ruling set the “Tinker Test” for determining when student speech is protected. This decision has had a lasting impact on student activism and free speech, influencing subsequent cases and ongoing debates about the balance between school authority and individual rights.

How it works

In the American jurisprudence, the case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District stands as a monumental juncture, particularly concerning the First Amendment entitlements of pupils. Rendered by the United States Supreme Court in 1969, this landmark verdict established a pivotal precedent dictating the scope of students’ free speech privileges in public educational institutions. The judgment underscored the immutable tenet that neither students nor educators relinquish their constitutional rights to vocal or expressive liberties upon crossing the threshold of the educational edifice.

The genesis of the legal saga traces back to December 1965, amid the burgeoning anti-war sentiment during the Vietnam conflict. A cadre of pupils in Des Moines, Iowa, among them Mary Beth Tinker, her sibling John Tinker, and their comrade Christopher Eckhardt, elected to don black armbands as a symbolic gesture of protest. Their objective was to mourn the fallen on both sides of the contentious war and advocate for a proposed Yuletide truce. Yet, school authorities swiftly imposed a directive proscribing the wearing of such armbands upon learning of the planned demonstration. Undeterred by this proscription, the Tinker siblings and Eckhardt adorned themselves with the armbands, precipitating their immediate suspension for contravening the new edict.

Convinced that their First Amendment prerogatives had been transgressed, the students, bolstered by parental support, resolved to contest the school district’s decree. The legal imbroglio eventually ascended to the apex court, confronting the justices with the pivotal query of whether the educational institution’s actions encroached upon the students’ constitutionally ordained freedom of expression.

In a seminal 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court sided with the students. Delivering the majority opinion, Justice Abe Fortas averred that students do not “abdicate their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” The tribunal acknowledged that while schools possess the prerogative to preserve decorum, they may not stifle student expression absent demonstrable disruption to the educational milieu. In the Tinker case, no evidence surfaced indicating that the students’ tacit protest had precipitated any such upheaval. Consequently, the school district’s measures were deemed an unwarranted infringement upon the students’ liberties.

The Tinker edict established the precedent now dubbed the “Tinker Test” for assessing student speech. Under this litmus test, student expression is shielded by the First Amendment unless it engenders significant disruption or impinges upon the rights of others. This pronouncement exerted a profound influence on subsequent cases pertaining to student speech and expression, serving as a lodestar in judicial deliberations.

The Tinker v. Des Moines case resonates not only for its legal ramifications but also for its broader cultural resonance. The ruling emboldened students to partake in political and social dialogue within the scholastic milieu, engendering a culture of activism and engagement. It affirmed the premise that young individuals possess a voice, and their perspectives merit safeguarding. This assertion proved particularly salient during the tumultuous 1960s, an epoch characterized by profound social and political convulsions, including the civil rights crusade and widespread dissent against the Vietnam War.

In the aftermath of the Tinker verdict, the contours of student free speech have been delineated and tested through subsequent Supreme Court adjudications. For instance, in Bethel School District v. Fraser (1986), the Court sanctioned the suspension of a student for delivering a salacious oration at a school assembly. The Court differentiated this scenario from Tinker, accentuating schools’ authority to proscribe vulgar language to cultivate a safe and conducive academic milieu. Similarly, in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988), the Court ruled that educational administrators possess the prerogative to wield editorial control over school-sponsored publications, provided such actions are germane to pedagogical imperatives. These rulings epitomize the delicate equilibrium the Court has endeavored to strike between safeguarding student expression and upholding school order and academic integrity.

Notwithstanding these limitations, the foundational tenet of Tinker—that students retain First Amendment rights that endure within scholastic precincts—endures as a keystone of student free speech jurisprudence. It continues to inform debates regarding the equilibrium between school authority and student liberties, encompassing issues such as student dress codes, social media utilization, and political demonstrations.

The cultural and societal reverberations of the Tinker decision transcend the courtroom. It has fostered heightened awareness among students regarding their constitutional prerogatives and has galvanized a more participatory and engaged student body. The verdict has inspired myriad students to advocate for causes they deem significant, cognizant that their voices enjoy protection. This empowerment has manifested in numerous student-led movements over the years, from anti-war protests in the 1960s and 1970s to contemporary campaigns advocating for gun control, environmental conservation, and social justice.

The legacy of Tinker v. Des Moines stands as a testament to the enduring imperative of safeguarding individual rights, even within regimented settings such as educational institutions. It underscores the imperative of balancing the authority of educational establishments with the foundational freedoms enshrined in the Constitution. By affirming that students do not forfeit their constitutional rights at the threshold of the schoolhouse, the Supreme Court affirmed the significance of nurturing a democratic ethos and fostering civic engagement from an early age.

In the contemporary milieu, the principles elucidated in the Tinker case retain salience. The proliferation of digital communication and social media platforms has engendered novel avenues for student expression, prompting fresh challenges and queries regarding the application of First Amendment safeguards. Educational institutions grapple with issues such as cyberbullying, online harassment, and the dissemination of disinformation, all while endeavoring to uphold students’ rights to unfettered expression. The Tinker Test endures as an indispensable tool in navigating these multifaceted dilemmas, furnishing a framework for discerning when curtailment of student speech is justified.

Moreover, the Tinker v. Des Moines case accentuates the role of the judiciary in safeguarding constitutional prerogatives. It serves as a reminder of the judiciary’s pivotal role in shielding individual freedoms from capricious or unjust state actions. The decision epitomizes the judiciary’s capacity to uphold democratic ideals and ensure that the rights enshrined in the Constitution are safeguarded for all citizens, including students.

Upon reflection, it becomes manifest that the Tinker saga transcended a mere protest concerning black armbands. It embodied a robust affirmation of individuals’ fundamental entitlements to articulate their convictions and viewpoints, even in the face of opposition. The fortitude exhibited by Mary Beth Tinker, John Tinker, and Christopher Eckhardt in vindicating their rights has indelibly shaped the legal landscape, empowering future cohorts of students.

In summation, the case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District stands as a watershed moment that profoundly influenced the panorama of student rights in the United States. It reaffirmed the constitutional safeguards of free speech within public schools, subject to the constraint that such expression does not precipitate significant disruption. The verdict’s ramifications endure, nurturing a milieu of student activism and serving as a seminal precedent in ongoing discourses regarding the scope and constraints of student expression. The legacy of Tinker underscores the perennial exigency of shielding individual rights, even within regimented settings like schools. By affirming that students retain their constitutional rights at the threshold of the schoolhouse, the Supreme Court has ensured that the voices of youth persist in being heard and respected.

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70 years after Brown v. Board, America is both more diverse — and more segregated

A hallway in Lewiston High School in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

FILE - Students from Thomas Leadership Academy play on the school’s playground in Eatonville, Fla., Aug. 23, 2023. Seventy years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board, America is both more diverse — and more segregated. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

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FILE - U.S. Deputy Marshals escort 6-year-old Ruby Bridges from William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, in this November 1960, file photo. Seventy years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board, America is both more diverse — and more segregated. (AP Photo/File)

An original document from the case of Brown v. Board of Education on display at the National Archives.

FILE - Members of the U.S. Supreme Court are seen in a 1953 photo before they issued the first school integration order in 1954. From Left, seated Associated Justices Felix Frankfurter and Hugo Black, Chief Justice Earl Warren, and Associate Justices Stanley Reed and William O’Douglas. Standing: Associate Justices Tom Clark, Robert H. Jackson, Harold H. Burton and Sherman Minton. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - Buses transport Black students home from Rosenwald School, outside of Clay, Kentucky on Sept. 19, 1956. Seventy years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board, America is both more diverse — and more segregated. (AP Photo/HB Littell, File)

FILE - Children in class together at a school in Philadelphia, PA, April 13, 1967. Seventy years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board, America is both more diverse — and more segregated. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - This map at the Justice Department pinpoints areas where progress has been made in desegregating public facilities, May 22, 1963 in Washington. (AP Photo/Bill Allen, File)

FILE - Valerie Banks was the only student to show up for her geography class at South Boston High School on the first day of court-ordered busing to desegregate Boston’s schools, Sept. 12, 1974. Seventy years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board, America is both more diverse — and more segregated. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - Police officers break up a scuffle amid demonstrators outside South Boston High School on the first day of a court-ordered busing program to integrate Boston public schools, Sept. 12, 1974. Seventy years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board, America is both more diverse — and more segregated. (AP Photo/Peter Bregg, File)

FILE - Another day begins on the yellow bus, as children peer through fogged-over windows on their way to school in Brooklyn, New York, Dec. 5, 2018. Seventy years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board, America is both more diverse — and more segregated. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)

FILE - Courtney Kenyon, left, and Kenya Milton work on their essays in their 5th grade class at Lewton Elementary School, Jan. 18, 2002, in Lansing, Mich. Seventy years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board, America is both more diverse — and more segregated. (AP Photo/Al Goldis, File)

FILE - Damien Salinas, 5 years old, right, hugs a friend as he arrives to school, Sept. 7, 2023, in New York. Seventy years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board, America is both more diverse — and more segregated. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)

FILE - A mural celebrating diversity decorates a hallway in Lewiston High School in Lewiston, Maine, March 15, 2017. Seventy years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board, America is both more diverse — and more segregated. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

FILE - School backpacks hang on a rack at West Orange Elementary School in Orange, Calif., March 18, 2021. Seventy years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board, America is both more diverse — and more segregated. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court laid out a new precedent: Separate but equal has no place in American schools.

The message of Brown v. Board of Education was clear. But 70 years later, the impact of the decision is still up for debate. Have Americans truly ended segregation in fact, not just in law?

The answer is complicated. U.S. schools in recent decades have grown far more diverse and, by some measures, more segregated , according to an Associated Press analysis.

On one hand, the number of Black and white students who go to school almost exclusively with students of the same race is at an all-time low.

On the other hand, huge shares of students of color still go to schools with almost no white students. Hispanic segregation is worse now than in the 1960s. The nation’s largest school districts, in particular, have seen a surge in segregation since the 1990s, according to research from Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project.

The history of school desegregation efforts, from Brown v. Board to today, shows how far the U.S. has come – and how far it has to go.

1954-1964: THE SOUTH DRAGS ITS FEET

The Brown v. Board decision declared white and Black students could not be forced to attend separate schools, even if those schools were allegedly equal in quality.

A few states such as Kansas and Delaware made some effort to comply with the order. But leaders in the Deep South immediately declared what U.S. Sen. Harry Byrd of Virginia called ” massive resistance ″ to integration.

In all, segregation levels changed little over the next decade, despite the bravery of Black students like the Little Rock Nine in 1957 and 6-year-old Ruby Bridges in New Orleans in 1960, who faced violent, racist mobs when they tried to desegregate their local schools.

U.S. Deputy Marshals escort 6-year-old Ruby Bridges from William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, in this November 1960. (AP Photo)

1964-1986: DESEGREGATION GETS SERIOUS

By the mid-1960s, the federal courts lost patience with the South. They started to mete out desegregation orders with teeth, requiring busing if necessary. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. declared segregation must be ripped out “root and branch.”

At the same time, civil rights legislation of the 1960s reshaped schools in far-reaching ways. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination in education; the Voting Rights Act gave Black voters more power to choose school boards; and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act offered schools federal cash if they desegregated. Meanwhile, the Immigration and Nationality Act opened the country to more immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America, leading to far more diverse schools.

A map at the Justice Department pinpoints areas where progress has been made in desegregating public facilities, May 22, 1963 in Washington. (AP Photo/Bill Allen)

From there, segregation decreased quickly. Almost every Black student in the South went to school only with people of color in 1963; only one-fourth of Black students did in 1968.

But desegregation came with a price: Thousands of qualified Black teachers were laid off, even though they were often more credentialed and qualified than white teachers.

“Integration has never been equitable,” said Ivory Toldson, a professor at Howard University.

Courts also began pushing desegregation in other parts of the country. Denver was one of the first cities outside the South called out for segregation in a 1973 Supreme Court case. Places like San Francisco and Cleveland were subject to desegregation orders, and riots broke out in 1974 over busing orders in Boston.

The momentum was short-lived. In 1974, the Supreme Court in Milliken v. Bradley struck down a desegregation plan that involved multiple school districts in and around Detroit. That meant metropolitan areas, with rare exceptions, could not be forced to bus students across school district lines.

Buses transport Black students home from Rosenwald School, in Kentucky on Sept. 19, 1956. (AP Photo/HB Littell)

The era saw massive white flight from urban school districts, in places where busing was required and where it was not. Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City collectively lost over half a million white public school students from 1968 to 1980. In just twelve years, the number of white students fell 71% in New Orleans, 78% in Detroit and 86% in Atlanta.

Still, federal court orders had succeeded in reducing Black segregation to its lowest level ever by 1986.

After that, progress began to stall.

Children in class together at a school in Philadelphia, PA, April 13, 1967. (AP Photo)

1986-TODAY: DIVERSITY GROWS, DESEGREGATION LOSES STEAM

The courts gradually began to focus less on achieving racially balanced schools and more on other ways to promote desegregation, such as magnet schools. It became easier for school districts to argue they had made enough progress to be released from desegregation orders, and most of them were lifted by the early 2000s. A few hundred are still active today, but usually unenforced; school district leaders often don’t know they’re still under desegregation orders.

Courtney Kenyon, left, and Kenya Milton work on their essays in their 5th grade class at Lewton Elementary School, Jan. 18, 2002, in Lansing, Mich. (AP Photo/Al Goldis)

The segregation of Black students changed little after the 1980s. As Latino immigration soared, so did the segregation of Latino students.

The effects of isolation are particularly pernicious for students who come from an immigrant background, said Patricia Gándara, co-director of UCLA’s Civil Rights Project. These families are less likely to speak English or know the unspoken rules of the American education system, like how to apply for college.

Damien Salinas, 5 years old, right, hugs a friend as he arrives to school, Sept. 7, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

More court cases chipped away at policy tools to address desegregation, turning toward the conservative idea that setting targets by race is itself a form of racial discrimination.

Nevertheless, classrooms became more diverse, reflecting the country’s changing demographics. A historic milestone came in 2014, when for the first time the majority of U.S. students were children of color.

Students of color may be more exposed to each other, but they’re still often in separate schools from white students. Around 4 out of 10 Black and Hispanic students go to schools made up almost entirely of other students of color.

Racial imbalance is particularly acute in the nation’s 100 largest districts, according to researchers from Stanford’s Educational Opportunity Project. Using segregation scores of 0 to 100, they found Black-white segregation grew over 40% from 1991 to 2019, from 21 to 30 points, while Hispanic-white segregation grew from 15 to 24.

Students play on a school playground in Eatonville, Fla., Aug. 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

That’s both because the government moved away from desegregation orders in the 1990s and because parents took advantage of the school choice movement in the 2000s.

Even before school choice, racial isolation was extreme in many large urban school districts. This is one of the reasons that many states with large cities outside the South, such as Illinois, Michigan, New York and California, have been among the most segregated in America since at least the 1980s.

This segregation matters, because concentration in high-poverty, racially segregated schools is strongly correlated with poorer outcomes for students.

“Segregation is at the core of an awful lot of the problems that we have,” Gándara said. “No matter how much money you throw at it, if you’re going to cluster poor kids and kids without family resources to support them in school, you’re going to continue to have these uneven outcomes.”

___ Associated Press designer and developer Eunice Esomonu contributed to the digital presentation. ___ The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

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US-skepticism and transnational conspiracy in the 2024 Taiwanese presidential election

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Taiwan has one of the highest freedom of speech indexes while it also encounters the largest amount of foreign interference due to its contentious history with China. Because of the large influx of misinformation, Taiwan has taken a public crowdsourcing approach to combatting misinformation, using both fact-checking ChatBots and public dataset called CoFacts. Combining CoFacts with large-language models (LLM), we investigated misinformation across three platforms (Line, PTT, and Facebook) during the 2024 Taiwanese presidential election. We found that most misinformation appears within China-friendly political groups and attacks US-Taiwan relations through visual media like images and videos. A considerable proportion of misinformation does not question U.S. foreign policy directly. Rather, it exaggerates domestic issues in the United States to create a sense of declining U.S. state capacity. Curiously, we found misinformation rhetoric that references conspiracy groups in the West.

Program in Quantitative Social Science, Dartmouth College, USA

Department of Political Science, University of Nevada Las Vegas, USA

Department of Computer Science, Barnard College, USA

Research Questions

• What are the misinformation narratives surrounding the election in Taiwan and how do they target international relations with the United States?
• What geographical or temporal patterns emerge from misinformation data?
• Who are the targets of these misinformation narratives and through what modalities?

Essay Summary

• We leveraged a dataset of 41,291 labeled articles from Line, 911,510 posts from Facebook, and 2,005,972 posts and comments from PTT to understand misinformation dynamics through topic modeling and network analysis.
• The primary form of misinformation is narratives that attack international relations with the United States (henceforth referred to as US-skepticism), specifically referencing the economy, health policy, the threat of war through Ukraine, and other U.S. domestic issues.
• Temporal and spatial evidence suggests VPN-based coordination, focused on U.S. issues and addresses.
• Misinformation is most common among pan-Blue and ROC identity groups on social media and is spread through visual media. These groups share many themes with conspiracy groups in Western countries.
• Our study shows the prevalence of misinformation strategies using visual media and fake news websites. It also highlights how crowdsourcing and advances in large-language models can be used to identify misinformation in cross-platform workflows.

Implications

According to Freedom House, Taiwan has one of the highest indices for free speech in Asia (Freedom House, 2022). Additionally, due to its contentious history with China, it receives significant foreign interference and misinformation, especially during its presidential elections. Due to the large influx of dis- and misinformation, Taiwan has developed many strategies to counter misleading narratives, including fact-checking ChatBots on its most popular chatroom app (Chang et al., 2020). Under this information environment, the 2024 Taiwanese presidential election emerged as one of the most divisive elections in Taiwan’s history, featuring at one point a doubling of presidential candidates in a typically two-party race, from two to four. As such, Taiwan is regarded as a “canary for disinformation” against elections in 2024, as a first indicator to how foreign interference may take place in other democracies (Welch, 2024).

In this paper, we study the misinformation ecosystem in Taiwan starting a year prior to the election. First, our findings highlight the interaction between misinformation and international relations. As was reported in The Economist and The New York Times , a considerable portion of the misinformation spread in Taiwan before the 2024 election is about US-skepticism, which aims at undermining the reputation of the United States among Taiwanese people (“China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation,” 2023; Hsu, Chien, and Myers, 2023). This phenomenon is significant because it does not target specific candidates or parties in the election but may indirectly influence the vote choice between pro- and anti-U.S. parties. Given the US-China global competition and the Russia-Ukraine ongoing conflict, the reputation of the United States is crucial for the strength and reliability of democratic allies (Cohen, 2003). Hence, it is not surprising that misinformation about the United States may propagate globally and influence elections across democracies. However, our findings surprisingly show that US-skepticism also includes a considerable number of attacks on U.S. domestic politics. Such content does not question the U.S. foreign policy but undermines the perceived reliability and state capacity of the United States. Here, s tate capacity is defined as whether a state is capable of mobilizing its resources to realize its goal, which is conceptually different from motivation and trust.

US-skepticism is commonly characterized as mistrusting the motivations of the United States, as illustrated in the Latin American context due to long histories of political influence (see dependency theory; Galeano, 1997), but our findings suggest that perceived U.S. state capacity is also an important narrative. As most foreign disinformation arises from China, this indicates a greater trend where authoritarian countries turn to sharp power tactics to distort information and defame global competitors rather than winning hearts and minds through soft power. Sharp power refers to the ways in which authoritarian regimes project their influence abroad to pierce, penetrate, or perforate the informational environments in targeted countries (Walker, 2018). In Taiwan’s case, China may not be able to tell China’s story well, but can still influence Taiwanese voters by making them believe that the United States is declining. Our findings suggest that future work analyzing the topics and keywords of misinformation in elections outside the United States should also consider the US-skepticism as one latent category, not just the politicians and countries as is common with electoral misinformation (Tenove et al., 2018). These findings are corroborated by narratives identified by a recent report including drug issues, race relations, and urban decay (Microsoft Threat Intelligence, 2024).

Additionally, our research investigates both misinformation and conspiracy theories, which are closely related. Whereas misinformation is broadly described as “false or inaccurate information” (Jerit & Zhao, 2020), a conspiracy theory is the belief that harmful events are caused by a powerful, often secretive, group. In particular, conspiracy communities often coalesce around activities of “truth-seeking,” embodying a contrarian view toward commonly held beliefs (Enders et al., 2022; Harambam, 2020; Konkes & Lester, 2017). Our findings also provide evidence of transnational similarities between conspiracy groups in Taiwan and the United States. Whereas the domestic context has been explored (Chen et al., 2023; Jerit & Zhao, 2020), the intersection of partisanship and conspiracy groups as conduits for cross-national misinformation flow deserves further investigation.

Second, our findings reemphasize that an IP address is not a reliable criterion for attributing foreign intervention.  Previous studies on Chinese cyber armies show that they use a VPN for their activities on Twitter (now X) (Wang et al., 2020) and Facebook (Frenkel, 2023). Commonly known as the Reddit of Taiwan, PTT is a public forum in Taiwan that by default contains the IP address of the poster. Our analysis of PTT located a group of accounts with US IP addresses that have the same activity pattern as other Taiwan-based accounts. Therefore, it is likely that these accounts use VPN to hide their geolocation. Our results provide additional evidence that this VPN strategy also appears on secondary and localized social media platforms. Our results suggest that the analysis of the originating location of misinformation should not be based entirely on IP addresses.

Third, our findings show that text is far from the only format used in the spread of misinformation. A considerable amount of misinformation identified on Facebook is spread through links (47%), videos (21%), and photos (15%). These items may echo each other’s content or even feature cross-platform flow. Proper tools are needed to extract and juxtapose content from different types of media so that researchers can have a holistic analysis of the spread and development of misinformation (Tucker et al., 2018). Such tools are urgent since mainstream social media has adopted and highly encouraged short videos—a crucial area for researchers to assess how misinformation spreads across platforms in the upcoming year of elections. This understanding is also important for fact-check agencies because they must prepare for collecting and reviewing information on various topics found in multiple media types across platforms. Crowdsourcing, data science, expert inputs, and international collaboration are all needed to deal with multi-format misinformation environments.

With prior studies showing that the aggregated fact checks (known as wisdom of the crowds) perform on par with expert ratings (see Arechar et al., 2023; Martel et al., 2023), our case study also evidences how crowdsourcing and LLM approaches can not only quickly fact-check but also summarize larger narrative trends. In Taiwan, this takes form of the CoFacts open dataset, which we use to identify misinformation narratives. CoFacts is a project initiated by g0v (pronounced “gov zero”), a civic hacktivism community in Taiwan that started in 2012. CoFacts started as a fact-checking ChatBot that circumvents the closed nature of chatroom apps, where users can forward suspicious messages or integrate the ChatBot into private rooms. These narratives are then sent to a database. Individual narratives are subsequently reviewed by more than 2,000 volunteers, including teachers, doctors, students, engineers, and retirees (Haime, 2022). As a citizen-initiated project, it is not affiliated with any government entity or party.

Crucially, these reviews provide valuable labels that are used to train AI models and fine-tune LLMs. The dataset is available open source on the popular deep-learning platform HuggingFace. Just as AI and automation can be used to spread misinformation (Chang, 2023; Chang & Ferrara, 2022; Ferrara et al., 2020; Monaco & Woolley, 2022), it can also help combat “fake news” through human-AI collaboration.

Finding 1: The primary form of misinformation  is narratives that attack international relations with the United States (henceforth referred to as US-skepticism), specifically referencing the economy, health policy, the threat of war through Ukraine, and other U.S. domestic issues.

The status quo between China and Taiwan is marked by Taiwan’s self-identification as a sovereign state, which is in contrast to China’s view of Taiwan as part of its territory under the “One China” policy. As brief context, China has claimed Taiwan as its territory since 1949, but the United States has helped maintain the status quo and peace after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. After democratization in 1987, Taiwan’s politics have been dominated by a clear blue-green division. The blue camp is led by Kuomintang (Nationalist Party, KMT hereafter), the founding party of the Republic of China (ROC, the formal name of Taiwan’s government based on its constitution) who was defeated by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and retreated to Taiwan in 1949. The green camp is led by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which pursues revising the ROC Constitution and changing the country’s name to Taiwan. The political cleavage between the blue and green camps is dictated by Taiwan’s relationship with the PRC and the United States. The blue camp’s position is that the PRC and ROC are under civil war but belong to the same Chinese nation, and thus the blue camp appreciates military support from the United States while enhancing economic and cultural cooperation with the PRC. The green camp believes that the necessary conditions for Taiwan to be free and independent are to stand firmly with the United States and maintain distance from the PRC. After 2020, the two major camps’ insufficient attention to domestic and social issues caused the rise of nonpartisans and a third party, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP or the white camp), which strategically avoids discussing foreign policies. In the 2024 election, the ruling DPP party (green) was reelected with 40% of votes for the third consecutive presidency (from 2016 to 2028), while KMT (blue) and TPP (white) received 33% and 26% of votes, respectively.

The U.S. “One China” policy since 1979 indicates that the United States opposes any change to the status quo unless it is solved peacefully. This has motivated the PRC to persuade Taiwanese citizens to support unification using misinformation targeted at China-friendly political groups, as the cost of unification would be greatly reduced if sufficient Taiwanese citizens opposed U.S. military intervention. This history between the United States and Taiwan serves as the foundation of US-skepticism. In the literature, US-skepticism in Taiwan is composed of two key psychological elements: trust and motivation (Wu & Lin, 2019; Wu, 2023). First, many Taiwanese no longer trust the United States after the United States switched diplomatic ties from Taiwan (ROC) to the PRC in 1979. Many blue-camp supporters doubt the commitment of the United States to send troops should China invade, per the Taiwan Relations Act (Wu & Lin, 2019). Second, Taiwanese citizens question Taiwan’s role as a proxy in a potential war with China instead of sincerely protecting democracy and human rights in Taiwan (Wu, 2023).

The CoFacts dataset contains 140,314 articles submitted by Line users, which are then fact-checked by volunteers as rumor (47%), not a rumor (21%), not an article (19%), and opinion (13%). Here, rumor is synonymous with misinformation. Using the CoFacts dataset, we trained a BERTopic model to identify 34 forms of misinformation and then ranked them by their overlap with the word “elections” in Mandarin Chinese (George & Sumathy, 2023; Nguyen et al., 2020). Table 1 shows the top nine narratives.

Many of these narratives are directly related to political parties or the democratic process. For instance, the highest-ranked topic is attacking the incumbent party (the DPP) at 18.1%, which contains 2,371 total posts. The subsequent misinformation topics focus on policy issues and specific narratives—international relations, issues of marriage and birth rate, vaccines, nuclear energy, biometrics, egg imports, and the war in Ukraine. These are known cleavage issues and overlap with the eight central concerns during the election cycle—economic prosperity, cross-strait affairs, wealth distribution, political corruption, national security, social reform/stability, and environmental protection (Achen & Wang, 2017; Achen & Wang, 2019; Chang & Fang, 2023).

We focus on the third type of misinformation, which is the relationship between Taiwan, the United States, and China. US-skepticism is not only the largest at 10,826 individual posts, but one flagged by journalists, policymakers, and politicians as one of the most crucial themes. This is a relatively new phenomenon in terms of proportion, which aims to sow distrust toward the United States (“China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation,” 2023). In contrast, questioning the fairness of process (i.e. ballot numbers) and policy positions (i.e. gay marriage) are common during elections. However, US-skeptical misinformation diverges in that there is no explicit political candidate or party targeted. By sampling the topic articles within this category and validating using an LLM-summarizer through the ChatGPT API, we identified three specific narratives:

(a) The United States and the threat of war: Ukraine intersects frequently in this topic, with videos of direct military actions. Example: “Did you hear former USA military strategist Jack Keane say the Ukrainian war is an investment. The USA spends just $66,000,000,000 and can make Ukraine and Russia fight…  Keane then mentions Taiwan is the same, where Taiwanese citizens are an ‘investment’ for Americans to fight a cheap war. The USA is cold and calculating, without any actual intent to help Taiwan!”

(b) Economic atrophy due to fiscal actions by the United States: These narratives focus on domestic policy issues in Taiwan such as minimum wage and housing costs. Example: “The USA printed 4 trillion dollars and bought stocks everywhere in the world, including Taiwan, and caused inflation and depressed wages. Be prepared!”

(c) Vaccine supply and the United States: While some narratives focus on the efficacy of vaccines, several describe the United States intentionally limiting supply during the pandemic. Example: “Taiwanese Dr. Lin is a leading scientist at Moderna, yet sells domestically at $39 per two doses, $50 to Israel. Taiwan must bid at least $60! The United States clearly does not value Taiwan.”

These narratives reveal a new element to US-skepticism: state capacity. As previously mentioned, state capacity is defined as whether a state is capable of mobilizing its resources to realize its goal. The Ukraine war and vaccine supply narratives both question the United States’ motivations in foreign policies and perceived trustworthiness. Meanwhile, the economic atrophy narrative is based on the United States’ domestic budgetary deficit and downstream impact on Taiwanese economy. These narratives frame U.S. state capacity as declining and imply that the United States could no longer realize any other commitment due to its lack of resources and capacity. The goal of such a narrative is to lower the Taiwanese audience’s belief that the United States will help. But such a narrative does not include keywords of its target group (e.g., Taiwan) nor the PCR’s goal (e.g., unification) and only works through framing and priming as an example of sharp power. 

The specific focus of misinformation narratives related to the United States is composed of Ukraine (28.8%), the economy and fiscal policies (33.1%), technology (25.2%), and vaccine supply (9.9%). Misinformation related to state capacity takes up approximately 52.4%, more than half of all narratives (see Figure A1, part a in the Appendix). In all narratives, political parties are only referenced 27.8% of the time with the DPP the primary target (26.2%), which is almost half of the proportion for state capacity. China is only mentioned in tandem with the United States in 38.4% of the posts (see Figure A1, part b in the Appendix).

Finding 2: Temporal and spatial evidence suggests VPN-based coordination, focused on U.S. issues and addresses.

Once we identified the top misinformation narratives using Line, we investigated information operations or coordination. Line is one of Taiwan’s most popular communication apps featuring chatrooms (similar to WhatsApp), with 83% usage. One limitation of Line is that although we can analyze message content, Line chatrooms can be seen as conversations behind “closed doors”—platforms cannot impose content moderation and researchers have no access to the users themselves nor to the private chatroom in which users engage with misinformation (Chang et al., 2020). PTT, on the other hand, provides a public forum-like environment in which users can interact. Figure 1 shows the co-occurrence network of users who post comments under the same forum. Each circle (node) represents a user who posts on PTT. If two users make mutual comments on more than 200 posts, then they are connected (form a tie). Intuitively, this means if two users are connected or “close” to each other by mutual connections, then they are likely coordinating or have extremely similar behaviors. The placement of the users reflects this and is determined by their connections.

Using the Louvain algorithm (Traag, 2015), a common method to identify communities on social networks, five communities emerged from our dataset. Each community is colored separately, with clear clusters, except for teal which is more integrated. In particular, the yellow cluster is significantly separate from the others. This means they share significant activity amongst their own community, but less so with other communities. This suggests premeditated coordination rather than organic discussion, as the users would have to target the same post with high frequency. Prior studies have shown analyzing temporal patterns can provide insight into information operations. Specifically, overseas content farms often follow a regular cadence, posting content before peak hours in Taiwan on Twitter (Wang et al., 2020) and YouTube (Hsu & Lin, 2023).

To better understand the temporal dynamics on PTT, we plotted the distribution of posts and comments over a 24-hour period. Specifically, we focused on the top two countries by volume—Taiwan and the United States. Figure 2, part a shows the time of posting. Taiwan’s activity increases from 6 in the morning until it peaks at noon (when people are on lunch break), then steadily declines into the night. In contrast, posts from the United States peak at midnight and 8 a.m. Taipei time, which corresponds to around noon and 8 p.m. in New York, respectively. This provides an organic baseline as to when we might expect people to post.

However, in Figure 2, part b, while the distribution for Taiwan (blue) remains unchanged, the peak for the United States (orange) occurs at the same time as Taiwan. One explanation is that users are responding to posts in Taiwan. The second is that users in Asia—potentially China—are using a VPN to appear as if they are in the United States. This coincides with a report by Meta Platforms that found large numbers of CCP-operated Facebook accounts and subsequently removed them (Frenkel, 2023).

The more curious issue is when considering the activity of the yellow group from Figure 1, the temporal pattern (green) shows a sharp increase in activity at 10 a.m., which then coincides with both the peaks for Taiwan (12) and the United States (22). The sudden burst of activity is consistent with prior findings on content farms from China, where posting behavior occurs when content farm workers clock in regularly for work (Wang et al., 2020). While it is difficult to prove the authenticity of these accounts, the structural and temporal aspects suggest coordination. Figure A2 in the appendix shows further evidence of coordination through the frequency distribution of counts for co-occurring posts. For the US-based group, a distribution akin to a power law appears, commonly found within social systems (Adamic & Huberman, 2000; Chang et al., 2023; Clauset et al., 2009). In contrast, the coordinated group features a significantly heavier tail, with a secondary, “unnatural,” peak at around 15 co-occurrences.

To better understand the content of these groups, Table A1 shows the summary of comments of each group and the originating post, using a large-language model for abstractive summarization (see Methods). We report the top points for comments and posts in Table A1. The coordinated community focuses on businessman Terry Gou, who considered running as a blue-leaning independent. The comments attack the incumbent DPP and their stance toward foreign policy. One popular post features President Tsai’s controversial meeting with Kevin McCarthy, then the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. When a journalist asked McCarthy if he would “invite President Tsai to Congress… or… Washington,” McCarthy replied, “I don’t have any invitation out there right now. Today we were able to meet her as she transits through America, I thought that was very productive.” While this was positively framed, the title of the post itself was translated as “McCarthy will not invite Tsai to the United States” (Doomdied, 2023). This takes on a common tactic in misinformation where statements are intentionally distorted to produce negative framings of a particular candidate.

Comments from U.S. IP addresses between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. focus on the potential alliance between the KMT and TPP. These posts are KMT-leaning with criticism toward both Lai and Ko, who are two oppositional candidates to the KMT. Some users argue that while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a negative force, the United States is not automatically a positive force, as the United States does not explicitly support Taiwan’s international recognition or economic integration. In general, both posts and comments express that Taiwan should not rely too heavily on either China or the United States. This echoes the element of trust in the US-skepticism from the historical experience between ROC and the United States.

Both the U.S.-based and coordinated groups appear as blue-leaning audiences. What differentiates the first and second case is clear evidence of misinformation in the former through inaccurate framing. While US-skepticism may be a valid political stance, if the ambient information environment contains inaccurate information, then the democratic deliberative process is at risk. The case of US-skepticism is also one where stance and truth-value are often conflated, which may influence the process of voter deliberation.

Finding 3: Misinformation is most common among pan-Blue and ROC identity groups on social media and is spread through visual media. These groups share themes with conspiracy groups in Western countries.

Lastly, we considered the groups in which misinformation is common and the way misinformation is delivered. To do so, we queried CrowdTangle using the titles and links from the CoFacts dataset specific to US-Taiwan relations. This yielded 4,632 posts from public groups. Table 2 shows the groups ranked by the total number of misinformation articles identified.

There are two themes to these groups. First, they are often pan-Blue media outlets ( CTI News ), politician support groups ( Wang Yo-Zeng Support Group ), and ROC national identity groups ( I’m an ROC Fan ). The second type is somewhat unexpected but extremely interesting; it consists of groups that espouse freedom of speech ( Support CTI News and Free Speech ) and truth-seeking ( Truth Engineering Taiwan Graduate School ), topics often regarded as conspiracies. These topics are reminiscent of those in the West, such as the rhetoric around “fake news” and “truthers,” and paint a transnational picture of how misinformation coalesces. The second largest group is Trump for the World , which supports a politician known to court conspiracy theory groups such as QAnon. These groups also serve as the “capacity” element of US-skepticism, implying that the United States is in trouble for its domestic issues and is not a reliable partner to Taiwan. Furthermore, these groups have sizable followings—ranging from 8,279 to 43,481. We show the mean, as the total number of members fluctuated over our one-year period.

Lastly, we found that the majority of misinformation contains some form of multimedia, such as video (36%) or photos (15%), as shown in Figure 3, part a. Only 1% is a direct status. This may be due to CrowdTangle not surfacing results from normal users, but the ratio of multimedia to text is quite high. This aligns with extant studies showing the growth of multimodal misinformation (Micallef et al., 2022) and also user behavior in algorithm optimization (Chang et al., 2022; Dhanesh et al., 2022; Pulley, 2020)—posts with multimedia tend to do better than posts with only text.

Moreover, 47% contain a URL. Figure 3, part b shows one of the top domains containing misinformation (beyondnews852.com) after filtering out common domains such as YouTube. The site is named “Beyond News Net” and is visually formatted like a legitimate news site to increase the perceived credibility of information (Flanagin & Metzger, 2007; Wölker & Powell, 2021). The ability to rapidly generate legitimate-looking news sites as a tactic for misinformation may become a challenge for both media literacy and technical approaches to fight misinformation.

We utilized three unique misinformation datasets—Line, Facebook, and PTT—with dates between 01/12/2023 and 11/10/2023. The CoFacts dataset includes 140,193 received messages, 96,432 that have been labeled as misinformation, facts, opinion, or not relevant. Of this, 41,564 entries are misinformation. The CoFacts dataset is not only methodologically useful but exemplifies a crowd-sourced approach to fact-checking misinformation as an actual platform intervention. Moreover, it is public and transparent, allowing for replicability. Using a subset of articles and posts containing misinformation, we trained a topic model using BERTopic (Grootendorst, 2022). On a high level, using BERTopic involves five steps: 1) extract embeddings using a sentence transformer, 2) reduce dimensionality, 3) cluster reduced embeddings, 4) tokenize topics, and 5) create topic representation.

We conducted several trials, experimenting with parameters such as different sentence transformer models and minimum cluster sizes for the HDBSCAN clustering algorithm. The model used to extract topics for this paper utilized paraphrase-multilingual-MiniLM-L12-v2 for our sentence embedding model (Reimers & Gurevych, 2019), had a minimum cluster size of 80 for the clustering algorithm, and used tokenize_zh for our tokenizer. Our model yielded 34 topics. We also trained a model based on latent-Dirichlet allocation (LDA) (Blei et al., 2003), but found the BERTopic results to be more interpretable. We then labeled all messages to indicate whether they included reference to the election or not, and ranked the topics by their election-related percentage to measure electoral salience. For our subsequent analysis, we focused on topic 3 (see Table 1), which captures general discourse about the relations between the United States, China, and Taiwan.

The Facebook dataset was extracted using CrowdTangle. We queried posts containing links and headlines from topic 3. We also cross-sectioned these links and headlines with a general election-based dataset with 911,510 posts. This yielded a total of 4,632 of posts shared on public Facebook groups and 227,125 engagements. Due to privacy concerns, it is not possible to obtain private posts from users on their own Facebook timelines, private groups, or messages. However, public groups are a good proxy for general discourse, in addition to providing ethnic or partisan affiliations via their group name (Chang & Fang, 2023). In other words, while CoFacts provides the misinformation narratives, Facebook public groups give insight into the targets of misinformation.

Lastly, we scraped PTT using Selenium. Commonly known as the Reddit of Taiwan, PTT is unique in that it contains the IP address of the poster, though this could be shrouded by proxy farms or VPNs. First, we scraped all posts that contained reference to the United States and the election, which yielded 22,576 posts and 1,983,396 comments, all with IP addresses, addresses provided by PTT, and the time of posting. We expanded the scope of this analysis as we were interested in the general discourse directly related to the United States, and the geospatial and temporal patterns that arose. 

Due to the large amount of data, there are three general approaches we could have taken—local extractive summarization with LLMs, local abstractive summarization with LLMs, and server-based abstractive summarization (such as ChatGPT). Local extractive summarization is a method that embeds each of the input sentences and then outputs five of the most representative sentences. However, this approach is often too coarse, as it returns sentences with the highest centrality but does not summarize general themes across all the different comments or posts. On the other hand, abstractive summarization works by considering the entire context by ingesting many documents and then summarizing across them. This provides a more generalized characterization of key themes. However, the input size is the primary bottleneck as large-language models can only ingest so many tokens (or words), which also need to be held in memory—the case for our project, as we are summarizing more than 10,000 posts.

To circumvent these issues, we sampled the maximum number of posts or comments that could fit within 16,000 tokens and then made a query call using the ChatGPT API. This provided a summary based on a probabilistic sample of the posts and comments.

• / Elections

Cite this Essay

Chang, H. C. H., Wang, A. H. E., & Fang Y. S. (2024). US-skepticism and transnational conspiracy in the 2024 Taiwanese presidential election. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review . https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-144

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No funding has been received to conduct this research.

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

No human subjects were included in this study.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original author and source are properly credited.

Data Availability

All materials needed to replicate this study are available via the Harvard Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/5SPGDY . The Cofacts database is available on HuggingFace and Facebook via CrowdTangle per regulation of Meta Platforms.

Acknowledgements

H. C. would like to thank Brendan Nyhan, Sharanya Majumder, John Carey, and Adrian Rauschfleish for their comments. H. C. would like to thank the Dartmouth Burke Research Initiation Award.

All authors contributed equally.