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Essay Papers Writing Online

A comprehensive guide to essay writing.

Essay writing is a crucial skill that students need to master in order to succeed academically. Whether you’re a high school student working on a history paper or a college student tackling a critical analysis essay, having a solid understanding of the essay writing process is essential.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the essential tips and tricks that will help you improve your essay writing skills. From generating ideas and organizing your thoughts to crafting a strong thesis statement and polishing your final draft, we’ve got you covered.

Not only that, but we’ll also provide you with useful templates that you can use as a framework for your essays. These templates will help you structure your writing, stay focused on your main argument, and ensure that your essay flows smoothly from one point to the next.

The Ultimate Essay Writing Guides

Essay writing can be a challenging task for many students, but with the right guidance and tips, you can improve your writing skills and produce high-quality essays. In this ultimate guide, we will provide you with valuable advice, tricks, and templates to help you excel in your essay writing endeavors.

1. Understand the Prompt: Before you start writing your essay, make sure you fully understand the prompt or question. Analyze the requirements and key points that need to be addressed in your essay.

2. Create an Outline: Organize your ideas and thoughts by creating a detailed outline for your essay. This will help you structure your arguments and ensure a logical flow of information.

3. Research Thoroughly: Conduct extensive research on your topic to gather relevant information and evidence to support your arguments. Use credible sources and cite them properly in your essay.

4. Write Clearly and Concisely: Avoid using jargon or complex language in your essay. Write in a clear and concise manner to convey your ideas effectively to the reader.

5. Proofread and Edit: Before submitting your essay, make sure to proofread and edit it carefully. Check for grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and ensure that your essay flows cohesively.

By following these ultimate essay writing guides, you can enhance your writing skills and produce outstanding essays that will impress your instructors and peers. Practice regularly and seek feedback to continuously improve your writing abilities.

Tips for Crafting an A+ Essay

1. Understand the Assignment: Before you start writing, make sure you fully understand the assignment guidelines and requirements. If you have any doubts, clarify them with your instructor.

2. Conduct Thorough Research: Gather relevant sources and information to support your arguments. Make sure to cite your sources properly and use credible sources.

3. Create a Strong Thesis Statement: Your thesis statement should clearly outline the main point of your essay and guide your readers on what to expect.

4. Organize Your Ideas: Create an outline to organize your thoughts and ensure a logical flow of ideas in your essay.

5. Write Clearly and Concisely: Use clear, concise language and avoid unnecessary jargon or complex sentences. Be direct and to the point.

6. Revise and Edit: Always proofread your essay for grammar and spelling errors. Revise your work to ensure coherence and clarity.

7. Seek Feedback: Ask a peer or instructor to review your essay and provide constructive feedback for improvement.

8. Use Proper Formatting: Follow the formatting guidelines provided by your instructor, such as font size, margins, and citation style.

9. Stay Focused: Keep your essay focused on the main topic and avoid going off on tangents. Stick to your thesis statement.

10. Practice, Practice, Practice: The more you practice writing essays, the better you will get at it. Keep practicing and refining your writing skills.

Tricks to Improve Your Writing Skills

Improving your writing skills can be a challenging but rewarding process. Here are some tricks to help you become a better writer:

1. Read widely: Reading a variety of genres and styles can help you develop your own voice and writing style.

2. Practice regularly: The more you write, the better you will become. Set aside time each day to practice writing.

3. Get feedback: Share your writing with others and ask for constructive criticism. Feedback can help you identify areas for improvement.

4. Study grammar and punctuation: Good writing requires a solid understanding of grammar and punctuation rules. Take the time to study and practice these essential skills.

5. Edit and revise: Writing is a process, and editing is an important part of that process. Take the time to edit and revise your work to improve clarity and coherence.

6. Experiment with different writing techniques: Try experimenting with different writing techniques, such as using metaphors, similes, or descriptive language, to enhance your writing.

7. Stay inspired: Find inspiration in the world around you. Whether it’s nature, art, or literature, draw inspiration from your surroundings to fuel your writing.

By following these tricks and practicing regularly, you can improve your writing skills and become a more confident and effective writer.

Step-by-Step Essay Writing Templates

When it comes to writing an essay, having a clear and structured template can be incredibly helpful. Here are some step-by-step essay writing templates that you can use to guide you through the process:

• Introduction: Start your essay with a hook to grab the reader’s attention. Provide some background information on the topic and end with a thesis statement that outlines the main argument of your essay.
• Body Paragraphs: Each body paragraph should focus on a single point that supports your thesis. Start with a topic sentence that introduces the main idea of the paragraph, provide evidence to support your point, and then analyze the evidence to show how it relates back to your thesis.
• Conclusion: Summarize the main points of your essay and restate your thesis in a new way. Avoid introducing new information in the conclusion and instead focus on tying together all the points you have made throughout the essay.

Expert Advice for Writing Top-Notch Essays

When it comes to writing a top-notch essay, it’s essential to follow expert advice to ensure your work stands out. Here are some key tips to help you elevate your writing:

1. Start with a strong thesis statement that clearly outlines your main argument.

2. Conduct thorough research to support your points with credible sources.

3. Organize your thoughts logically and ensure your essay flows smoothly from one point to the next.

4. Use a variety of sentence structures and vocabulary to keep your writing engaging.

5. Proofread and edit your essay carefully to eliminate errors and refine your arguments.

By following these expert tips, you can take your essay writing skills to the next level and produce work that is both informative and compelling.

Resources to Enhance Your Essay Writing Process

When it comes to improving your essay writing skills, there are a variety of resources available to help you enhance your process. Here are some valuable resources that can aid you in becoming a more effective and efficient writer:

• Writing Guides: There are countless writing guides and books that offer tips, tricks, and strategies for improving your writing skills. Whether you’re looking to enhance your grammar, structure, or argumentation, these guides can provide valuable insights.
• Online Writing Communities: Joining online writing communities can be a great way to connect with other writers, receive feedback on your work, and engage in writing challenges and prompts. Websites like Writing.com and Wattpad are popular platforms for writers to share their work and receive critiques.
• Writing Workshops and Courses: Participating in writing workshops and courses can help you hone your craft and develop your writing skills. Whether you prefer in-person workshops or online courses, there are many options available to suit your needs and schedule.
• Writing Apps and Tools: Utilizing writing apps and tools can streamline your writing process and help you stay organized. Tools like Grammarly can assist with grammar and spelling checks, while apps like Scrivener can help you organize your research and ideas.
• Libraries and Writing Centers: Visiting your local library or university writing center can provide access to valuable resources, such as writing guides, research materials, and writing tutors who can offer personalized feedback and support.

By taking advantage of these resources, you can enhance your essay writing process and become a more skilled and confident writer.

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10 apps that write essays for you + how to use them.

Writing essays can be hours of long work reading and writing. To help you hand your paper in faster, we’ve compiled the top 10 apps that write essays for you.

Published on Jun 04, 2024

By Krista Doyle

Writing essays is a skill you need to pass many high school classes and even college or university courses. However, not everyone has the greatest writing skills, and even then, great writers sometimes don’t have the time to write everything. 

Plagiarism is another common concern when in school and should be taken seriously, considering it can get you kicked out of education. Instead of paying a hefty fee for essay writing services, take advantage of the best essay writing apps available to help you score your next A+. 

Why software can help improve your essay writing

Using software, especially AI-powered platforms, can help streamline the writing process by offering features like templates, structured frameworks, content generation as well as grammar and spell-check.

Essay writing software allows you to organize your thoughts more effectively and often in a distraction-free work environment. They can also aid in enhancing the overall quality of your writing by offering savvy suggestions for improving sentence or paragraph structure, vocabulary usage and flow within your essays.

Benefits of essay writing software

• Improved Organization: Essay writing software helps users organize their thoughts more effectively, creating a structured framework for their writing tasks.
• Enhanced Productivity: These tools provide a distraction-free work environment, allowing writers to focus solely on their essays without any interruptions.
• Content Generation: Some platforms like Jasper assist in generating content ideas, providing valuable insights and suggestions to kickstart the writing process.
• Vocabulary Enhancement: By offering suggestions for alternative word choices, essay writing software helps enrich the vocabulary used in your essays.
• Structural Guidance: These tools provide feedback on sentence and paragraph structure, helping users improve the overall coherence and flow of their writing.
• Quality Improvement: Essay writing software contributes to enhancing the overall quality of your work by offering valuable tips and recommendations to refine your writing.

Elements of an A+ essay you can’t ignore

• Clear Thesis Statement: An A+ essay must have a strong and clear thesis statement that presents the main argument or point of view.
• Comprehensive Research: Extensive research with credible sources is crucial for providing in-depth analysis and supporting arguments effectively.
• Proper Structure and Formatting: The essay should have a well-organized structure with a logical flow of ideas from introduction to conclusion.
• Critical Analysis: Demonstrating critical thinking skills by evaluating information, presenting counter arguments, and offering insightful perspectives.
• Originality: Strive for original ideas and unique perspectives to set your essay apart and showcase intellectual creativity.
• Effective Use of Evidence: Incorporate relevant evidence and examples to strengthen arguments and demonstrate a deep understanding of the topic.
• Meticulous Proofreading: Pay attention to grammar, punctuation, spelling, and overall writing mechanics to ensure clarity and coherence in your essay.

How to write a strong essay thesis

To write a strong essay thesis statement, you should begin by clearly identifying the main topic or argument of your essay. Your thesis statement should be concise and specific, providing a roadmap for the reader on what to expect in the rest of the paper.

Make sure your thesis is arguable and not a statement of fact. Next, consider the key points you want to make in support of your thesis. These points will guide the structure of your essay and should be logically organized for a coherent flow of ideas.

The final step in writing a strong essay thesis is to revise and refine it. This step is crucial because it allows you to improve the clarity, coherence, and overall effectiveness of your thesis statement.

During revision, pay attention to the language you have used and make sure it is precise and specific. Consider whether your thesis accurately reflects the main argument or topic of your essay.

The top 10 apps that write essays for you

We’ve found the top online apps and websites to help you decide on your thesis, collect your research, and help you through the paper writing process. Some of these apps are AI-based and can help you with the writing process, while others will help you improve your productivity and ability to gather information effectively.

• Wordtune Read
• Essay AI Lab
• My Assignment Help Essay Typer
• Paper Typer

Jasper is an AI writing tool with the power to write essays for you. The templates library is robust, allowing you to choose from many different styles and formats. Writing your next essay is as easy as inputting key information and clicking the ‘Generate now’ button!

From the dashboard, just ask Jasper for help writing an essay. From here, you can input all the important details of your essay, including its intended target audience (ie. college professors). This is key for optimizing academic writing that will be published online. 

In the screenshot below, we asked Jasper for help on an essay about writing A+ essays. We shared some content information as well as our desired tone. Jasper delivered!

• Optimizes written content for ranking on Google
• Finishes your sentences for you
• Has a Jumpstart learning center to learn even better ways to use Jasper
• Includes over 50+ templates for different writing needs
• Rated 5/5 stars in over 1000 reviews
• Paid membership required

Pricing: Jasper offers several flexible pricing plans ranging from the $39/mo Creator plan to custom Business plans for an enterprise-level solution.

2. Papers Owl

This quick thesis statement generator makes the most out of the first few sentences of your essay. Add in your information and the AI generates a paragraph to introduce your essay.

• Online website tool
• No registration required
• Receive three outputs each time
• Requires that you know your thesis already — which requires prior research
• You need one to two supporting statements already

Pricing: Free

Coggle is a mind mapping app. These visual diagrams help you decide on your essay topic, organize all your points, and know which ideas are linked to each other. Coggle is available for iOS and Android devices and as a Google Chrome extension.

• Available as an online website tool, browser extension, or app
• Collaborate with up to three other people
• Make unlimited mind maps
• Download your map as a PDF or image
• Most maps will be public
• Requires registration
• The free version has no custom line paths

Pricing: Free forever. Paid plans start at $5/month.

4.  Wordtune Read

Wordtune’s app Wordtune Read reduces your reading time by summarizing paragraphs in long articles and essays. This example shows how Wordtune Read turns a long academic research paper into a three-minute read by summarizing essential points on the right.

• Summarizes long articles and documents
• Allows users to upload a document or link to a research article
• Users can export the summarized points as a Word document
• Available as a Google Chrome extension
• Can only export as a Word document

Pricing: Basic version is free, but there are options to upgrade. Paid plans start at $9.99/month.

5. Essay AI Lab

Essay AI Lab searches the internet for relevant information for you and conveniently puts it all together in an essay. All you have to do is provide the guiding title and prompt. 

Essay AI Lab’s writing process allows you to choose each paragraph in your essay from tens of samples. This word processing tool is excellent for finding resources while writing your essay.

• Includes citations and research references in APA or MLA format
• You choose each paragraph for your essay
• Paraphrases to eliminate any plagiarism concerns
• Completely free to use
• Requires registration to save or download your work
• Rephrasing can change word meaning
• Some citations come from blogs and news sources

6. My Assignment Help Essay Typer

This word processing tool is very similar to Essay AI Lab but has a few more benefits. In addition to providing pre-written paragraphs on your topic, you can hire an expert at any point to jump in and help you finish your paper.

• Includes other free tools like a summary generator and paraphrasing tool
• App available for iPhone or iPad and Android devices
• Works best as a research tool
• Reviews claim they do not give refunds for failed services

Pricing: Free 

7. Paper Typer

Paper Typer writes you an entire essay in seconds after you tell it the subject of your paper. This AI essay writer app creates appropriate formatting for your essay as well. It offers headers and subheaders to write the best essay possible.

• Entire paper in seconds
• Unlimited sessions and edits
• You can edit citations on the same site
• Covers a wide range of information on the topic
• Only works for simple subject topics
• Fact-check needed to ensure proper citations
• Edits required to prevent plagiarism

Pricing: Free for students.

8. Wordtune

Wordtune upgrades your academic papers with professional writing using AI algorithms. This text editor uses AI to rewrite sentences and paragraphs up to 280 characters long. 

This tool works best to polish introductory or concluding sentences or summarize a long point. You can upgrade to the Premium plan to make your sentences more formal, more casual, longer, or shorter. 

• Designed to improve the quality of your essays
• Free version available
• Has extensive customer support
• Limited free membership
• Won’t write essays for you; only improves pre-written text

Pricing: Free online. Premium plans start at $9.99/month for unlimited use.

9. AI Writer

AI Writer is another fully AI essay writer. Write your title or headline on the homepage, sign-up, and receive access to an original draft, citations, and relevant SEO-friendly content. 

• Free 1-week trial
• Optimizes content for SEO
• Has a 2-minute turn-around time
• Saves up to 50% of your time compared to starting from scratch
• Writes in English only
• Membership required
• Does not use all-academic sources
• Reviewers say the essays are not high-quality

Pricing: Paid plans start at $29 per month.

10. Readable

Readable is a web-based text analyzer that helps to improve your writing’s readability score. Readability refers to how complex your writing is. For example, college essays typically have a higher readability score than high school essays. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is the academic standard for determining readability, which Readable uses in their analysis.

Improving your readability score can lead to clearer writing and higher grades.  

• Offers a 7-day trial of ContentPro version
• Grades your paper
• Shares your word count as you write
• Analyzes the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
• Free version is very limited
• Requires an account to download your work

Pricing: There’s a free version. Paid plans start at $8/month.

Write A+ essays with Jasper

While there are several apps that write essays for you available in the market, Jasper stands out for several reasons. 

Our AI writing assistant was designed to be your writing partner. Instead of generating content from a template, Jasper is a “thinking” app. It draws on its knowledge of 10% of the internet and writes naturally — almost like a human would.

You can use Jasper’s Blog Post Outline template for outlining and the Long-Form Assistant for essay writing. You can also take advantage of the Blog Post Introduction and Blog Post Conclusion templates for starting and finishing strong. 

You will get 100% unique content with Jasper — zero plagiarism. You only have to think about proofreading, using a spell-checker, or any final revisions.

What are you waiting for? Sign up for Jasper today.

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Krista Doyle

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Top 10 Apps That Write Essays for You in 2024 (Free & Paid)

Senior Content Marketing Manager

February 13, 2024

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You have a big research paper or essay due soon, and you’re looking for a way to save time and energy or enhance the way you write. You’re tired of staring at a blank page, hoping it’ll magically become your best assignment yet.

What you need is an app that writes essays for you.

There are lots of essay writing tools available for every possible use. Whether you need an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that helps you draft the outline, generate text for different sections, or improve your essay to make it sound better overall, you’re in luck.

In this guide, we’re sharing with you the 10 best essay-writing apps available today. Each one offers writers, students, and other essay writers of all kinds a better way to get started or finish your assignment.

Let’s explore the options for apps that write essays for you, and let’s start writing better essays together. ✔️

What Should You Look for in Apps That Write Essays for You?

3. writesonic, 4. essayailab, 6. sudowrite, 8. hyperwrite.ai, 9. ai-writer , 10. storylab.ai.

Like any type of essay writing service or product, not all of these apps are built the same. Some AI content tools are designed for research and outlining, while others excel at transforming your words into compelling thought pieces, arguments, or statements. 

As you consider which essay writing app is best for you, think about the following. 

• Use case: Is this app designed for essay writing? Or is it a more generic AI writing tool? 
• Features: Does the app have the research, writing, or proofreading features you need? Does it offer you even more options?
• Ease of use: Is the app easy to use? What’s the user experience like?
• Ratings and reviews: What do real-world users think of the app? 
• Language: Does the app only work in English? Can I write in another language or translate my essay?
• Pricing: Is there a free version of the app? Does it have an affordable or expensive monthly subscription cost?

These questions should lead you closer to the best app that writes essays or academic papers for you. Consider what matters most to you, which features you can live without, and what’s your number one priority for this app—then use our top 10 list to find your ideal match. 🔗

The 10 Best Apps That Write Essays for You to Use in 2024

With an ever-increasing number of AI writing tools coming into existence, it can be overwhelming to figure out which ones are worth trying. That’s why we’ve brought you our shortlist of the 10 best essay-writing apps for 2024. 

There’s something here for everyone—whether you want a dedicated essay writing tool, an AI tool that can assist with all types of writing or an all-in-one app that lets you do so much more than just improve your writing skills or optimize your assignment.

ClickUp may be known as a productivity and project management tool for businesses, but it’s also a great place for writers and students of any level. ClickUp provides you with a destination to store and work on your ideas, research, and writing—and features to prioritize your work throughout the process.

One of the best features for essay writing is ClickUp AI . Our new user-friendly AI writing assistant is tailored to your role, with a huge variety of use cases, tasks, and features, depending on how you want to use the app. Use ClickUp to assist with brainstorming essay or research paper topic ideas, summarizing your essay to write an impactful conclusion, or rewriting paragraphs so you sound more professional.

All the ideas and words you generate with our AI assistant live inside ClickUp Docs . Not only is this Microsoft Word and Google Docs alternative a great place to store notes and ideas, but it can become your personal wiki or repository for all your essay writing needs—one of our favorite productivity hacks . 

Store ideas, notes, citations, essay drafts, and interview notes in one place. Format your Docs, add images and colors, and personalize the experience so writing your essay is more fun.

If you’re not sure where to start, the Writing Guidelines Template by ClickUp is your go-to place to get clarity on how to write the best content. The template includes advice on being consistent across language, tone, and formatting so you can produce error-free, cohesive, and accurate content every time. 

With ClickUp AI, ClickUp Docs, and our comprehensive Template Library , ClickUp has everything you need to start writing your best essays yet. 🤩

ClickUp best features

• Store all your essay or assignment notes, drafts, and files in one place
• Invite mentors to collaborate with you or share real-time feedback within your Docs
• Use ClickUp AI to generate high-quality ideas, rephrase sentences, and create text for your essay
• Streamline your process and get inspiration with relevant templates
• Save time and work faster by using ClickUp to assist with research, writing, and as a focus app while you work

ClickUp limitations 

• With so many features and use cases, some users may need a while to explore all the possibilities of using ClickUp
• ClickUp AI is a new feature, so the functionality will grow and develop over time

ClickUp pricing

• Free Forever
• Unlimited: $5/month per user
• Business: $12/month per user
• Business Plus: $19/month per user
• Enterprise: Contact for pricing
• ClickUp AI is available on all paid plans for $5 per Workspace member per month

ClickUp ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (8,700+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.7/5 (3,800+ reviews) 

Frase is an AI content creation tool that combines writing and SEO research to create copy that’s easy to read and designed to rank in search engines. This AI writing software can pull background research and stats from search results, and the outlining tool makes organizing your thoughts into a coherent essay easier. 📝

Frase best features

• Source stats, research, and background information directly from search engines
• Create an outline with structured headings and sections
• Use AI to generate introductions, FAQs, headings, and more
• Write, edit, and share documents easily within Frase

Frase limitations 

• Frase is designed for individuals and agencies working on SEO copy, so some of the features may not be relevant for essay writing or academic writing
• Some users report that sometimes the text output can be repetitive on the essay-writing app

Frase pricing

• Solo: $14.99/month per user
• Basic: $44.99/month per user
• Team: $114.99/month for three users

Frase ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.9/5 (200+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.8/5 (300+ reviews) 

Bonus: Check out 7 Free Content Writing Templates for Faster Content Creation

Writesonic is a comprehensive copywriting and paraphrasing tool that gives you the features to write, edit, optimize, and improve your content writing—including essays. Writesonic’s feature list includes an AI writer, paraphrasing tool, text expander, article summarizer, and idea generator. 💡

Writesonic best features

• Get factual content with data pulled from top search results to help find the best essay and academic papers
• Upload documents to guide the tool on your unique style for a more personalized writing style
• Paraphrase your text or get a summary of your essay in one click
• Check your essay before you submit with a built-in spell checker, grammar checker, and plagiarism checker

Writesonic limitations

• Some users may run into issues with word count limits, especially for writing essays and longer assignments
• You may need to prompt multiple times to get longer responses, some users suggest

Writesonic pricing

• Unlimited: $20/month per user
• Business: From $19/month per user

Writesonic ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.8/5 (1,800+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.8/5 (1,800+ reviews) 

EssayAiLab is a free AI essay writer app that helps users find ideas, write essays, and edit for grammar before they submit. This dedicated app that writes essays for you has a range of niche features including Modern Language Association (MLA) and American Psychological Association (APA) citations and a hypersensitive plagiarism checker. 🔍

EssayAiLab best features

• Search through millions of credible results to surface the most relevant information when writing essays
• Find new ways to compose sentences with automated suggestions to speed up the writing process
• Check for issues with the built-in grammar checker and plagiarism checker
• Automatically generate MLA and APA citations in one click across the entire essay

EssayAiLab limitations 

• There aren’t many user reviews of EssayAiLab, so it’s hard to get an idea of what other users think about this free app
• This essay writer app is designed specifically for essay writing, so you may wish to explore other essay apps for other types of academic writing

EssayAiLab pricing

Essayailab ratings and reviews.

• Capterra: N/A

Jasper is one of the most well-known AI content writing tools available today. This popular tool specializes in generating short-form and long-form copy that’s aligned with your brand—which is a plus point for users who want to compose multiple essays that sound like them.

Jasper’s features include an AI writer, a chatbot, and a template library. Easily make suggestions for word count or for optimizing academic writing in a specific style or tone.

Jasper best features

• Share documents to train the AI on your personal paper writing skills and style
• Access recent search data to check facts and add credibility
• Edit and optimize your essays so that they read professionally
• Check for any issues with a built-in plagiarism checker

Jasper limitations 

• Some users, especially students, may find the pricing model unaffordable
• Sometimes the outputs don’t always feel relevant, some users suggest
• No real free version compared to some other AI essay writer apps

Jasper pricing

• Creator: $39/month per user
• Teams: $99/month for three users
• Business: Contact for pricing

Jasper ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (1,200+ reviews)

Sudowrite is an AI writing tool that bills itself as a writing companion. This tool is designed for creative writers and authors working on stories and scripts, but many of its features—like autocomplete and rewrite—translate well to academic writing.

This essay-writing software also helps you hone in on your specific writing style for more clarity and readability—so you produce the best essay possible.

Sudowrite best features

• Automatically complete sentences and paragraphs i the writing app
• Use rewrite to add variety to your essay language and improve readability
• Get suggestions on replacement words to enhance the impact of your sentences
• Get feedback on how to improve your essay within the app

Sudowrite limitations 

• Sudowrite is built with creative writing in mind, so it may not be the best option for professional essay writers or business users
• As it’s a relatively new tool, there aren’t many reviews from real-world users yet
• Writing app has no real free version

Sudowrite pricing

• Hobby & Student: $10/month for 30,000 words
• Professional: $25/month for 90,000 words
• Max: $100/month for 300,000 words

Sudowrite ratings and reviews

Rytr is an AI-powered content writer and writing assistant that’s ideal for a variety of uses including business ideas, emails, cover letters, and essays. The platform asks you to choose a use case and add context, and it’ll create content based on your goals and prompts. ✏️

Rytr best features

• Choose from 40+ built-in use cases and templates
• Use scientific copywriting formulas to make your essays more persuasive
• Expand, reword, and polish sentences to make them read better
• Submit your essays without worry thanks to the built-in plagiarism checker

Rytr limitations 

• Some users report that the facts given can feel basic or repetitive compared to other apps that write essays
• The AI writer can cut off mid-sentence if you run out of credits, which can happen unexpectedly

Rytr pricing

• Saver: $9/month per user
• Unlimited: $29/month per user

Rytr ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (700+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (10+ reviews) 

HyperWrite.ai is an AI copywriting tool that blends research, writing, and personal AI assistance to create a useful tool for writers. Its features include a summarizing tool, an intro generator, a speech writer, and a universal translator. 💬

HyperWrite.ai best features

• Use AI to help you write an essay on any topic
• Generate a list of essay topic ideas before you start writing
• Rewrite content so that it sounds more powerful in enhances your writing ability
• Summarize text to automatically create summaries and conclusions

HyperWrite.ai limitations 

• There’s no built-in plagiarism checker, so you’ll need to use another app for this
• As a relatively new tool, there’s little social proof and few reviews about HyperWrite

HyperWrite.ai pricing

• Premium: $19.99/month per user
• Ultra: $44.99/month per user

HyperWrite.ai ratings and reviews

• G2: 5/5 (2 reviews)
• Capterra: N/A 

AI-Writer is a new AI writing tool that bills itself as “the only AI text generator built to be trusted.” This app focuses heavily on citation and transparency, which is a bonus for those writing essays or assignments. AI-Writer’s features include research, AI writing, verifiable citations, and text rewording. 📚

AI-Writer best features

• Automatically generate a full article draft or an entire essay draft in minutes
• Get citations for every source that AI-Writer pulls data or facts from
• Reword your text so that it sounds more professional or persuasive
• Automatically generate a list of references that you can include when you submit your essay

AI-Writer limitations 

• Like many AI essay writing apps, this one is designed with SEO copy in mind so the workflow may not feel relevant for essay writers
• Those with longer assignments may find the per-article word cap too small (especially for those who write essays regularly)

AI-Writer pricing

• Basic: $29/month per user
• Standard: $49/month for three users
• Power: $375/month for 10 users

AI-Writer ratings and reviews

• Capterra: 5/5 (1 review) 

StoryLab.ai is a comprehensive AI content marketing toolkit designed for marketing teams and agencies that want to boost engagement and revenue by creating content at volume for their content calendar . As part of this, the platform has a range of copy generators that can help you create a strong essay title, essay copy, and more. 📣

StoryLab.ai best features

• Generate introductions, titles, content ideas, and more
• Get unique outputs every time you run the generator
• Experiment with 13 different writing styles
• Available in 17+ languages

StoryLab.ai limitations 

• StoryLab.ai is designed for marketing teams, so essay and assignment writers may find the range of features distracting or unnecessary
• The product isn’t explained in as much detail as other AI writers, but there is a free plan you can experiment with

StoryLab.ai pricing

• Pro: $15/month per user
• Unlimited: $19/month per user

StoryLab.ai ratings and reviews

Ace your next assignment with the best essay writing apps.

There are lots of essay writing apps out there that claim to be the best, but we believe those in our shortlist live up to the title. Explore these apps that write essays for you, test some out, and find a new way to make your essay-writing process easier.

As you explore the apps above, we recommend prioritizing ClickUp. Our all-in-one app doesn’t just come with an AI writing tool—it’s a destination for all your notes, drafts, tasks, interviews, and files throughout the essay writing process.

Gather your thoughts, write your essay, make improvements, and more—all within one app.

Try ClickUp for free today to understand why it’s appreciated by so many writers and students. ✨

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Alex Birkett

11 Apps That Write Essays for You (and Improve Quality)

Last Updated on February 28, 2023 by Alex Birkett

Writing essays is a time-consuming task.

It requires research, structuring, formatting, and plenty of editing. As such, it’s no wonder that students often seek out help from external sources.

One of the most popular solutions in recent years are essay writing apps.

But what exactly are they? And do they work as advertised? Let’s dive into the details.

What Are Essay Writing Apps?

Essay writing apps are digital tools that help you to write better essays.

They typically come with features like spellcheckers, grammar checkers, and idea generators to help spur your writing process forward.

Some also offer pre-written content that you can use as a starting point for your own essay.

The idea is that these tools save you time and energy so you can focus on crafting great ideas instead of getting bogged down with tedious tasks like proofreading or finding research materials.

Do Essay Writing Apps Really Work?

The short answer is yes – but with some caveats.

While these apps can certainly be helpful in terms of providing assistance with proofreading and idea generation, they won’t be able to write entire essays for you from scratch like some people may believe.

Moreover, while some apps offer pre-written content that could be useful as a starting point for your essay, it’s important to remember that this isn’t an excuse to plagiarize or copy other people’s work without crediting them properly; if caught doing so, it could have serious consequences for your academic career.

What Are the Best Essay Writing Apps Available?

The best essay writing apps will have some of the following abilities:

• They generate net new content
• They help you format and ideate the structure of your essay
• They improve your writing style
• They have grammar, spelling, plagiarism, and style detection
• They can help you research factual information about the topic
• They’re “multi-purpose tools” that allow for custom functionalities
• They’re affordable.

I’ll judge the following of the best essay apps below on the above characteristics.

Editor’s note: I’m going to use some affiliate links when possible to try to earn some revenue from my content. These don’t change the opinions espoused in the content nor the style in which they are written. If I think a product sucks, I’m not going to say otherwise. This is just a bonus and a way to fund the whole operation. Anyway, enjoy the article!

11 Apps That Write Essays for You

• ProWritingAid
• Hypotenuse AI

Jasper  is an AI-powered essay writing app that helps you organize, write, and format your essays faster.

It’s functionally an all-purpose AI text generator , with a Google Docs / MS Word style editor you can use in conjunction with custom commands.

You can also hook it up with Grammarly to find spelling mistakes, punctuation mistakes, run on sentences, and other grammatical mistakes in real time.

They’ve got a few different modes (as part of their broader Boss Mode plan):

Focus mode is for pure writing, a simple word processor (but with an AI assistant attached). The focus writer is where I spend a lot of my time in this tool.

Chat mode is just like ChatGPT (more on that later)

SEO mode hooks up with Surfer SEO  to give you keyword suggestions in addition to your regular spell checking and generative essay writer functionality.

And power mode unlocks all of their use case templates, recipes, and commands.

Overall, Jasper is hands down the most powerful AI writing software. Premium features like SEO mode, Chat mode, and Power mode are only available on their Boss Mode plan, so I’d opt for that one.

It does seem to struggle with research papers and reference materials, so make sure you’ve got your citations on lock before you start writing. They also lack a web clipper tool, but their browser extension tool does give you the ability to write content everywhere.

They also have drawing tools and art generation capabilities , by the way.

Price : Starts at $24/mo. Boss Mode plan begins at $49/month

G2 Score:  4.8/5

Frase is a web-based writing tool that uses AI to help writers create high-quality essays quickly.

They’ve got a whole suite of SEO tools , including a content brief and content research tool, content optimization software, and generative AI  tools to help you write content.

Their content brief and research tool is of particular interest here.

Most of the best essay writing app options on this list focus only on text generation or rewriting; few focus on actually helping you format your piece in the first place, which is often where the hard work is.

Then, for their AI writing tool, they feature a ton of helpful templates, including “explain why,” “bullets to paragraphs,” and a metaphor / analogy tool:

Price:  Only $14.99/mo ($12 per month when paid annually).

ChatGPT  was launched in 2022 by OpenAI (the creators of GPT-3, which powers most of the writing software on this list).

It has brought generative AI to the mainstream, and it’s already one of the best writing apps for all purposes.

It acts as a chat interface, so it’s much more intuitive than many of the dedicated AI writing software out there.

Basically, you can ask it or prompt it to write…anything. I’ve used it to generate creative stories, write love poems, make me ideas for essays, improve my writing skills, and build outlines for SEO-focused content.

Let’s walk through a use case. I took a history class in college called “US history from 1945 to the present.” I’ll ask ChatGPT to create me some topic ideas:

Pretty good! I like the cold war idea, so I’ll ask it to create an outline for me:

Okay, maybe I’d want to change up a few pieces of this, but let’s go with it. Here’s the full essay:

Crazy! And that’s just a first pass. I could further tweak the outputs with better instructions.

This stuff is getting scary good.

Price:  Free

G2 Score:  NA

4. Writesonic

Writesonic  is a YC-backed startup that makes generative AI tools capable of writing essays.

I’m a big fan of this product.

They’ve got a ton of ready-made templates to get you started out (including a few that are great for writing essays). They’ve also got a few templates that can help you improve your writing style or even rewrite content so its better formatted.

Finally, they’ve got a Google Docs style editor for long form writers so you can use commands and write alongside the AI.

G2 Score: 4.8/5

Copy AI  is another AI copywriting tool  built on top of GPT-3.

It primarily writes essays through use case templates. A few that are popular for the writing process include:

• Essay intro
• Essay outline
• Explain like I’m 5
• Sentence rewriter
• Analogy generator

For example, look at this need little essay writer app that lets you build an outline for your essay:

The sentence rewriter and analogy generator are two examples that can help you improve your writing style.

Copy AI doesn’t have the same flexibility and power that Jasper and ChatGPT have, but it’s much easier to use. The templates are well set up and foolproof. And they have many that actually help you format text and design the scope of your piece, not just write it.

Overall, I’m a big fan of this tool.

Price:  Free for up to 2000 words and then $49/mo for unlimited word counts.

6. ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid  is a cool professional writing software that uses AI to generate content.

It’s great for academic papers and academic writing. Unlike many other essay writing services, this one incorporates grammar checking, spell check, style checking, plagiarism checking, and word count into the content they produce.

They’ve built custom solutions for higher education, teachers, non-native English speakers, and creatives.

I like this one because it lets users create content from scratch, but it’s also got features to improve your writing (this is powerful for college students especially).

Got some handwritten notes that you want to whip up into a good essay? This one is great at processing hand written notes and producing great content.

Pro Writing Aid works via browser, but they’ve got integrations that allow for offline access and desktop software as well – such as a Scrivener integration and an MS Word integration.

Overall, a great product with a free app that allows for up to 500 words.

Price: Completely free for up to 500 words, and then $10 per month for unlimited use.

G2 Score: 4.5/5

7. Speedwrite

Speedwrite  is one of the most popular writing applications out there. It helps you write essays from scratch as well as rephrasing your existing content.

How’s it work? Basically, through “predictions.” You just enter text and hit the “predict” button (they call their text generations “predictions”). This then takes your content and paraphrases it using their artificial intelligence.

This makes it useful for everything from writing notes to polishing up existing texts.

They’ve got tons of users (roughly 500k+). They claim to have written millions of lines of text, and all of this is fresh, original content with good style and grammar.

While Speedwrite has some downsides (it’s not great with structured diagrams or starting with a blank page), it’s still popular. Anyway, there are a ton of great Speedwrite alternatives  you can check out.

One cool thing is you can use this tool completely free.

Here’s an example of a “prediction” based on the above text.

Price:  Free and the only $19.99 per month

Lex is a new AI writer that I’ve just started trying out. I love it so far.

It’s different from the others. It’s aimed at writers. Many of the other tools help non-writers produce content. This one is no-frills, just a Google Docs / Microsoft Word style editor and an auto complete functionality.

And to be honest: the outputs are pretty darn good. I only write the first two sentences here and then let Lex finish it:

Lex can also be used on both ios devices as well as android devices (instructions in the app).

As far as I know, the tool is free, but I’m sure they’ll introduce a standard pricing model soon. You have to get on a waitlist to get access.

Price : Free

G2 Score: NA

Rytr  is a similar tool to Jasper, Copy AI, and Writesonic. It was also built on GPT-3 technology, so it’s got many of the same outputs and templates as these tools.

The biggest difference with Rytr is its price. They’re one of the most affordable apps that write essays for you, starting at just $9/mo (plus a free plan).

This is a great starter app.

Price: free, and then $9/mo

G2 Score: 4.7/5

10. Hypotenuse AI

Hypotenuse AI  started out as an ecommerce-focused AI tool, but it has since expanded.

Like other tools on this list, they’ve got one of the best essay writing capabilities out there.

The reason I’m adding them to this list, though, is their content detective feature. This allows you to research content with citations. Most tools suffer from factual inaccuracies, which is obviously a huge problem when it comes to academic writing.

Hypotenuse is working to solve that, and for that, I applaud them.

Price: Starts at $24/mo

G2 Score: 4.4/5

11. Word AI

Word AI  is a sweet tool built for two things: content rewriting, and scale.

You can essentially do like 1000 rewrites based on your initial content. This is helpful for SEO folks hoping to do link building and guest posting at scale.

For the essay writers among us? It’s great for coming up with clear copy and rewriting your piece to enrich your text, split sentences, and improve the clarity of your writing.

I will say, transparently, this is not one of my favorite tools out there. I think it’s a little clunky for most use cases and it’s best for spinning up a ton of content for SEO.

However, I wanted to include it on the list because it’s one of the best at content production at scale.

Price:  $57/month

G2 Score: 3.9/5

At the end of the day, essay writing apps can be incredibly useful resources if used correctly by students or writers who need assistance crafting their stories or arguments more effectively and efficiently than ever before.

However, it’s important to remember that these tools don’t replace actual human effort – they’re meant to supplement it – so make sure not to rely too heavily on them or allow them to take away from the creativity in your own work!

In that way, “apps that write essays for you” is sort of a myth. You’ll still need to provide the human intelligence 🙂

With all this in mind, don’t forget to do your own research into which app is right for you before committing – good luck!

Ultimate Guide to Writing Your College Essay

Tips for writing an effective college essay.

College admissions essays are an important part of your college application and gives you the chance to show colleges and universities your character and experiences. This guide will give you tips to write an effective college essay.

Want free help with your college essay?

UPchieve connects you with knowledgeable and friendly college advisors—online, 24/7, and completely free. Get 1:1 help brainstorming topics, outlining your essay, revising a draft, or editing grammar.

Writing a strong college admissions essay

Learn about the elements of a solid admissions essay.

Avoiding common admissions essay mistakes

Learn some of the most common mistakes made on college essays

Brainstorming tips for your college essay

Stuck on what to write your college essay about? Here are some exercises to help you get started.

How formal should the tone of your college essay be?

Learn how formal your college essay should be and get tips on how to bring out your natural voice.

Taking your college essay to the next level

Hear an admissions expert discuss the appropriate level of depth necessary in your college essay.

Student Stories

Student Story: Admissions essay about a formative experience

Get the perspective of a current college student on how he approached the admissions essay.

Student Story: Admissions essay about personal identity

Get the perspective of a current college student on how she approached the admissions essay.

Student Story: Admissions essay about community impact

Student story: admissions essay about a past mistake, how to write a college application essay, tips for writing an effective application essay, sample college essay 1 with feedback, sample college essay 2 with feedback.

This content is licensed by Khan Academy and is available for free at www.khanacademy.org.

Free Essay Help Online: 31 Reliable Websites [2024 Update]

Online writing help is one of the best things the Internet has to offer. Despite numerous distractions, kitten videos, and friends’ status updates, it’s better to stay connected while doing written homework. Why? You can get essay help online. Here’s a list of 21+ sites for hiring tutors, having your papers reviewed, and even using samples.

• Online Tutoring
• Critique and Suggestions
• Free Essay Samples

💻 Online Tutoring

Getting some extra help outside of class can help you stay on track. One-on-one homework sessions through webcam or live chat can supplement the lectures of the most brilliant professors. Getting essay help online is now as easy as texting with friends. All you need is to choose the right service, the best tutor match, and clearly formulate your question. Get ready to send your assignment details or even additional files in some cases.

• The Princeton Review is an educational resource where you can connect to expert tutors round the clock. Here you can get online essay help in more than 40 subjects. This source is an excellent way to get help with homework. The best part: You get this help as quickly as possible. The majority of users chat for less than a minute. According to statistics from The Princeton Review, every night they help more than 5,000 students with science, art, languages, and more. The reviews of their services are positive. Students appreciate their various methods of teaching—from easy assignment help to explaining the basics of a lecture course in just 40 minutes.

• Jiskha Homework Help is a hub where you can post your homework questions and receive essay help online for free from more than 200 volunteer tutors. Consider trying this one if you feel lucky, as there’s no guarantee that you will receive an answer immediately. On the other hand, the service is free, and it’s worth trying. Of course, this isn’t the best way to find research paper help, for example—volunteers just don’t have enough time to write papers for you. But if you’re looking for answers to tricky school or college questions—this is a good choice. Search through answers in various fields—science, algebra, foreign languages, history, social studies, music, and more. You can scroll both new 2023 topics and archives. There are hundreds of pages with useful information for your studies.
• Chegg Online Tutoring has a team of certified tutors who are ready to help you with essay writing. Though Chegg is better known for its book deals, judging by students’ reviews, this trustful service can succeed in everything they do. Need 1-on-1 consultation? Download Chegg Tutors application for iOS or Android. With the app, you can get a tutor’s help even away from home. You also should give Chegg Tutors a chance because it offers a free trial to newcomers! The trial includes a free 30 minutes of online tutoring. Think about all those challenging assignments you have, and you won’t want to refuse this offer!
• WyzAnt helps students improve their outcomes through customized learning. It means that lessons are developed to meet a student’s individual needs. WyzAnt gives you opportunities to get the knowledge you missed in college. On their website, you’ll meet only professional educators. By the way, by using the word “meet” we mean real, in-person lessons you can book! Not everyone feels comfortable when learning via Skype or chat. That’s why these lessons are a popular option among students. Still not sure? Then, you may want to know about the technical advantages—WyzAnt has specific software to connect you with your tutor that includes high-quality video and audio, code editors for programming languages, and a whiteboard to share.
• Tutor is a special service offering online tutors ready to help you with your studies 24/7. On Tutor, you won’t meet a teacher who has no degree. Instead, the 3,000 employees are experts in their fields and have at least a Bachelor’s degree. The organization supports the idea of confidentiality. So don’t be worried that someone will know about your lessons with Tutor. There’s also a department for U.S. military families. This way, military-connected students can get assignment help all year and improve their knowledge. Tutor also has an app for iOS and Android , so feel free to use it.
• PrestoExperts makes it incredibly easy to benefit from tutors’ expertise. If you prefer to see and hear your instructor instead of typing in chat, this service is what you need. Learning becomes much easier when you find a personal tutor. How does it work on PrestoExperts? You choose a tutor, and then write them an email or open the live chat. Next, you explain your task to the tutor and get possible solutions to your problem. If you agree with the price and the task—you pay for services. The consultation portion is always free.
• WizIQ is a popular platform used by educators and trainers to reach learners all over the world. Would you like to study on the go? With this service, online learning is fast and easy. WizIQ also sells software for virtual education. Students and teachers are not the only ones interested in such software. It’s an excellent option for corporate education, too. It also provides e-learning analytics. You can increase the effectiveness of your teaching videos. For this purpose, just check the time students spend watching your lectures.

• Tutorhub is a great place to receive online writing help with essays, research papers, and any other assignments. You will be able to choose your perfect tutor match and learn more about the author before asking a question. Tutorhub has hundreds of reviews to show you the benefits of its service. Buy online lessons for $28-$42 per hour on any topic, and you’ll be sure to get a 100% satisfactory result. The service offers a money-back guarantee for many cases.The best part: You can save the lecture to revisit later. A great feature to use when preparing for an exam!
• Tutormatching service will help you find your perfect tutor match. It’s important that this service looks for your perfect match according to the parameters of your choice. Many tutors on this site are volunteers. Usually, rates differ depending on the academic field, tutor’s experience and degree, and rating. Every educator has a particular number of stars depending on their reviews.
• Buddy School is an easy-to-use online tutoring platform that speaks students’ language. A beneficial feature of this service is a wide choice of foreign languages. You can find a coach in German, Japanese, Italian, Hindi, Czech, Arabic, and even Ancient Greek. Here are short guidelines on how to start your lessons—find a tutor among an excellent pick of experts and book time. Choose tutors wisely—there are often free minutes included in the schedule. You can find this information on each teacher’s profile.
• Tutorvista offers a choice of hourly and monthly packages. One-on-one online tutoring sessions can help you writing essays that rock. Book personalized one-to-one lessons to improve your knowledge. Tutorvista offers the opportunity to buy various packages. The options include monthly lessons with tutors. Prepare for school or college with video lectures. The writing mode on a whiteboard will help you to memorize the information quickly.
• TLC Live delivers qualified online tutoring to students of different ages and specialization. You can start by using a free trial version or asking a few free questions. Book lessons from qualified teachers for children starting from 1st grade. TLC Live guarantees 100% safety as they interview each teacher to make sure they’re appropriate for educating kids. They also perform criminal record checks.

💡 Critique and Suggestions

Have you chosen your perfect tutor match from the previous list? Another way to get essay help online is to have your paper reviewed by a qualified editor. Importantly, not only can you receive comments on the strong and weak sides of your paper but also professional advice on how to make it better:

• PaperRater provides spelling, grammar, and style check and, suggestions. This site offers free proofreading services, but you will benefit even more from personalized comments from an experienced tutor. The good thing about this is: You can use PaperRater for free. Choosing this option, you get 50 submissions (five pages/each). If you want to get 200 submissions (20 pages/each), the requirements are $14.95 and many research papers to check with your premium account.
• Essay Judge evaluates your writing and gives qualified advice on how to make it better. Importantly, you can also receive an expert’s feedback for free. Yes, that’s true. While many analogical websites use machines to check your text, Essay Judge attracts volunteer teachers. They spend about 30 minutes a day and help a couple of students to improve writing skills.

• Essay Reviewer corrects your mechanical errors and makes suggestions as to not only structure but also even the content of your paper. Overnight revisions can help you writing essays in various subjects and on different study levels. This service is appropriate for 5th-grade students and useful to work with for your spelling, structure, and grammar. You don’t even have to match reviewed materials with the original for comparison—your assignments are done in track changes version. So, you can easily see all your mistakes and learn from them.
• WriteCheck specializes in plagiarism detection but can give you suggestions as to your writing style as well. Along with plagiarism and grammar check, this service can provide online qualified tutoring help. Whether you write a nursing paper or literature review, checking for plagiarism is significant. Of course, not everyone can pay for every page. But you can test yourself with a plagiarism quiz. It will show you how plagiarized your papers might be, and how to avoid this plagiarism in the future.
• Proof-Reading Service offers qualified proofreading and editing help. You can have your essay polished by experienced editors here. This service has several departments—for journal articles, scientific papers, theses and dissertations, and other types. Sharing your papers is usually done through Dropbox or email.
• Grammar Check for Sentence is a fast tool for editing any type of text. It’s absolutely free, and all you need to do is to copy and paste your content into the field. Of course, you should review the results as the algorithm of this software doesn’t work perfectly—it can misjudge parts of speech, prepositions, and so on. But it’s also a nice check of your writing skills.
• Reverso Speller is another spelling checker that can find any mistake. It’s also connected to several dictionaries so that you can see the definition and synonyms of the miswritten word. There are several types of corrections. All of them are illustrated at the end of the web-page. They even underline words the algorithm can’t recognize—so you won’t miss foreign words or rare terms.
• Virtual Writing Tutor is another way to get a high-quality paper. You can check spelling and grammar, verify your word count, and evaluate if your text is paraphrased well. Moreover, Virtual Writing Tutor has a speech recognition tool. With its help, you can record your text to get a written document. You can also turn your text into an MP3 audio format and download it to your computer.
• Slick Write is a safe way to check your document’s grammar and style. It works on the same principles as Grammarly does but also gives you a lot of statistics like vocabulary analysis, reading time, readability index, average paragraph length, and so on. The statistics are useful to improve your style, make the paper more readable, and original. Slick Write also has a tool called Associator. It helps a lot during the writing process because you can find connections for any word.

• Hemingway App . Searching for a free tool to check your readability? Give Hemingway App a try. You can use it whether online or via the desktop app. Just put in your text and get instant results. The service highlights all sentences that are difficult to read, passive voice usage, wordiness, and phrases with simpler alternatives.
• Readable.io is one more tool to check your readability. Learn to use one of the scores like Flesch Reading Ease or Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level to determine how difficult your paper is to read and understand. The service underlines all the challenging parts, including passive voice, wordiness, and too many syllables. After corrections, you can check the text one more time to make sure it fits your needs.

📜 Free Essay Samples

Another effective studying tactic is learning by copying . The following online collections of essay samples can help you write your own masterpiece:

• Skyline College argumentative paper samples will show you how to present and defend your position on a certain controversial issue. Pay special attention to a thesis statement and arguments used by the authors, focus on the logical structure and line of argument.
• Writing For College are great for learning the main principles of pointing out the strong and weak sides of a certain topic. Learn how to critique without criticizing too much.
• Western Technical College will show you effective narration tactics you may use in your own papers. Pay special attention to word choice, use of verbs, and most frequently used expressions.
• Essay Basics offers a sample of papers from professional custom writers. Read those examples on debatable topics like environment protection, sex education, the importance of science, euthanasia issues, and so on.
• Studycorgi.com provides its users free access to the essay sample database. All academic paper examples are written by A-grade students. The website’s visitors can find here any topic on every college/university subject.

• Good Luck IELTS —examples for those who are preparing for exams. You can read eight examples of typical IELTS essays on such topics as university and gender issues, gap year, athlete salaries, and others.
• IvyPanda is a custom writing company that provides an access to 100,000+ academic paper examples. Here, you will find argumentative, persuasive, explanatory, descriptive, expository, and narrative essays, as well as case studies, research and term papers.
• 123 Help Me is a fantastic collection of essay examples on ancient and modern literature. Find a paper on any literature topic you like—from Antigone to Fahrenheit 451. But make sure to use them only as a sample. Beware of plagiarism on the way to your academic success.

Sample analytical essays won’t teach you analytical thinking skills because you already have them. By using samples, however, you will easily detect sample words and expressions that should be used in analytical writing. Pay special attention to transition words, which connect different sections of your essay and make your project clearer. Getting essay help online is a perfect reason to stay connected while doing your homework. Take advantage of the best student resources to study smarter!

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Great Blogs

Thanks for the feedback, Robert!

i am so happy about this app.it helps a lot. i am happy .thank you for creating this app.it is reliable and useful. thank you for creating this app

Glad you liked it!🙂 Thank you for the feedback!

The article is too good to know some best options for writing services. I would like to share it so that everyone can get this information.

Thank you for your kind words, Daisy! Feel free to share the article 🙂

Beautiful information. Sample analytical essays won’t teach you analytical thinking skills because you already have them.

Thank you for the feedback, Frances!

Very useful information but still there are few more reputable online tutoring websites that are missing in the list above. Some of the names are Coursehero, Solutioninn, Transtutor, tutor.com and brainmass. I hope this information may be useful if used with the list above.

Thank you for the information, Alex!

Thanks for introducing a little rationality into this debate.

Hi Karinthia,

I’m happy that this list helped you! I hope to see you again on our blog.

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How to Write an Essay

Use the links below to jump directly to any section of this guide:

Essay Writing Fundamentals

How to prepare to write an essay, how to edit an essay, how to share and publish your essays, how to get essay writing help, how to find essay writing inspiration, resources for teaching essay writing.

Essays, short prose compositions on a particular theme or topic, are the bread and butter of academic life. You write them in class, for homework, and on standardized tests to show what you know. Unlike other kinds of academic writing (like the research paper) and creative writing (like short stories and poems), essays allow you to develop your original thoughts on a prompt or question. Essays come in many varieties: they can be expository (fleshing out an idea or claim), descriptive, (explaining a person, place, or thing), narrative (relating a personal experience), or persuasive (attempting to win over a reader). This guide is a collection of dozens of links about academic essay writing that we have researched, categorized, and annotated in order to help you improve your essay writing. 

Essays are different from other forms of writing; in turn, there are different kinds of essays. This section contains general resources for getting to know the essay and its variants. These resources introduce and define the essay as a genre, and will teach you what to expect from essay-based assessments.

Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab

One of the most trusted academic writing sites, Purdue OWL provides a concise introduction to the four most common types of academic essays.

"The Essay: History and Definition" (ThoughtCo)

This snappy article from ThoughtCo talks about the origins of the essay and different kinds of essays you might be asked to write. 

"What Is An Essay?" Video Lecture (Coursera)

The University of California at Irvine's free video lecture, available on Coursera, tells  you everything you need to know about the essay.

Wikipedia Article on the "Essay"

Wikipedia's article on the essay is comprehensive, providing both English-language and global perspectives on the essay form. Learn about the essay's history, forms, and styles.

"Understanding College and Academic Writing" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This list of common academic writing assignments (including types of essay prompts) will help you know what to expect from essay-based assessments.

Before you start writing your essay, you need to figure out who you're writing for (audience), what you're writing about (topic/theme), and what you're going to say (argument and thesis). This section contains links to handouts, chapters, videos and more to help you prepare to write an essay.

How to Identify Your Audience

"Audience" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This handout provides questions you can ask yourself to determine the audience for an academic writing assignment. It also suggests strategies for fitting your paper to your intended audience.

"Purpose, Audience, Tone, and Content" (Univ. of Minnesota Libraries)

This extensive book chapter from Writing for Success , available online through Minnesota Libraries Publishing, is followed by exercises to try out your new pre-writing skills.

"Determining Audience" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This guide from a community college's writing center shows you how to know your audience, and how to incorporate that knowledge in your thesis statement.

"Know Your Audience" ( Paper Rater Blog)

This short blog post uses examples to show how implied audiences for essays differ. It reminds you to think of your instructor as an observer, who will know only the information you pass along.

How to Choose a Theme or Topic

"Research Tutorial: Developing Your Topic" (YouTube)

Take a look at this short video tutorial from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to understand the basics of developing a writing topic.

"How to Choose a Paper Topic" (WikiHow)

This simple, step-by-step guide (with pictures!) walks you through choosing a paper topic. It starts with a detailed description of brainstorming and ends with strategies to refine your broad topic.

"How to Read an Assignment: Moving From Assignment to Topic" (Harvard College Writing Center)

Did your teacher give you a prompt or other instructions? This guide helps you understand the relationship between an essay assignment and your essay's topic.

"Guidelines for Choosing a Topic" (CliffsNotes)

This study guide from CliffsNotes both discusses how to choose a topic and makes a useful distinction between "topic" and "thesis."

How to Come Up with an Argument

"Argument" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

Not sure what "argument" means in the context of academic writing? This page from the University of North Carolina is a good place to start.

"The Essay Guide: Finding an Argument" (Study Hub)

This handout explains why it's important to have an argument when beginning your essay, and provides tools to help you choose a viable argument.

"Writing a Thesis and Making an Argument" (University of Iowa)

This page from the University of Iowa's Writing Center contains exercises through which you can develop and refine your argument and thesis statement.

"Developing a Thesis" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This page from Harvard's Writing Center collates some helpful dos and don'ts of argumentative writing, from steps in constructing a thesis to avoiding vague and confrontational thesis statements.

"Suggestions for Developing Argumentative Essays" (Berkeley Student Learning Center)

This page offers concrete suggestions for each stage of the essay writing process, from topic selection to drafting and editing. 

How to Outline your Essay

"Outlines" (Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill via YouTube)

This short video tutorial from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows how to group your ideas into paragraphs or sections to begin the outlining process.

"Essay Outline" (Univ. of Washington Tacoma)

This two-page handout by a university professor simply defines the parts of an essay and then organizes them into an example outline.

"Types of Outlines and Samples" (Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab)

Purdue OWL gives examples of diverse outline strategies on this page, including the alphanumeric, full sentence, and decimal styles. 

"Outlining" (Harvard College Writing Center)

Once you have an argument, according to this handout, there are only three steps in the outline process: generalizing, ordering, and putting it all together. Then you're ready to write!

"Writing Essays" (Plymouth Univ.)

This packet, part of Plymouth University's Learning Development series, contains descriptions and diagrams relating to the outlining process.

"How to Write A Good Argumentative Essay: Logical Structure" (Criticalthinkingtutorials.com via YouTube)

This longer video tutorial gives an overview of how to structure your essay in order to support your argument or thesis. It is part of a longer course on academic writing hosted on Udemy.

Now that you've chosen and refined your topic and created an outline, use these resources to complete the writing process. Most essays contain introductions (which articulate your thesis statement), body paragraphs, and conclusions. Transitions facilitate the flow from one paragraph to the next so that support for your thesis builds throughout the essay. Sources and citations show where you got the evidence to support your thesis, which ensures that you avoid plagiarism. 

How to Write an Introduction

"Introductions" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page identifies the role of the introduction in any successful paper, suggests strategies for writing introductions, and warns against less effective introductions.

"How to Write A Good Introduction" (Michigan State Writing Center)

Beginning with the most common missteps in writing introductions, this guide condenses the essentials of introduction composition into seven points.

"The Introductory Paragraph" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post from academic advisor and college enrollment counselor Grace Fleming focuses on ways to grab your reader's attention at the beginning of your essay.

"Introductions and Conclusions" (Univ. of Toronto)

This guide from the University of Toronto gives advice that applies to writing both introductions and conclusions, including dos and don'ts.

"How to Write Better Essays: No One Does Introductions Properly" ( The Guardian )

This news article interviews UK professors on student essay writing; they point to introductions as the area that needs the most improvement.

How to Write a Thesis Statement

"Writing an Effective Thesis Statement" (YouTube)

This short, simple video tutorial from a college composition instructor at Tulsa Community College explains what a thesis statement is and what it does. 

"Thesis Statement: Four Steps to a Great Essay" (YouTube)

This fantastic tutorial walks you through drafting a thesis, using an essay prompt on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter as an example.

"How to Write a Thesis Statement" (WikiHow)

This step-by-step guide (with pictures!) walks you through coming up with, writing, and editing a thesis statement. It invites you think of your statement as a "working thesis" that can change.

"How to Write a Thesis Statement" (Univ. of Indiana Bloomington)

Ask yourself the questions on this page, part of Indiana Bloomington's Writing Tutorial Services, when you're writing and refining your thesis statement.

"Writing Tips: Thesis Statements" (Univ. of Illinois Center for Writing Studies)

This page gives plentiful examples of good to great thesis statements, and offers questions to ask yourself when formulating a thesis statement.

How to Write Body Paragraphs

"Body Paragraph" (Brightstorm)

This module of a free online course introduces you to the components of a body paragraph. These include the topic sentence, information, evidence, and analysis.

"Strong Body Paragraphs" (Washington Univ.)

This handout from Washington's Writing and Research Center offers in-depth descriptions of the parts of a successful body paragraph.

"Guide to Paragraph Structure" (Deakin Univ.)

This handout is notable for color-coding example body paragraphs to help you identify the functions various sentences perform.

"Writing Body Paragraphs" (Univ. of Minnesota Libraries)

The exercises in this section of Writing for Success  will help you practice writing good body paragraphs. It includes guidance on selecting primary support for your thesis.

"The Writing Process—Body Paragraphs" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

The information and exercises on this page will familiarize you with outlining and writing body paragraphs, and includes links to more information on topic sentences and transitions.

"The Five-Paragraph Essay" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post discusses body paragraphs in the context of one of the most common academic essay types in secondary schools.

How to Use Transitions

"Transitions" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill explains what a transition is, and how to know if you need to improve your transitions.

"Using Transitions Effectively" (Washington Univ.)

This handout defines transitions, offers tips for using them, and contains a useful list of common transitional words and phrases grouped by function.

"Transitions" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This page compares paragraphs without transitions to paragraphs with transitions, and in doing so shows how important these connective words and phrases are.

"Transitions in Academic Essays" (Scribbr)

This page lists four techniques that will help you make sure your reader follows your train of thought, including grouping similar information and using transition words.

"Transitions" (El Paso Community College)

This handout shows example transitions within paragraphs for context, and explains how transitions improve your essay's flow and voice.

"Make Your Paragraphs Flow to Improve Writing" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post, another from academic advisor and college enrollment counselor Grace Fleming, talks about transitions and other strategies to improve your essay's overall flow.

"Transition Words" (smartwords.org)

This handy word bank will help you find transition words when you're feeling stuck. It's grouped by the transition's function, whether that is to show agreement, opposition, condition, or consequence.

How to Write a Conclusion

"Parts of An Essay: Conclusions" (Brightstorm)

This module of a free online course explains how to conclude an academic essay. It suggests thinking about the "3Rs": return to hook, restate your thesis, and relate to the reader.

"Essay Conclusions" (Univ. of Maryland University College)

This overview of the academic essay conclusion contains helpful examples and links to further resources for writing good conclusions.

"How to End An Essay" (WikiHow)

This step-by-step guide (with pictures!) by an English Ph.D. walks you through writing a conclusion, from brainstorming to ending with a flourish.

"Ending the Essay: Conclusions" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This page collates useful strategies for writing an effective conclusion, and reminds you to "close the discussion without closing it off" to further conversation.

How to Include Sources and Citations

"Research and Citation Resources" (Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab)

Purdue OWL streamlines information about the three most common referencing styles (MLA, Chicago, and APA) and provides examples of how to cite different resources in each system.

EasyBib: Free Bibliography Generator

This online tool allows you to input information about your source and automatically generate citations in any style. Be sure to select your resource type before clicking the "cite it" button.

CitationMachine

Like EasyBib, this online tool allows you to input information about your source and automatically generate citations in any style. 

Modern Language Association Handbook (MLA)

Here, you'll find the definitive and up-to-date record of MLA referencing rules. Order through the link above, or check to see if your library has a copy.

Chicago Manual of Style

Here, you'll find the definitive and up-to-date record of Chicago referencing rules. You can take a look at the table of contents, then choose to subscribe or start a free trial.

How to Avoid Plagiarism

"What is Plagiarism?" (plagiarism.org)

This nonprofit website contains numerous resources for identifying and avoiding plagiarism, and reminds you that even common activities like copying images from another website to your own site may constitute plagiarism.

"Plagiarism" (University of Oxford)

This interactive page from the University of Oxford helps you check for plagiarism in your work, making it clear how to avoid citing another person's work without full acknowledgement.

"Avoiding Plagiarism" (MIT Comparative Media Studies)

This quick guide explains what plagiarism is, what its consequences are, and how to avoid it. It starts by defining three words—quotation, paraphrase, and summary—that all constitute citation.

"Harvard Guide to Using Sources" (Harvard Extension School)

This comprehensive website from Harvard brings together articles, videos, and handouts about referencing, citation, and plagiarism. 

Grammarly contains tons of helpful grammar and writing resources, including a free tool to automatically scan your essay to check for close affinities to published work. 

Noplag is another popular online tool that automatically scans your essay to check for signs of plagiarism. Simply copy and paste your essay into the box and click "start checking."

Once you've written your essay, you'll want to edit (improve content), proofread (check for spelling and grammar mistakes), and finalize your work until you're ready to hand it in. This section brings together tips and resources for navigating the editing process. 

"Writing a First Draft" (Academic Help)

This is an introduction to the drafting process from the site Academic Help, with tips for getting your ideas on paper before editing begins.

"Editing and Proofreading" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page provides general strategies for revising your writing. They've intentionally left seven errors in the handout, to give you practice in spotting them.

"How to Proofread Effectively" (ThoughtCo)

This article from ThoughtCo, along with those linked at the bottom, help describe common mistakes to check for when proofreading.

"7 Simple Edits That Make Your Writing 100% More Powerful" (SmartBlogger)

This blog post emphasizes the importance of powerful, concise language, and reminds you that even your personal writing heroes create clunky first drafts.

"Editing Tips for Effective Writing" (Univ. of Pennsylvania)

On this page from Penn's International Relations department, you'll find tips for effective prose, errors to watch out for, and reminders about formatting.

"Editing the Essay" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This article, the first of two parts, gives you applicable strategies for the editing process. It suggests reading your essay aloud, removing any jargon, and being unafraid to remove even "dazzling" sentences that don't belong.

"Guide to Editing and Proofreading" (Oxford Learning Institute)

This handout from Oxford covers the basics of editing and proofreading, and reminds you that neither task should be rushed. 

In addition to plagiarism-checkers, Grammarly has a plug-in for your web browser that checks your writing for common mistakes.

After you've prepared, written, and edited your essay, you might want to share it outside the classroom. This section alerts you to print and web opportunities to share your essays with the wider world, from online writing communities and blogs to published journals geared toward young writers.

Sharing Your Essays Online

Go Teen Writers

Go Teen Writers is an online community for writers aged 13 - 19. It was founded by Stephanie Morrill, an author of contemporary young adult novels. 

Tumblr is a blogging website where you can share your writing and interact with other writers online. It's easy to add photos, links, audio, and video components.

Writersky provides an online platform for publishing and reading other youth writers' work. Its current content is mostly devoted to fiction.

Publishing Your Essays Online

This teen literary journal publishes in print, on the web, and (more frequently), on a blog. It is committed to ensuring that "teens see their authentic experience reflected on its pages."

The Matador Review

This youth writing platform celebrates "alternative," unconventional writing. The link above will take you directly to the site's "submissions" page.

Teen Ink has a website, monthly newsprint magazine, and quarterly poetry magazine promoting the work of young writers.

The largest online reading platform, Wattpad enables you to publish your work and read others' work. Its inline commenting feature allows you to share thoughts as you read along.

Publishing Your Essays in Print

Canvas Teen Literary Journal

This quarterly literary magazine is published for young writers by young writers. They accept many kinds of writing, including essays.

The Claremont Review

This biannual international magazine, first published in 1992, publishes poetry, essays, and short stories from writers aged 13 - 19.

Skipping Stones

This young writers magazine, founded in 1988, celebrates themes relating to ecological and cultural diversity. It publishes poems, photos, articles, and stories.

The Telling Room

This nonprofit writing center based in Maine publishes children's work on their website and in book form. The link above directs you to the site's submissions page.

Essay Contests

Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards

This prestigious international writing contest for students in grades 7 - 12 has been committed to "supporting the future of creativity since 1923."

Society of Professional Journalists High School Essay Contest

An annual essay contest on the theme of journalism and media, the Society of Professional Journalists High School Essay Contest awards scholarships up to $1,000.

National YoungArts Foundation

Here, you'll find information on a government-sponsored writing competition for writers aged 15 - 18. The foundation welcomes submissions of creative nonfiction, novels, scripts, poetry, short story and spoken word.

Signet Classics Student Scholarship Essay Contest

With prompts on a different literary work each year, this competition from Signet Classics awards college scholarships up to $1,000.

"The Ultimate Guide to High School Essay Contests" (CollegeVine)

See this handy guide from CollegeVine for a list of more competitions you can enter with your academic essay, from the National Council of Teachers of English Achievement Awards to the National High School Essay Contest by the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Whether you're struggling to write academic essays or you think you're a pro, there are workshops and online tools that can help you become an even better writer. Even the most seasoned writers encounter writer's block, so be proactive and look through our curated list of resources to combat this common frustration.

Online Essay-writing Classes and Workshops

"Getting Started with Essay Writing" (Coursera)

Coursera offers lots of free, high-quality online classes taught by college professors. Here's one example, taught by instructors from the University of California Irvine.

"Writing and English" (Brightstorm)

Brightstorm's free video lectures are easy to navigate by topic. This unit on the parts of an essay features content on the essay hook, thesis, supporting evidence, and more.

"How to Write an Essay" (EdX)

EdX is another open online university course website with several two- to five-week courses on the essay. This one is geared toward English language learners.

Writer's Digest University

This renowned writers' website offers online workshops and interactive tutorials. The courses offered cover everything from how to get started through how to get published.

Writing.com

Signing up for this online writer's community gives you access to helpful resources as well as an international community of writers.

How to Overcome Writer's Block

"Symptoms and Cures for Writer's Block" (Purdue OWL)

Purdue OWL offers a list of signs you might have writer's block, along with ways to overcome it. Consider trying out some "invention strategies" or ways to curb writing anxiety.

"Overcoming Writer's Block: Three Tips" ( The Guardian )

These tips, geared toward academic writing specifically, are practical and effective. The authors advocate setting realistic goals, creating dedicated writing time, and participating in social writing.

"Writing Tips: Strategies for Overcoming Writer's Block" (Univ. of Illinois)

This page from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Center for Writing Studies acquaints you with strategies that do and do not work to overcome writer's block.

"Writer's Block" (Univ. of Toronto)

Ask yourself the questions on this page; if the answer is "yes," try out some of the article's strategies. Each question is accompanied by at least two possible solutions.

If you have essays to write but are short on ideas, this section's links to prompts, example student essays, and celebrated essays by professional writers might help. You'll find writing prompts from a variety of sources, student essays to inspire you, and a number of essay writing collections.

Essay Writing Prompts

"50 Argumentative Essay Topics" (ThoughtCo)

Take a look at this list and the others ThoughtCo has curated for different kinds of essays. As the author notes, "a number of these topics are controversial and that's the point."

"401 Prompts for Argumentative Writing" ( New York Times )

This list (and the linked lists to persuasive and narrative writing prompts), besides being impressive in length, is put together by actual high school English teachers.

"SAT Sample Essay Prompts" (College Board)

If you're a student in the U.S., your classroom essay prompts are likely modeled on the prompts in U.S. college entrance exams. Take a look at these official examples from the SAT.

"Popular College Application Essay Topics" (Princeton Review)

This page from the Princeton Review dissects recent Common Application essay topics and discusses strategies for answering them.

Example Student Essays

"501 Writing Prompts" (DePaul Univ.)

This nearly 200-page packet, compiled by the LearningExpress Skill Builder in Focus Writing Team, is stuffed with writing prompts, example essays, and commentary.

"Topics in English" (Kibin)

Kibin is a for-pay essay help website, but its example essays (organized by topic) are available for free. You'll find essays on everything from  A Christmas Carol  to perseverance.

"Student Writing Models" (Thoughtful Learning)

Thoughtful Learning, a website that offers a variety of teaching materials, provides sample student essays on various topics and organizes them by grade level.

"Five-Paragraph Essay" (ThoughtCo)

In this blog post by a former professor of English and rhetoric, ThoughtCo brings together examples of five-paragraph essays and commentary on the form.

The Best Essay Writing Collections

The Best American Essays of the Century by Joyce Carol Oates (Amazon)

This collection of American essays spanning the twentieth century was compiled by award winning author and Princeton professor Joyce Carol Oates.

The Best American Essays 2017 by Leslie Jamison (Amazon)

Leslie Jamison, the celebrated author of essay collection  The Empathy Exams , collects recent, high-profile essays into a single volume.

The Art of the Personal Essay by Phillip Lopate (Amazon)

Documentary writer Phillip Lopate curates this historical overview of the personal essay's development, from the classical era to the present.

The White Album by Joan Didion (Amazon)

This seminal essay collection was authored by one of the most acclaimed personal essayists of all time, American journalist Joan Didion.

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace (Amazon)

Read this famous essay collection by David Foster Wallace, who is known for his experimentation with the essay form. He pushed the boundaries of personal essay, reportage, and political polemic.

"50 Successful Harvard Application Essays" (Staff of the The Harvard Crimson )

If you're looking for examples of exceptional college application essays, this volume from Harvard's daily student newspaper is one of the best collections on the market.

Are you an instructor looking for the best resources for teaching essay writing? This section contains resources for developing in-class activities and student homework assignments. You'll find content from both well-known university writing centers and online writing labs.

Essay Writing Classroom Activities for Students

"In-class Writing Exercises" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page lists exercises related to brainstorming, organizing, drafting, and revising. It also contains suggestions for how to implement the suggested exercises.

"Teaching with Writing" (Univ. of Minnesota Center for Writing)

Instructions and encouragement for using "freewriting," one-minute papers, logbooks, and other write-to-learn activities in the classroom can be found here.

"Writing Worksheets" (Berkeley Student Learning Center)

Berkeley offers this bank of writing worksheets to use in class. They are nested under headings for "Prewriting," "Revision," "Research Papers" and more.

"Using Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism" (DePaul University)

Use these activities and worksheets from DePaul's Teaching Commons when instructing students on proper academic citation practices.

Essay Writing Homework Activities for Students

"Grammar and Punctuation Exercises" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

These five interactive online activities allow students to practice editing and proofreading. They'll hone their skills in correcting comma splices and run-ons, identifying fragments, using correct pronoun agreement, and comma usage.

"Student Interactives" (Read Write Think)

Read Write Think hosts interactive tools, games, and videos for developing writing skills. They can practice organizing and summarizing, writing poetry, and developing lines of inquiry and analysis.

This free website offers writing and grammar activities for all grade levels. The lessons are designed to be used both for large classes and smaller groups.

"Writing Activities and Lessons for Every Grade" (Education World)

Education World's page on writing activities and lessons links you to more free, online resources for learning how to "W.R.I.T.E.": write, revise, inform, think, and edit.

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How to Write a Great College Essay, Step-by-Step

College Admissions , College Essays

Writing your personal statement for your college application is an undeniably overwhelming project. Your essay is your big shot to show colleges who you are—it's totally reasonable to get stressed out. But don't let that stress paralyze you.

This guide will walk you through each step of the essay writing process to help you understand exactly what you need to do to write the best possible personal statement . I'm also going to follow an imaginary student named Eva as she plans and writes her college essay, from her initial organization and brainstorming to her final edits. By the end of this article, you'll have all the tools you need to create a fantastic, effective college essay.

So how do you write a good college essay? The process starts with finding the best possible topic , which means understanding what the prompt is asking for and taking the time to brainstorm a variety of options. Next, you'll determine how to create an interesting essay that shows off your unique perspective and write multiple drafts in order to hone your structure and language. Once your writing is as effective and engaging as possible, you'll do a final sweep to make sure everything is correct .

This guide covers the following steps:

#1: Organizing #2: Brainstorming #3: Picking a topic #4: Making a plan #5: Writing a draft #6: Editing your draft #7: Finalizing your draft #8: Repeating the process

Step 1: Get Organized

The first step in how to write a college essay is figuring out what you actually need to do. Although many schools are now on the Common App, some very popular colleges, including Rutgers and University of California, still have their own applications and writing requirements. Even for Common App schools, you may need to write a supplemental essay or provide short answers to questions.

Before you get started, you should know exactly what essays you need to write. Having this information allows you to plan the best approach to each essay and helps you cut down on work by determining whether you can use an essay for more than one prompt.

Start Early

Writing good college essays involves a lot of work: you need dozens of hours to get just one personal statement properly polished , and that's before you even start to consider any supplemental essays.

In order to make sure you have plenty of time to brainstorm, write, and edit your essay (or essays), I recommend starting at least two months before your first deadline . The last thing you want is to end up with a low-quality essay you aren't proud of because you ran out of time and had to submit something unfinished.

Determine What You Need to Do

As I touched on above, each college has its own essay requirements, so you'll need to go through and determine what exactly you need to submit for each school . This process is simple if you're only using the Common App, since you can easily view the requirements for each school under the "My Colleges" tab. Watch out, though, because some schools have a dedicated "Writing Supplement" section, while others (even those that want a full essay) will put their prompts in the "Questions" section.

It gets trickier if you're applying to any schools that aren't on the Common App. You'll need to look up the essay requirements for each college—what's required should be clear on the application itself, or you can look under the "how to apply" section of the school's website.

Once you've determined the requirements for each school, I recommend making yourself a chart with the school name, word limit, and application deadline on one side and the prompt or prompts you need to respond to on the other . That way you'll be able to see exactly what you need to do and when you need to do it by.

The hardest part about writing your college essays is getting started. 

Decide Where to Start

If you have one essay that's due earlier than the others, start there. Otherwise, start with the essay for your top choice school.

I would also recommend starting with a longer personal statement before moving on to shorter supplementary essays , since the 500-700 word essays tend to take quite a bit longer than 100-250 word short responses. The brainstorming you do for the long essay may help you come up with ideas you like for the shorter ones as well.

Also consider whether some of the prompts are similar enough that you could submit the same essay to multiple schools . Doing so can save you some time and let you focus on a few really great essays rather than a lot of mediocre ones.

However, don't reuse essays for dissimilar or very school-specific prompts, especially "why us" essays . If a college asks you to write about why you're excited to go there, admissions officers want to see evidence that you're genuinely interested. Reusing an essay about another school and swapping out the names is the fastest way to prove you aren't.

Example: Eva's College List

Eva is applying early to Emory University and regular decision to University of Washington, UCLA, and Reed College. Emory, the University of Washington, and Reed both use the Common App, while University of Washington, Emory, and Reed all use the Coalition App.

Even though she's only applying to four schools, Eva has a lot to do: two essays for UW, four for the UCLA application, one for the Common App (or the Coalition App), and two essays for Emory. Many students will have fewer requirements to complete, but those who are applying to very selective schools or a number of schools on different applications will have as many or even more responses to write.

Eva's first deadline is early decision for Emory, she'll start by writing the Common App essay, and then work on the Emory supplements. (For the purposes of this post, we'll focus on the Common App essay.)

Pro tip: If this sounds like a lot of work, that's because it is. Writing essays for your college applications is demanding and takes a lot of time and thought. You don't have to do it alone, though. PrepScholar has helped students like you get into top-tier colleges like Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and Brown. Our essay experts can help you craft amazing essays that boost your chances of getting into your dream school . 

Step 2: Brainstorm

Next up in how to write a college essay: brainstorming essay ideas. There are tons of ways to come up with ideas for your essay topic: I've outlined three below. I recommend trying all of them and compiling a list of possible topics, then narrowing it down to the very best one or, if you're writing multiple essays, the best few.

Keep in mind as you brainstorm that there's no best college essay topic, just the best topic for you . Don't feel obligated to write about something because you think you should—those types of essays tend to be boring and uninspired. Similarly, don't simply write about the first idea that crosses your mind because you don't want to bother trying to think of something more interesting. Take the time to come up with a topic you're really excited about and that you can write about in detail.

Analyze the Prompts

One way to find possible topics is to think deeply about the college's essay prompt. What are they asking you for? Break them down and analyze every angle.

Does the question include more than one part ? Are there multiple tasks you need to complete?

What do you think the admissions officers are hoping to learn about you ?

In cases where you have more than one choice of prompt, does one especially appeal to you ? Why?

Let's dissect one of the University of Washington prompts as an example:

"Our families and communities often define us and our individual worlds. Community might refer to your cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood or school, sports team or club, co-workers, etc. Describe the world you come from and how you, as a product of it, might add to the diversity of the UW. "

This question is basically asking how your personal history, such as your childhood, family, groups you identify with etc. helped you become the person you are now. It offers a number of possible angles.

You can talk about the effects of either your family life (like your relationship with your parents or what your household was like growing up) or your cultural history (like your Jewish faith or your Venezuelan heritage). You can also choose between focusing on positive or negative effects of your family or culture. No matter what however, the readers definitely want to hear about your educational goals (i.e. what you hope to get out of college) and how they're related to your personal experience.

As you try to think of answers for a prompt, imagine about what you would say if you were asked the question by a friend or during a get-to-know-you icebreaker. After all, admissions officers are basically just people who you want to get to know you.

The essay questions can make a great jumping off point, but don't feel married to them. Most prompts are general enough that you can come up with an idea and then fit it to the question.

Consider Important Experiences, Events, and Ideas in Your Life

What experience, talent, interest or other quirk do you have that you might want to share with colleges? In other words, what makes you you? Possible topics include hobbies, extracurriculars, intellectual interests, jobs, significant one-time events, pieces of family history, or anything else that has shaped your perspective on life.

Unexpected or slightly unusual topics are often the best : your passionate love of Korean dramas or your yearly family road trip to an important historical site. You want your essay to add something to your application, so if you're an All-American soccer player and want to write about the role soccer has played in your life, you'll have a higher bar to clear.

Of course if you have a more serious part of your personal history—the death of a parent, serious illness, or challenging upbringing—you can write about that. But make sure you feel comfortable sharing details of the experience with the admissions committee and that you can separate yourself from it enough to take constructive criticism on your essay.

Think About How You See Yourself

The last brainstorming method is to consider whether there are particular personality traits you want to highlight . This approach can feel rather silly, but it can also be very effective.

If you were trying to sell yourself to an employer, or maybe even a potential date, how would you do it? Try to think about specific qualities that make you stand out. What are some situations in which you exhibited this trait?

Example: Eva's Ideas

Looking at the Common App prompts, Eva wasn't immediately drawn to any of them, but after a bit of consideration she thought it might be nice to write about her love of literature for the first one, which asks about something "so meaningful your application would be incomplete without it." Alternatively, she liked the specificity of the failure prompt and thought she might write about a bad job interview she had had.

In terms of important events, Eva's parents got divorced when she was three and she's been going back and forth between their houses for as long as she can remember, so that's a big part of her personal story. She's also played piano for all four years of high school, although she's not particularly good.

As for personal traits, Eva is really proud of her curiosity—if she doesn't know something, she immediately looks it up, and often ends up discovering new topics she's interested in. It's a trait that's definitely come in handy as a reporter for her school paper.

Step 3: Narrow Down Your List

Now you have a list of potential topics, but probably no idea where to start. The next step is to go through your ideas and determine which one will make for the strongest essay . You'll then begin thinking about how best to approach it.

What to Look for in a College Essay Topic

There's no single answer to the question of what makes a great college essay topic, but there are some key factors you should keep in mind. The best essays are focused, detailed, revealing and insightful, and finding the right topic is vital to writing a killer essay with all of those qualities.

As you go through your ideas, be discriminating—really think about how each topic could work as an essay. But don't be too hard on yourself ; even if an idea may not work exactly the way you first thought, there may be another way to approach it. Pay attention to what you're really excited about and look for ways to make those ideas work.

Consideration 1: Does It Matter to You?

If you don't care about your topic, it will be hard to convince your readers to care about it either. You can't write a revealing essay about yourself unless you write about a topic that is truly important to you.

But don't confuse important to you with important to the world: a college essay is not a persuasive argument. The point is to give the reader a sense of who you are , not to make a political or intellectual point. The essay needs to be personal.

Similarly, a lot of students feel like they have to write about a major life event or their most impressive achievement. But the purpose of a personal statement isn't to serve as a resume or a brag sheet—there are plenty of other places in the application for you to list that information. Many of the best essays are about something small because your approach to a common experience generally reveals a lot about your perspective on the world.

Mostly, your topic needs to have had a genuine effect on your outlook , whether it taught you something about yourself or significantly shifted your view on something else.

Consideration 2: Does It Tell the Reader Something Different About You?

Your essay should add something to your application that isn't obvious elsewhere. Again, there are sections for all of your extracurriculars and awards; the point of the essay is to reveal something more personal that isn't clear just from numbers and lists.

You also want to make sure that if you're sending more than one essay to a school—like a Common App personal statement and a school-specific supplement—the two essays take on different topics.

Consideration 3: Is It Specific?

Your essay should ultimately have a very narrow focus. 650 words may seem like a lot, but you can fill it up very quickly. This means you either need to have a very specific topic from the beginning or find a specific aspect of a broader topic to focus on.

If you try to take on a very broad topic, you'll end up with a bunch of general statements and boring lists of your accomplishments. Instead, you want to find a short anecdote or single idea to explore in depth .

Consideration 4: Can You Discuss It in Detail?

A vague essay is a boring essay— specific details are what imbue your essay with your personality . For example, if I tell my friend that I had a great dessert yesterday, she probably won't be that interested. But if I explain that I ate an amazing piece of peach raspberry pie with flaky, buttery crust and filling that was both sweet and tart, she will probably demand to know where I obtained it (at least she will if she appreciates the joys of pie). She'll also learn more about me: I love pie and I analyze desserts with great seriousness.

Given the importance of details, writing about something that happened a long time ago or that you don't remember well isn't usually a wise choice . If you can't describe something in depth, it will be challenging to write a compelling essay about it.

You also shouldn't pick a topic you aren't actually comfortable talking about . Some students are excited to write essays about very personal topics, like their mother's bipolar disorder or their family's financial struggles, but others dislike sharing details about these kinds of experiences. If you're a member of the latter group, that's totally okay, just don't write about one of these sensitive topics.

Still, don't worry that every single detail has to be perfectly correct. Definitely don't make anything up, but if you remember a wall as green and it was really blue, your readers won't notice or care.

Consideration 5: Can It Be Related to the Prompt?

As long as you're talking about yourself, there are very few ideas that you can't tie back to one of the Common App or Coalition App prompts. But if you're applying to a school with its own more specific prompt, or working on supplemental essays, making sure to address the question will be a greater concern.

Deciding on a Topic

Once you've gone through the questions above, you should have a good sense of what you want to write about. Hopefully, it's also gotten you started thinking about how you can best approach that topic, but we'll cover how to plan your essay more fully in the next step.

If after going through the narrowing process, you've eliminated all your topics, first look back over them: are you being too hard on yourself? Are there any that you really like, but just aren't totally sure what angle to take on? If so, try looking at the next section and seeing if you can't find a different way to approach it.

If you just don't have an idea you're happy with, that's okay! Give yourself a week to think about it. Sometimes you'll end up having a genius idea in the car on the way to school or while studying for your U.S. history test. Otherwise, try the brainstorming process again when you've had a break.

If, on the other hand, you have more than one idea you really like, consider whether any of them can be used for other essays you need to write.

Example: Picking Eva's Topic

• Love of books
• Failed job interview
• Parents' divorce

Eva immediately rules out writing about playing piano, because it sounds super boring to her, and it's not something she is particularly passionate about. She also decides not to write about splitting time between her parents because she just isn't comfortable sharing her feelings about it with an admissions committee.

She feels more positive about the other three, so she decides to think about them for a couple of days. She ends up ruling out the job interview because she just can't come up with that many details she could include.

She's excited about both of her last two ideas, but sees issues with both of them: the books idea is very broad and the reporting idea doesn't seem to apply to any of the prompts. Then she realizes that she can address the solving a problem prompt by talking about a time she was trying to research a story about the closing of a local movie theater, so she decides to go with that topic.

Step 4: Figure Out Your Approach

You've decided on a topic, but now you need to turn that topic into an essay. To do so, you need to determine what specifically you're focusing on and how you'll structure your essay.

If you're struggling or uncertain, try taking a look at some examples of successful college essays . It can be helpful to dissect how other personal statements are structured to get ideas for your own , but don't fall into the trap of trying to copy someone else's approach. Your essay is your story—never forget that.

Let's go through the key steps that will help you turn a great topic into a great essay.

Choose a Focal Point

As I touched on above, the narrower your focus, the easier it will be to write a unique, engaging personal statement. The simplest way to restrict the scope of your essay is to recount an anecdote , i.e. a short personal story that illustrates your larger point.

For example, say a student was planning to write about her Outward Bound trip in Yosemite. If she tries to tell the entire story of her trip, her essay will either be far too long or very vague. Instead, she decides to focus in on a specific incident that exemplifies what mattered to her about the experience: her failed attempt to climb Half Dome. She described the moment she decided to turn back without reaching the top in detail, while touching on other parts of the climb and trip where appropriate. This approach lets her create a dramatic arc in just 600 words, while fully answering the question posed in the prompt (Common App prompt 2).

Of course, concentrating on an anecdote isn't the only way to narrow your focus. Depending on your topic, it might make more sense to build your essay around an especially meaningful object, relationship, or idea.

Another approach our example student from above could take to the same general topic would be to write about the generosity of fellow hikers (in response to Common App prompt 4). Rather than discussing a single incident, she could tell the story of her trip through times she was supported by other hikers: them giving tips on the trails, sharing snacks, encouraging her when she was tired, etc. A structure like this one can be trickier than the more straightforward anecdote approach , but it can also make for an engaging and different essay.

When deciding what part of your topic to focus on, try to find whatever it is about the topic that is most meaningful and unique to you . Once you've figured that part out, it will guide how you structure the essay.

Decide What You Want to Show About Yourself

Remember that the point of the college essay isn't just to tell a story, it's to show something about yourself. It's vital that you have a specific point you want to make about what kind of person you are , what kind of college student you'd make, or what the experience you're describing taught you.

Since the papers you write for school are mostly analytical, you probably aren't used to writing about your own feelings. As such, it can be easy to neglect the reflection part of the personal statement in favor of just telling a story. Yet explaining what the event or idea you discuss meant to you is the most important essay —knowing how you want to tie your experiences back to your personal growth from the beginning will help you make sure to include it.

Develop a Structure

It's not enough to just know what you want to write about—you also need to have a sense of how you're going to write about it. You could have the most exciting topic of all time, but without a clear structure your essay will end up as incomprehensible gibberish that doesn't tell the reader anything meaningful about your personality.

There are a lot of different possible essay structures, but a simple and effective one is the compressed narrative, which builds on a specific anecdote (like the Half Dome example above):

Start in the middle of the action. Don't spend a lot of time at the beginning of your essay outlining background info—it doesn't tend to draw the reader in and you usually need less of it than you think you do. Instead start right where your story starts to get interesting. (I'll go into how to craft an intriguing opener in more depth below.)

Briefly explain what the situation is. Now that you've got the reader's attention, go back and explain anything they need to know about how you got into this situation. Don't feel compelled to fit everything in—only include the background details that are necessary to either understand what happened or illuminate your feelings about the situation in some way.

Finish the story. Once you've clarified exactly what's going on, explain how you resolved the conflict or concluded the experience.

Explain what you learned. The last step is to tie everything together and bring home the main point of your story: how this experience affected you.

The key to this type of structure is to create narrative tension—you want your reader to be wondering what happens next.

A second approach is the thematic structure, which is based on returning to a key idea or object again and again (like the boots example above):

Establish the focus. If you're going to structure your essay around a single theme or object, you need to begin the essay by introducing that key thing. You can do so with a relevant anecdote or a detailed description.

Touch on 3-5 times the focus was important. The body of your essay will consist of stringing together a few important moments related to the topic. Make sure to use sensory details to bring the reader into those points in time and keep her engaged in the essay. Also remember to elucidate why these moments were important to you.

Revisit the main idea. At the end, you want to tie everything together by revisiting the main idea or object and showing how your relationship to it has shaped or affected you. Ideally, you'll also hint at how this thing will be important to you going forward.

To make this structure work you need a very specific focus. Your love of travel, for example, is much too broad—you would need to hone in on a specific aspect of that interest, like how traveling has taught you to adapt to event the most unusual situations. Whatever you do, don't use this structure to create a glorified resume or brag sheet .

However you structure your essay, you want to make sure that it clearly lays out both the events or ideas you're describing and establishes the stakes (i.e. what it all means for you). Many students become so focused on telling a story or recounting details that they forget to explain what it all meant to them.

Example: Eva's Essay Plan

For her essay, Eva decides to use the compressed narrative structure to tell the story of how she tried and failed to report on the closing of a historic movie theater:

• Open with the part of her story where she finally gave up after calling the theater and city hall a dozen times.
• Explain that although she started researching the story out of journalistic curiosity, it was important to her because she'd grown up going to movies at that theater.
• Recount how defeated she felt when she couldn't get ahold of anyone, and then even more so when she saw a story about the theater's closing in the local paper.
• Describer her decision to write an op-ed instead and interview other students about what the theater meant to them.
• Finish by explaining that although she wasn't able to get the story (or stop the destruction of the theater), she learned that sometimes the emotional angle can be just as interesting as the investigative one.

Step 5: Write a First Draft

The key to writing your first draft is not to worry about whether it's any good—just get something on paper and go from there. You will have to rewrite, so trying to get everything perfect is both frustrating and futile.

Everyone has their own writing process. Maybe you feel more comfortable sitting down and writing the whole draft from beginning to end in one go. Maybe you jump around, writing a little bit here and a little there. It's okay to have sections you know won't work or to skip over things you think you'll need to include later.

Whatever your approach, there are a few tips everyone can benefit from.

Don't Aim for Perfection

I mentioned this idea above, but I can't emphasize it enough: no one writes a perfect first draft . Extensive editing and rewriting is vital to crafting an effective personal statement. Don't get too attached to any part of your draft, because you may need to change anything (or everything) about your essay later .

Also keep in mind that, at this point in the process, the goal is just to get your ideas down. Wonky phrasings and misplaced commas can easily be fixed when you edit, so don't worry about them as you write. Instead, focus on including lots of specific details and emphasizing how your topic has affected you, since these aspects are vital to a compelling essay.

Write an Engaging Introduction

One part of the essay you do want to pay special attention to is the introduction. Your intro is your essay's first impression: you only get one. It's much harder to regain your reader's attention once you've lost it, so you want to draw the reader in with an immediately engaging hook that sets up a compelling story .

There are two possible approaches I would recommend.

The "In Media Res" Opening

You'll probably recognize this term if you studied The Odyssey: it basically means that the story starts in the middle of the action, rather than at the beginning. A good intro of this type makes the reader wonder both how you got to the point you're starting at and where you'll go from there . These openers provide a solid, intriguing beginning for narrative essays (though they can certainly for thematic structures as well).

But how do you craft one? Try to determine the most interesting point in your story and start there. If you're not sure where that is, try writing out the entire story and then crossing out each sentence in order until you get to one that immediately grabs your attention.

Here's an example from a real student's college essay:

"I strode in front of 400 frenzied eighth graders with my arm slung over my Fender Stratocaster guitar—it actually belonged to my mother—and launched into the first few chords of Nirvana's 'Lithium.'"

Anonymous , University of Virginia

This intro throws the reader right into the middle of the action. The author jumps right into the action: the performance. You can imagine how much less exciting it would be if the essay opened with an explanation of what the event was and why the author was performing.

The Specific Generalization

Sounds like an oxymoron, right? This type of intro sets up what the essay is going to talk about in a slightly unexpected way . These are a bit trickier than the "in media res" variety, but they can work really well for the right essay—generally one with a thematic structure.

The key to this type of intro is detail . Contrary to what you may have learned in elementary school, sweeping statements don't make very strong hooks. If you want to start your essay with a more overall description of what you'll be discussing, you still need to make it specific and unique enough to stand out.

Once again, let's look at some examples from real students' essays:

Neha, Johns Hopkins University

Brontë, Johns Hopkins University

Both of these intros set up the general topic of the essay (the first writer's bookshelf and and the second's love of Jane Eyre ) in an intriguing way. The first intro works because it mixes specific descriptions ("pushed against the left wall in my room") with more general commentary ("a curious piece of furniture"). The second draws the reader in by adopting a conversational and irreverent tone with asides like "if you ask me" and "This may or may not be a coincidence."

Don't Worry Too Much About the Length

When you start writing, don't worry about your essay's length. Instead, focus on trying to include all of the details you can think of about your topic , which will make it easier to decide what you really need to include when you edit.

However, if your first draft is more than twice the word limit and you don't have a clear idea of what needs to be cut out, you may need to reconsider your focus—your topic is likely too broad. You may also need to reconsider your topic or approach if you find yourself struggling to fill space, since this usually indicates a topic that lacks a specific focus.

Eva's First Paragraph

I dialed the phone number for the fourth time that week. "Hello? This is Eva Smith, and I'm a reporter with Tiny Town High's newspaper The Falcon. I was hoping to ask you some questions about—" I heard the distinctive click of the person on the other end of the line hanging up, followed by dial tone. I was about ready to give up: I'd been trying to get the skinny on whether the Atlas Theater was actually closing to make way for a big AMC multiplex or if it was just a rumor for weeks, but no one would return my calls.

Step 6: Edit Aggressively

No one writes a perfect first draft. No matter how much you might want to be done after writing a first draft—you must take the time to edit. Thinking critically about your essay and rewriting as needed is a vital part of writing a great college essay.

Before you start editing, put your essay aside for a week or so . It will be easier to approach it objectively if you haven't seen it in a while. Then, take an initial pass to identify any big picture issues with your essay. Once you've fixed those, ask for feedback from other readers—they'll often notice gaps in logic that don't appear to you, because you're automatically filling in your intimate knowledge of the situation. Finally, take another, more detailed look at your essay to fine tune the language.

I've explained each of these steps in more depth below.

First Editing Pass

You should start the editing process by looking for any structural or thematic issues with your essay . If you see sentences that don't make sense or glaring typos of course fix them, but at this point, you're really focused on the major issues since those require the most extensive rewrites. You don't want to get your sentences beautifully structured only to realize you need to remove the entire paragraph.

This phase is really about honing your structure and your voice . As you read through your essay, think about whether it effectively draws the reader along, engages him with specific details, and shows why the topic matters to you. Try asking yourself the following questions:

• Does the intro make you want to read more?
• Is the progression of events and/or ideas clear?
• Does the essay show something specific about you? What is it and can you clearly identify it in the essay?
• Are there places where you could replace vague statements with more specific ones?
• Do you have too many irrelevant or uninteresting details clogging up the narrative?
• Is it too long? What can you cut out or condense without losing any important ideas or details?

Give yourself credit for what you've done well, but don't hesitate to change things that aren't working. It can be tempting to hang on to what you've already written —you took the time and thought to craft it in the first place, so it can be hard to let it go. Taking this approach is doing yourself a disservice, however. No matter how much work you put into a paragraph or much you like a phrase, if they aren't adding to your essay, they need to be cut or altered.

If there's a really big structural problem, or the topic is just not working, you may have to chuck this draft out and start from scratch . Don't panic! I know starting over is frustrating, but it's often the best way to fix major issues.

Consulting Other Readers

Once you've fixed the problems you found on the first pass and have a second (or third) draft you're basically happy with, ask some other people to read it. Check with people whose judgment you trust : parents, teachers, and friends can all be great resources, but how helpful someone will be depends on the individual and how willing you are to take criticism from her.

Also, keep in mind that many people, even teachers, may not be familiar with what colleges look for in an essay. Your mom, for example, may have never written a personal statement, and even if she did, it was most likely decades ago. Give your readers a sense of what you'd like them to read for , or print out the questions I listed above and include them at the end of your essay.

Second Pass

After incorporating any helpful feedback you got from others, you should now have a nearly complete draft with a clear arc.

At this point you want to look for issues with word choice and sentence structure:

• Are there parts that seem stilted or overly formal?
• Do you have any vague or boring descriptors that could be replaced with something more interesting and specific?
• Are there any obvious redundancies or repetitiveness?
• Have you misused any words?
• Are your sentences of varied length and structure?

A good way to check for weirdness in language is to read the essay out loud. If something sounds weird when you say it, it will almost certainly seem off when someone else reads it.

Example: Editing Eva's First Paragraph

In general, Eva feels like her first paragraph isn't as engaging as it could be and doesn't introduce the main point of the essay that well: although it sets up the narrative, it doesn't show off her personality that well. She decides to break it down sentence by sentence:

I dialed the phone number for the fourth time that week.

Problem: For a hook, this sentence is a little too expository. It doesn't add any real excitement or important information (other than that this call isn't the first, which can be incorporate elsewhere.

Solution: Cut this sentence and start with the line of dialogue.

"Hello? This is Eva Smith, and I'm a reporter with Tiny Town High's newspaper The Falcon. I was hoping to ask you some questions about—"

Problem: No major issues with this sentence. It's engaging and sets the scene effectively.

Solution: None needed, but Eva does tweak it slightly to include the fact that this call wasn't her first.

I heard the distinctive click of the person on the other end of the line hanging up, followed by dial tone.

Problem: This is a long-winded way of making a point that's not that important.

Solution: Replace it with a shorter, more evocative description: " Click. Bzzzzzzz. Whoever was on the other end of the line had hung up."

I was about ready to give up: I'd been trying to get the skinny on whether the Atlas Theater was actually closing to make way for a big AMC multiplex or if it was just a rumor for weeks, but no one would return my calls.

Problem: This sentence is kind of long. Some of the phrases ("about ready to give up," "get the skinny") are cliche.

Solution: Eva decides to try to stick more closely to her own perspective: "I'd heard rumors that Atlas Theater was going to be replaced with an AMC multiplex, and I was worried." She also puts a paragraph break before this sentence to emphasize that she's now moving on to the background info rather than describing her call.

Step 7: Double Check Everything

Once you have a final draft, give yourself another week and then go through your essay again. Read it carefully to make sure nothing seems off and there are no obvious typos or errors. Confirm that you are at or under the word limit.

Then, go over the essay again, line by line , checking every word to make sure that it's correct. Double check common errors that spell check may not catch, like mixing up affect and effect or misplacing commas.

Finally, have two other readers check it as well . Oftentimes a fresh set of eyes will catch an issue you've glossed over simply because you've been looking at the essay for so long. Give your readers instructions to only look for typos and errors, since you don't want to be making any major content changes at this point in the process.

This level of thoroughness may seem like overkill, but it's worth taking the time to ensure that you don't have any errors. The last thing you want is for an admissions officer to be put off by a typo or error.

Example: Eva's Final Draft (Paragraphs 1 and 2)

"Hello? This is Eva Smith again. I'm a reporter with Tiny Town High's newspaper The Falcon , and I was hoping to ask you some questions about —" Click. Bzzzzzzz. Whoever was on the other end of the line had hung up.

I'd heard rumors that the historic Atlas Theater was going to be replaced with an AMC multiplex, and I was worried. I'd grown up with the Atlas: my dad taking me to see every Pixar movie on opening night and buying me Red Vines to keep me distracted during the sad parts. Unfortunately my personal history with the place didn't seem to carry much weight with anyone official, and my calls to both the theater and city hall had thus far gone unanswered.

Once you've finished the final check, you're done, and ready to submit! There's one last step, however.

Step 8: Do It All Again

Remember back in step one, when we talked about making a chart to keep track of all the different essays you need to write? Well, now you need to go back to that list and determine which essays you still need to write . Keep in mind your deadlines and don't forget that some schools may require more than one essay or ask for short paragraphs in addition to the main personal statement.

Reusing Essays

In some cases, you may be able to reuse the essay you've already written for other prompts. You can use the same essay for two prompts if:

Both of them are asking the same basic question (e.g. "how do you interact with people who are different from you?" or "what was an important experience and why?"), or

One prompt is relatively specific and the other is very general (e.g. "tell us about how your family shaped your education" and "tell us something about your background"), and

Neither asks about your interest in a specific school or program.

If you choose to reuse an essay you wrote for a different prompt, make sure that it addresses every part of question and that it fits the word limit. If you have to tweak a few things or cut out 50-odd words, it will probably still work. But if the essay would require major changes to fit the criteria, you're probably better off starting from scratch (even if you use the same basic topic).

Crafting Supplemental Essays

The key to keep in mind in when brainstorming for supplemental essays is that you want them to add something new to your application . You shouldn't write about the same topic you used for your personal statement, although it's okay to talk about something similar, as long as you adopt a clearly different angle.

For example, if you're planning to be pre-med in college and your main essay is about how volunteering at the hospital taught you not to judge people on their appearance, you might write your secondary essay on your intellectual interest in biology (which could touch on your volunteering). There's some overlap, but the two topics are clearly distinct.

And now, you're really, truly, finally done. Congrats!

What's Next?

Now that you know how to write a college essay, we have a lot more specific resources for you to excel.

Are you working on the Common App essay ? Read our breakdown of the Common App prompts and our guide to picking the best prompt for you.

Or maybe you're interested in the University of California ? Check out our complete guide to the UC personal statements .

In case you haven't finished the rest of the application process , take a look at our guides to asking for recommendations , writing about extracurriculars , and researching colleges .

Finally, if you're planning to take the SAT or ACT one last time , try out some of our famous test prep guides, like "How to Get a Perfect Score on the SAT" and "15 Key ACT Test Day Tips."

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Alex is an experienced tutor and writer. Over the past five years, she has worked with almost a hundred students and written about pop culture for a wide range of publications. She graduated with honors from University of Chicago, receiving a BA in English and Anthropology, and then went on to earn an MA at NYU in Cultural Reporting and Criticism. In high school, she was a National Merit Scholar, took 12 AP tests and scored 99 percentile scores on the SAT and ACT.

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It's getting harder to spot, but here are some ways you can use ChatGPT to stop cheating and plagiarism.

In 2024, cheating has evolved. It's a tale as old as teaching -- a student, for one reason or another, uses someone else's work to complete their assignment. But now, they could be using an artificial intelligence tool.

The allure is understandable. Away with those shady essay-writing services where a student has to plonk down real cash for an unscrupulous person to write them 1,200 words on the fall of the Roman Empire. An AI writing tool can do that for free in 30 seconds flat.

As a professor of strategic communications, I encounter students using AI tools like ChatGPT , Grammarly and EssayGenius on a regular basis. It's usually easy to tell when a student has used one of these tools to draft their entire work. The tell-tale signs include ambiguous language and a super annoying tendency for AI to spit out text with the assignment prompt featured broadly.

For example, a student might use ChatGPT -- an AI tool that uses large language model learning and a conversational question and answer format to provide query results -- to write a short essay response to a prompt by simply copying and pasting the essay question into the tool.

Take this prompt: In 300 words or less, explain how this SWAT and brand audit will inform your final pitch.

This is ChatGPT's result:

I have received responses like this, or those very close to it, a few times in my tenure as a teacher, and one of the most recognizable red flags is the amount of instances in which key terms from the prompt are used in the final product. 

Students don't normally repeat key terms from the prompt in their work in this way, and the results read closer to old-school SEO-driven copy meant to define these terms rather than a unique essay meant to demonstrate an understanding of subject matter.

But can teachers use AI tools to catch students using AI tools? I came up with some ways to be smarter in spotting artificial intelligence in papers.

Catching cheaters with AI

Here's how to use AI tools to catch cheaters in your class:

• Understand AI capabilities : There are AI tools on the market now that can scan an assignment and its grading criteria to provide a fully written, cited and complete piece of work in a matter of moments. Familiarizing yourself with these tools is the first step in the war against AI-driven integrity violations. 
• Do as the cheaters do: Before the semester begins, copy and paste all your assignments into a tool like ChatGPT and ask it to do the work for you. When you have an example of the type of results it provides specifically in response to your assignments, you'll be better equipped to catch robot-written answers. You could also use a tool designed specifically to spot AI writing in papers .
• Get a real sample of writing: At the beginning of the semester, require your students to submit a simple, fun and personal piece of writing to you. The prompt should be something like "200 words on what your favorite toy was as a child," or "Tell me a story about the most fun you ever had." Once you have a sample of the student's real writing style in hand, you can use it later to have an AI tool review that sample against what you suspect might be AI-written work.
• Ask for a rewrite : If you suspect a student of using AI to cheat on their assignment, take the submitted work and ask an AI tool to rewrite the work for you. In most cases I've encountered, an AI tool will rewrite its own work in the laziest manner possible, substituting synonyms instead of changing any material elements of the "original" work.

Here's an example:

Now, let's take something an actual human (me) wrote, my CNET bio:

The phrasing is changed, extracting much of the soul in the writing and replacing it with sentences that are arguably more clear and straightforward. There are also more additions to the writing, presumably for further clarity.

The most important part about catching cheaters who use AI to do their work is having a reasonable amount of evidence to show the student and the administration at your school if it comes to that. Maintaining a skeptical mind when grading is vital, and your ability to demonstrate ease of use and understanding with these tools will make your case that much stronger.

Good luck out there in the new AI frontier, fellow teachers, and try not to be offended when a student turns in work written by their robot collaborator. It's up to us to make the prospect of learning more alluring than the temptation to cheat.

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Credit: Edmon de Haro

Writing within prison walls

Johns hopkins houses the country's largest digital collection of writings by incarcerated people. can their powerful words elicit change.

By Allen Arthur

A s a kid, Levert Brookshire III remembers running away from his father's house. After his parents separated when he was 7, he split his time between them. But around 11 years old, he began sneaking off to see his mother, with whom he had a deep connection, to escape his father's rigidity. Now in his 50s, Brookshire still describes himself as a mama's boy.

"It's always been that way," he laughs.

His desire to make her proud endures. But it was during that time, bouncing between households, when Brookshire got involved in the streets around San Bernardino and Los Angeles. He wasn't committed to the lifestyle at first, he says. Instead, he was drawn to the persona. He possessed a dangerously common mix of qualities he still sees in youth who grow up in low-income, low-opportunity environments—a lack of hope, a deep yearning for approval, and no belief they can succeed in anything else. That blend, he says, convinces many to "play gangsters" whether they want to or not.

"You don't have much of an identity to cling to," Brookshire says. "You really don't have nothing to be proud of. And so, the gangster life, it becomes what you hear at the dinner table, with your parents, teachers at school. Everyone knows the bad guys in the neighborhood. Everyone's fascinated by that."

Brookshire's path dead-ended in an Arizona prison. In his cell, he looked back on what he'd hoped his life would be—and grew suicidal. The sense that he'd disappointed his mother, now much older and living on disability, felt too heavy to bear. So he began penning a goodbye to her.

His plan never came to pass, in part because he couldn't stop writing. He estimates the letter ended up running more than 30 pages. In what was supposed to be his suicide note were his life's hopes and regrets, released on the page as he faced down decades of incarceration. He also began writing about his life after prison.

He didn't know it at the time, but his writing would connect him to that future, beginning his journey of laying out a detailed post-release plan that he follows to this day. Anyone can read some of them: More than 40 of his letters and essays live in the American Prison Writing Archive .

Now housed at Johns Hopkins University, the digital archive hosts nearly 4,000 pieces, each submitted by an incarcerated writer. It offers an unfiltered glimpse into the massive and troubled United States prison system, one that prison corrections departments often work diligently to keep from public view. And while such a collection might sound dispiriting, the writings showcase a panorama of human feeling and complexity—the misery of watching one's individuality deteriorate, the joy of creating theatrical productions, the strangeness of Sarah Palin making a prison visit—much of which is missing from common media narratives about prison.

"There's a body of expertise and beauty and creativity and ways that people are able to be keen observers," says Vesla Weaver , a professor of political science and sociology at Johns Hopkins and the archive's director. "They have unmatched insights into the world because they've lived at the receiving end of institutions that often fail them and have had to build from within those crevices ideas, aspirations, new ways of surviving, ways of giving back to one another."

Used by researchers, educators, advocates, and anyone interested in learning the realities of prison, the archive offers a home for those who rarely have a chance to express themselves to be valued and—ideally—understood. The writing serves as prison oversight and human insight, a window into the system and the souls.

"I literally shed tears when I first saw my writings inside [the archive]," Brookshire says. "The only way I can describe it is 'humility' because I know the person I was, and I know where I was at when I wrote those exact words."

T he archive's creation began in 2006, when educator and author Doran Larson started a writer's workshop in Attica, the infamous upstate New York prison. Though men often came and went from the writer's group because of releases, transfers, or disciplinary problems, Larson remembers "a core of about seven or eight men that kept coming back."

"And that's really what kept me coming back: their consistency and dedication to the work," he recalls.

Exposed to these deeply emotional and creative works, Larson crafted an undergraduate course on American prison writing at Hamilton University, where he's a professor of literature and creative writing. During summers spent reading at the Library of Congress, he found little reflecting present-day prison life.

"The textbook I wanted to use basically didn't exist," Larson says.

Bereft of options but convinced of the quality of the work, Larson put out a call in 2012 for writing submissions through Prison Legal News , a publication distributed inside. He received 154, turning more than 70 of them into the book Fourth City: Essays From the Prison in America (Michigan State University Press, 2014).

The book's release didn't stop the submissions. Around half a dozen arrived each week, creating what Larson describes as "an ethical problem": a growing collection of writings with nowhere to put them.

"People would put in their cover letter: 'I know the deadline's passed. I know you're not going to be able to publish this. I just want someone to hear my story.'"

From these submissions, the American Prison Writing Archive began. Initially hosted at Hamilton, the project survived for years with a small staff and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities . As the archive grew, it became clear that while Hamilton valued the project, the liberal arts school simply didn't have the resources to keep it going.

Larson began searching for other possibilities. Around this time, colleagues of Larson's received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to launch a digital humanities project. Armed with both funding and a thriving archive, he just needed an institutional partner.

Enter Vesla Weaver.

F or years, Weaver had studied prisons as an essential space for understanding U.S. democracy. Despite being taught politics that valued freedom, Weaver saw a huge portion of the country facing intense repression.

"The lived experience of the people I was talking to basically had no resemblance to the things that were being taught in American politics textbooks," Weaver remembers. "And at that time there wasn't even a mention of incarceration or prisons as a crucial site of the deployment of state power."

The two academics paired up, with Larson as the program executive, Weaver as the director, and Johns Hopkins as the new home.

JHU now hosts a one-of-a-kind collection, "a living archive" as Larson calls it, which gathers work not easily accessed. But its value runs deeper than that. Exploring the array of entries—essays, cultural criticism, poetry, and more—exposes one to an incredible breadth of experiences and emotions not often seen in portrayals of prison.

"I wish you could see into the hearts of these actors and poets," Beverly Jaynes wrote in 2017 of theater and poetry classes she took inside the women's prison in Vandalia, Missouri, "to see their gained self-confidence from meeting challenges and reaching goals, to see their joy in understanding their ability to take direction with self-discipline, to see their bonding and how far they've come together in personal growth."

In "Federal Felines," from 1993, the archive's oldest piece, writer John L. Orr chronicles a tense stare-down with another prison resident at the Federal Correctional Institution Terminal Island, a low-security prison sticking out into the Los Angeles harbor. That resident, it turns out, is a cat, and the rest of the story unfolds as Orr's tender reflection on the surprising fulfillment of caregiving and the meaning found in moments free from society's labels.

"The nursery became a refuge for me," Orr writes of the cats' makeshift home. "An island on an island, and l retreated to its confines every chance I got: writing letters, reading, and just to escape the desolation of the general population. Slowly the kittens accepted me and occasionally used my legs as scratching posts if I didn't flinch. I guess I was part of their playground."

Many of the reflections in the archive grapple with the full complexity of incarceration, with dozens of writers pointing out the absurdity of violent, destructive institutions advertised as spaces for personal growth and reform.

Writing from the notoriously violent Alabama prison system, Donald D. Hairgrove in a "A Single Unheard Voice" broke down the miseries the system inflicts—from violent officers to deprivation of contact—while presenting it to the taxpaying public as a place for people to change.

"Far from rehabilitating or 'correcting' past errors, it constitutes a setting that helps drive people to anger, frustration, and despair," Hairgrove wrote in 2015.

At the same time, writers wrestle with their own mindsets, investigating themselves and their behaviors.

"Through Zen Buddhist meditation and contemplation," writes Diana W. in an essay from an Alaskan prison , "I have learned about myself—all the ugly, dark, and scary stuff: the fear, self-pity, anger, and deep sadness; and, surprisingly, some good stuff too: a sense of humor, intelligence, compassion, and true remorse."

Brookshire himself embodies this experience, writing about society's vicious treatment of the poor and mentally ill in one passage, then saying he deserved consequences for his behavior soon after. Yet he, like many incarcerated people, says that none of what he needed for meaningful change could be found inside.

"It's not an environment for learning," Brookshire says, "It's not an environment for teaching, and it's not an environment for growing. You have to make it an environment for growing."

That tension—between understanding the need for rehabilitation and experiencing its near impossibility inside—is perhaps best encapsulated by Chanell Burnette.

"I am simply a human being who has made a very costly mistake," she wrote from Virginia in 2019 , "and am making the best effort to understand why we all do the things that we do … and also a desperate attempt to open the eyes of those in charge of passing judgment on us."

I f there's a throughline in the archive, it's a powerful desire to be viewed as human. Piece after piece beckons the reader to understand incarcerated people as people, complete with the same talents, desires, and flaws as everyone else. This acceptance, many pieces assert, would make the public's faith in punishment much harder to sustain.

That punishment extends to prison communication itself. Ostensibly to prevent contraband from entering facilities, prisons and jails have increasingly adopted mail scanning: a process by which the system itself or a third-party contractor digitizes mail and sends it to the incarcerated person, often completely disposing of the original paper copy. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, at least 14 states deployed the practice between 2017 and 2022 alone. The federal system and many local jails have done the same.

This crackdown extends to reading as well, with many facilities prohibiting books sent by anyone other than approved vendors, or banning books entirely. PEN America , a nonprofit supporting free expression, analyzed the 28 states reporting information on banned books and found more than 22,000 titles banned in Florida's prisons and more than 10,000 in Texas '. These restrictions are growing more common, decreasing the ability of incarcerated people to communicate with loved ones, limiting their options for positive forms of expression, and cracking down on a key method of prison oversight.

"It's all part of cost-cutting and efficiency," says Yukari Kane, co-founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of the Prison Journalism Project . "I think part of the impetus for that was the labor shortage [in prisons] after the pandemic. And as they've done that, they've realized that doing that allows them to control information a lot more."

The Prison Journalism Project was also inspired in part by the pandemic. Kane and PJP co-founder Shaheen Pasha were teaching journalism in prisons. When prisons and jails cut off visitation at the dawn of the pandemic, information from inside became even more scarce, all while the virus and staffing issues were decimating facilities.

PJP's newspaper and the stories it helped place in other outlets became one of the few ways the outside world learned of the devastating effects of COVID-19 on prisons.

Like many with incarcerated loved ones, Mc­kenna Deluca sees access to literature inside mingling the political and personal. As co-director of the Claremont Forum's Prison Library Project , she helps ship thousands of books each month to incarcerated people and sees firsthand the power of creativity inside.

"My dad was incarcerated when I was in high school," Deluca says. "He's since passed away, so I'm kind of doing this in memory of him. But also, when he was incarcerated and got out, he kept saying [he'd] not gotten involved with gangs or any other kind of malicious activity because he was reading all the time."

Increasing opportunities for education and expression are how society shows the people inside we still care, she says.

Even when those inside can find time and space to consume or create literature, its survival is not guaranteed.

Brookshire remembers "meticulously" writing pages and pages of deeply important thoughts, only to have them destroyed during a confrontation or a move.

"Sometimes we've had people send us a 200-page manuscript, and they say, 'I know that you may not be able to take this. Please don't send it back. It'll get destroyed,'" Weaver says.

Bringing visibility, security, and respect to prison writings is a primary goal of both Weaver and Larson. For Larson, the American Prison Writing Archive represents a sharp turn from seeing incarcerated people as problems to seeing them as a vast resource of creativity and experience, able to help society answer difficult questions.

"What the archive is seeking to do is to turn that around and say, This is a pool of incredible human resources for understanding not only the criminal legal system but literally every factor that leads people into this system," Larson says.

For Weaver, it's a way for the country to look at itself, to question rigorously whether we live up to our ideals.

"We'll be able to have a collective testimonial account that wasn't focused on one prison. It was a mass of writing that is better than any social survey poll of incarcerated people. I mean, the power of the archive is that," she says. "We don't tell people what to write about or what to say. And yet, through their writings, we have amassed an incredible documentary evidence base."

That sense of treating incarcerated people inside as unique personalities, rather than as a monolith, infuses Deluca's ambitions, too. She's seen change come about when "we looked at this one individual—if we could change this person's life and they could change that person's life—more on a one-on-one basis, instead of a collective 'you' or 'other.'"

If the crackdowns on prison communication make prison seem even more isolated, they also make the archive and other endeavors to give prison writers outlets that much more valuable. The archive is part of a small but notable boom within prison journalism and writing, with new organizations, such as PJP and Empowerment Avenue , training and publishing prison journalists. Outlets like Prism and The Appeal also offer publishing opportunities. The Marshall Project launched News Inside , a free publication for incarcerated people, and recently prison newspapers have started growing again.

Still, the challenges seem to grow as the archive does.

A team of eight now runs the American Prison Writing Archive, opening about 700 submissions per month and responding to each. Together, they navigate thorny ethical questions.

"What happens when a journalist comes along and wants to republish some of the work and the person has died?" Weaver asks. "Or they're transferred to the prison hospital because they've been beaten up or neglected, or we can't get back in touch with them for whatever reason? What happens when what they write could expose them to further retaliation and violence?"

Larson and Weaver both teach with the archive. For those inside, its value keeps revealing itself to new writers.

What Brookshire wrote continues to guide his life, starting all the way back to the letter to his mother. Together, his writings collectively chronicle his new understanding of society and the "elaborate charade of the so-called gangsta's code." And across nearly four dozen pieces, he painstakingly plans his life after prison. Slowly, the obstacles before him seem more solvable. Possibilities inch closer.

For the American Prison Writing Archive, a 'shadow canon' sheds light

The american prison writing archive moves to baltimore, larson publishes new book on american prison system.

Now a peer support specialist with Community Bridges , a nonprofit in Arizona, Brookshire hopes those who discover the archive will see what he calls the "absurdity" of prison but also the power of providing people inside with an opportunity.

"It gives life. That's life for people who are in a dark place," he says of being in the archive. "Just know [the writers] are sitting in a room where they're supposed to be depressed, where they're supposed to be downtrodden, where they're supposed to be melancholy. But yet that beautiful creation came from their head through their arms through the tip of their pen onto that paper. And that's what you read. And that's beautiful to me."

Larson and Weaver say the archive doesn't need a hard sell. Just give it a try, and you'll understand why it's needed. "I tell my students: It's like walking into a dark room that's full of furniture, and you have to arrange the furniture," Larson says. "But first you're going to have to bruise your knees badly by just running into it. … When they go into the archive, they're getting their moral compasses so thrown off balance because it just doesn't fit the world that they believed they operated in."

The archive also represents a microcosm of the country: birth and death, meeting and parting, violence and redemption, labor and segregation, attempts at change both successful and thwarted.

"It's so much more than just, 'This is the injustice of these institutions,'" Weaver says. "It's people who have seen a range of failures, even before they got to prison. So to me, it's a story of America—all wrapped up in this one place." For others, it's something they carry with them.

"I know that [my plan] would always slip my mind if I didn't have it written down," Brookshire says. "If I forget, I could look at my master plan. It'll always be posted in that archive. And I'm literally living it. Now I'm just living what I wrote."

Allen Arthur is a freelance journalist working predominantly with people who have been incarcerated.

Posted in Politics+Society

Tagged writing , prison-industrial complex , incarceration , prison reform

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