College Essay Overview & Tips on Writing

Ask your teacher or supervisor. They have a vast knowledge of writing essays and how they should appear. Know the expectations of your mentor and make sure you meet them.

Most supervisors will provide you with the general guideline to follow when writing the essay or even some great college essays for sale to use as an example. In general, most pieces take a similar format. This article will learn about the essay’s general outlook and other essential content to understand the work.

Elements to include when writing a college essay

  1. Cover page

The cover page should contain:

  • Your name: you need to include your full names in this section.
  • Teacher’s name: the cover section should also have the tutor’s name supervising your essay assignment.
  • Your college: remember to write the name of your institution on the cover page.
  • Your section
  • Your discipline: your discipline may include the course you are perusing.
  • The essay’s main topic: have a place on your cover page to illustrate your essay’s topic.
  • The score awarded to the piece: the score section remains blank until after making your essay, where the lecture indicated your score in this section.
  • Essay level
  • The highest and lowest number of words to include in the essay

Get advice from your teacher before submitting the essay and know their requirements.

  1. Contents page

It is mostly done at the final stage and put between the cover page and your essay’s first page. A content page divides the piece into sections and numbers them, especially if it has close to 2,000 words even more.

  1. First page

It should contain your title at the very top of the page. It should be in bold and in a larger font than the rest of the words. The first page also contains the introduction. It is more or less like a summary of the essay.

  1. Bibliography

It is merely the citations. Essays are all about reading other people’s work than coming up with your work, ideas, and opinions. Therefore, it requires research, and from your research, you need to cite exactly where you got your information. It is a requirement. Reference the necessary texts not everything requires a reference. If you have no clue in referencing or want to reference better, go through ‘How to succeed at referencing.’ Read different ways of citation and learn the best way of referencing.

  1. Illustrations

It is informing of graphs, tables, pie charts and also pictures. Anything that is yours needs a reference. If you use any information that is not your original content, you need to cite it to avoid plagiarism, which is the biggest crime in essay writing. Do not forget to give a citation to picture or graphs lifted from another source other than your original work. The authority must be in the bibliography.

Put a title on your picture. Describe it so that the readers have more information on what they are looking at.

  1. Formatting and fonts

Various essays may have specifications on how to format your work. The paper may describe the font to use, spacing among others.

  • Font. The standard font is usually Times New Roman (12)
  • Spacing. The standard spacing is 1.5 lines. Other essays may have their different specification to follow.
  • Breaks. You are supposed to leave a line between paragraphs instead of indenting the first line. You can do this by spacing at 12pt after a line. In a way, it also makes your work neat, and it will attract the readers.
  1. Section headings

It is necessary, especially when writing long essays. For short essays, this might not be necessary.

The headings should be in bold and not underlined. But before considering using headings, you should get advice from your teacher. Find out whether he or she likes using titles or not.

  1. Title

The topic of your essay should be at the top of the first page. You should use 14pt text. Note that the title of your paper should not underline.

Conclusion

Writing an essay is an easy task, especially when you follow the format. Though different papers may differ in their structure, the majority of them have the same design. Understand the layout of every essay you need to write to ensure you are producing quality work. With the correct format, you will be sure to include all the relevant content in your paper.