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Essay samples by category

With regard to college paper subjects, there is no shortage of free essay themes available. Professors, instructors, and educators in universities, colleges, and schools appear to be resourceful engines, continuously generating an infinite array of essay topics.

Medicine And Health

• Women's Health
• Public Health
• Organ Donation
• Mental Health
• Impact of Technology
• Biotechnology
• Advantages of Technology
• Internet Privacy
• Gamification
• Cyber Security
• Computer Software
• Volunteering
• Socialization
• Social Work
• Social Status
• Social Responsibility
• Social Norm
• Social Networking
• Social Movements
• Social Issues
• Social Exclusion
• Social science
• Scientific method
• Radiation Therapy
• Political Science
• Pharmacology
• Superstition
• Supernatural
• Reincarnation
• Mother Teresa
• Good and evil
• Wuthering Heights
• Virginia Woolf
• Tennessee Williams
• Sandra Cisneros
• Phillis Wheatley
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• United States Constitution
• Surveillance
• Prohibition
• Plessy v Ferguson
• Mass Incarceration
• Law Enforcement
• Thomas Jefferson
• Richard Nixon
• Public Speaking
• Political party
• Michelle Obama
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Study Abroad
• Special Education
• Recommendation
• Physical Education
• Higher Education
• Education System
• Female Education
• Swot Analysis
• Organization
• International Business
• Entrepreneurship
• Bussiness Plan
• Visual Arts
• Romanticism
• Renaissance
• Movie Review
• Architecture
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100% happiness guarantee, free paper examples by words:, last added essay samples, the principle of the separation of powers: montesquieu’s revolutionary concept.

Renowned Enlightenment philosopher Baron de Montesquieu is most recognized for his significant contributions to political theory, especially the notion of the separation of powers. His 1748 treatise "The Spirit of the Laws" contained an explanation of this concept and served as the foundation for contemporary democratic administration. The authors of the US Constitution were influenced by Montesquieu's theories regarding the allocation of governmental powers, and his ideas are still relevant in today's political discourse. Avoiding the accumulation of power in […]

The Spark that Ignited the English Civil War: an In-Depth Analysis

The English Civil War, a seminal event in British history, was not the result of a single cause but rather a complex interplay of political, religious, and social factors that built up over time. However, one event that stands out as a critical catalyst for this conflict was King Charles I's attempt to arrest five members of Parliament in January 1642. This dramatic episode not only symbolized the escalating tensions between the monarchy and Parliament but also set the stage […]

The Principal Author of the Declaration of Independence

Despite the fact that it was written by a group of people, Thomas Jefferson is recognized as having written the majority of the Declaration of Independence, one of the most important documents in American history that signifies the start of the country's independence. Jefferson played a key role in articulating the colonies' complaints against British rule and in laying the theoretical groundwork for the nascent republic. The Continental Congress assigned a group of men, including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger […]

The Architect of the Stanford Prison Experiment: a Psychological Inquiry

Few experiments in the field of psychology study have provoked as much discussion and thought as the Stanford Prison Experiment. This contentious study, which looked at how people behave when they feel they have authority and power, was carried out in 1971 and was led by Stanford University psychologist Dr. Philip Zimbardo. The experiment's significant ramifications and moral dilemmas are still relevant in psychology and other fields. Born in 1933, Dr. Zimbardo had always been captivated by the dynamics of […]

The Disturbing Portrayal of the Klan in “The Birth of a Nation”

"The Birth of a Nation," directed by D.W. Griffith in 1915, is widely regarded as a seminal work of cinema because of its inventive methods and epic narrative. But its racist overtones and depiction of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) have generated a great deal of controversy and discussion. The Klan is portrayed in the movie as both the heroic defenders of Southern society and as an essential entity that must be in place to defend white civilization against the […]

The Social and Moral Goals of the Temperance Movement

A coalition of religious leaders, social reformers, and concerned citizens saw alcohol as a threat to society's moral fabric and well-being, and together they created the Temperance Movement, which was a significant social and political force in the United States and other parts of the world during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement's main objective was to reduce alcohol consumption and ultimately lead to its prohibition. Fundamentally, the Temperance Movement aimed to improve both individual lives and society […]

Classifying Items: the Science of Effective Categorization

In our everyday lives, we encounter countless items, each with its own characteristics and properties. Whether it's the books on our shelves, the groceries in our carts, or the digital files on our computers, organizing these items into appropriate groups is essential for efficiency and functionality. This process of classification, though seemingly simple, is underpinned by complex principles that are pivotal in various fields, from biology to data science. Understanding the science behind effective categorization can enhance our ability to […]

The Foundational Role of Constitutions in Modern Governance

At their core, constitutions serve several crucial functions, ensuring stability, order, and fairness within a society; they establish the principles and values upon which a nation is built, delineate the powers and responsibilities of government institutions, and protect individual rights and freedoms. Understanding the primary purpose of most constitutions reveals their indispensable role in shaping democratic societies and upholding the rule of law. Constitutions are the cornerstone of modern governance, providing a framework for the political and legal structures within […]

How “Impressionism” Became the Name of an Art Movement

The term "Impressionism," a label now synonymous with one of the most celebrated movements in art history, has an intriguing origin that reflects both the movement's innovative spirit and the critical reception it initially received. The story of how this term came into being is a fascinating tale of artistic rebellion, critical disdain, and the eventual triumph of a new visual language that forever changed the landscape of art. A group of young Parisian artists started questioning the norms of […]

How Seat Belts Significantly Enhance Survival Rates in Car Accidents

Few inventions in the field of car safety have shown to be as important and successful as the seat belt. Since its introduction in the middle of the 20th century, this straightforward yet clever gadget has repeatedly shown that it is capable of saving lives. Numerous studies have demonstrated that wearing a seat belt increases one's odds of survival in an automobile accident by 45–50%. This indicates that seat belt use considerably improves survival rates. Comprehending the underlying mechanisms of […]

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Six Essay Helper Tools for Students

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• 23rd August 2023

Essay writing is a significant aspect of any academic career – regardless of the subject. Creating a research timeline and writing an essay from start to finish can be a daunting task, but luckily, online essay helper tools can assist you throughout the writing process. In this post, we’ve compiled a list of the five popular tools to help you with your essay, from the initial outline to the citations. Keep reading for more.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine provided by Google that focuses specifically on scholarly literature, including academic articles, conference papers, theses, and books. It was created to help researchers and students find authoritative and credible sources for their research and provides links to the full-text versions when available.

One feature of Google Scholar is that it allows you to track citations of academic works. For example, you can see how many times a particular article has been cited by other researchers, which can help gauge its significance.

Scrivener is a popular writing software designed to assist you in drafting, organizing, and editing your work. For example, it allows you to break down your writing into smaller, manageable sections called scrivenings . These can represent different sections or paragraphs of your essay.

You can then view and arrange your scrivenings on a virtual corkboard or in an outline format so you can plan the structure of your work, which is especially helpful if you’re writing a longer essay. Scrivener also provides a research folder where you can store reference materials, images, web links, and notes related to your project, keeping all relevant information in one place for easy access. It also has a customizable full-screen mode that allows you to focus solely on writing without distractions.

Turnitin is a plagiarism checker widely used by educational institutions to help students avoid unintentional plagiarism. It compares submitted work to a vast database of academic content to identify potential matches. After your essay is processed, Turnitin generates an originality report that highlights any text in the submitted document that matches content from other sources. Turnitin can also check citations and references to ensure they are correctly formatted, which helps ensure your sources are credited properly and decreases instances of unintentional plagiarism .

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Thesaurus.Com

Do you ever find yourself reusing the same words over and over when writing an essay? Varying your word choice in your writing helps make your essays more interesting and expressive, but it’s not always easy to come up with the right synonyms . Thesaurus.com is one of the largest and most reliable online thesaurus tools and is a great resource for finding synonyms for commonly used words in essays (such as significantly or additionally ) and expanding your everyday vocabulary. You can even have a synonym of the day sent directly to your email.

Evernote is a note-taking app that provides a platform for students to organize ideas, research materials, and take notes in one place. It syncs across devices and provides a browser extension called the Web Clipper that allows you to save articles, web pages, and images directly to your Evernote account.

Citation Machine

Citation Machine generates citations and references for your essay based on the information you provide, such as the title of the work, the author’s name, and the publication year. It offers a wide range of citation styles commonly used in academic writing, including APA, MLA, and Chicago styles.

Citation Machine can generate reference entries and in-text citations for different types of sources (e.g., books, articles, websites, and videos). In addition, it offers tutorials and tips on proper citation guidelines and avoiding plagiarism .

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Getting College Essay Help: Important Do's and Don’ts

College Essays

If you grow up to be a professional writer, everything you write will first go through an editor before being published. This is because the process of writing is really a process of re-writing —of rethinking and reexamining your work, usually with the help of someone else. So what does this mean for your student writing? And in particular, what does it mean for very important, but nonprofessional writing like your college essay? Should you ask your parents to look at your essay? Pay for an essay service?

If you are wondering what kind of help you can, and should, get with your personal statement, you've come to the right place! In this article, I'll talk about what kind of writing help is useful, ethical, and even expected for your college admission essay . I'll also point out who would make a good editor, what the differences between editing and proofreading are, what to expect from a good editor, and how to spot and stay away from a bad one.

Table of Contents

What Kind of Help for Your Essay Can You Get?

What's Good Editing?

What should an editor do for you, what kind of editing should you avoid, proofreading, what's good proofreading, what kind of proofreading should you avoid.

What Do Colleges Think Of You Getting Help With Your Essay?

Who Can/Should Help You?

Advice for editors.

Should You Pay Money For Essay Editing?

The Bottom Line

What's next, what kind of help with your essay can you get.

Rather than talking in general terms about "help," let's first clarify the two different ways that someone else can improve your writing . There is editing, which is the more intensive kind of assistance that you can use throughout the whole process. And then there's proofreading, which is the last step of really polishing your final product.

Let me go into some more detail about editing and proofreading, and then explain how good editors and proofreaders can help you."

Editing is helping the author (in this case, you) go from a rough draft to a finished work . Editing is the process of asking questions about what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you're organizing your ideas. But not all editing is good editing . In fact, it's very easy for an editor to cross the line from supportive to overbearing and over-involved.

Ability to clarify assignments. A good editor is usually a good writer, and certainly has to be a good reader. For example, in this case, a good editor should make sure you understand the actual essay prompt you're supposed to be answering.

Open-endedness. Good editing is all about asking questions about your ideas and work, but without providing answers. It's about letting you stick to your story and message, and doesn't alter your point of view.

Think of an editor as a great travel guide. It can show you the many different places your trip could take you. It should explain any parts of the trip that could derail your trip or confuse the traveler. But it never dictates your path, never forces you to go somewhere you don't want to go, and never ignores your interests so that the trip no longer seems like it's your own. So what should good editors do?

Help Brainstorm Topics

Sometimes it's easier to bounce thoughts off of someone else. This doesn't mean that your editor gets to come up with ideas, but they can certainly respond to the various topic options you've come up with. This way, you're less likely to write about the most boring of your ideas, or to write about something that isn't actually important to you.

If you're wondering how to come up with options for your editor to consider, check out our guide to brainstorming topics for your college essay .

Help Revise Your Drafts

Here, your editor can't upset the delicate balance of not intervening too much or too little. It's tricky, but a great way to think about it is to remember: editing is about asking questions, not giving answers .

Revision questions should point out:

• Places where more detail or more description would help the reader connect with your essay
• Places where structure and logic don't flow, losing the reader's attention
• Places where there aren't transitions between paragraphs, confusing the reader
• Moments where your narrative or the arguments you're making are unclear

But pointing to potential problems is not the same as actually rewriting—editors let authors fix the problems themselves.

Bad editing is usually very heavy-handed editing. Instead of helping you find your best voice and ideas, a bad editor changes your writing into their own vision.

You may be dealing with a bad editor if they:

• Add material (examples, descriptions) that doesn't come from you
• Use a thesaurus to make your college essay sound "more mature"
• Add meaning or insight to the essay that doesn't come from you
• Tell you what to say and how to say it
• Write sentences, phrases, and paragraphs for you
• Change your voice in the essay so it no longer sounds like it was written by a teenager

Colleges can tell the difference between a 17-year-old's writing and a 50-year-old's writing. Not only that, they have access to your SAT or ACT Writing section, so they can compare your essay to something else you wrote. Writing that's a little more polished is great and expected. But a totally different voice and style will raise questions.

Where's the Line Between Helpful Editing and Unethical Over-Editing?

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether your college essay editor is doing the right thing. Here are some guidelines for staying on the ethical side of the line.

• An editor should say that the opening paragraph is kind of boring, and explain what exactly is making it drag. But it's overstepping for an editor to tell you exactly how to change it.
• An editor should point out where your prose is unclear or vague. But it's completely inappropriate for the editor to rewrite that section of your essay.
• An editor should let you know that a section is light on detail or description. But giving you similes and metaphors to beef up that description is a no-go.

Proofreading (also called copy-editing) is checking for errors in the last draft of a written work. It happens at the end of the process and is meant as the final polishing touch. Proofreading is meticulous and detail-oriented, focusing on small corrections. It sands off all the surface rough spots that could alienate the reader.

Because proofreading is usually concerned with making fixes on the word or sentence level, this is the only process where someone else can actually add to or take away things from your essay . This is because what they are adding or taking away tends to be one or two misplaced letters.

Laser focus. Proofreading is all about the tiny details, so the ability to really concentrate on finding small slip-ups is a must.

Excellent grammar and spelling skills. Proofreaders need to dot every "i" and cross every "t." Good proofreaders should correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They should put foreign words in italics and surround quotations with quotation marks. They should check that you used the correct college's name, and that you adhered to any formatting requirements (name and date at the top of the page, uniform font and size, uniform spacing).

Limited interference. A proofreader needs to make sure that you followed any word limits. But if cuts need to be made to shorten the essay, that's your job and not the proofreader's.

A bad proofreader either tries to turn into an editor, or just lacks the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Some signs that you're working with a bad proofreader are:

• If they suggest making major changes to the final draft of your essay. Proofreading happens when editing is already finished.
• If they aren't particularly good at spelling, or don't know grammar, or aren't detail-oriented enough to find someone else's small mistakes.
• If they start swapping out your words for fancier-sounding synonyms, or changing the voice and sound of your essay in other ways. A proofreader is there to check for errors, not to take the 17-year-old out of your writing.

What Do Colleges Think of Your Getting Help With Your Essay?

Admissions officers agree: light editing and proofreading are good—even required ! But they also want to make sure you're the one doing the work on your essay. They want essays with stories, voice, and themes that come from you. They want to see work that reflects your actual writing ability, and that focuses on what you find important.

On the Importance of Editing

Get feedback. Have a fresh pair of eyes give you some feedback. Don't allow someone else to rewrite your essay, but do take advantage of others' edits and opinions when they seem helpful. ( Bates College )

Read your essay aloud to someone. Reading the essay out loud offers a chance to hear how your essay sounds outside your head. This exercise reveals flaws in the essay's flow, highlights grammatical errors and helps you ensure that you are communicating the exact message you intended. ( Dickinson College )

On the Value of Proofreading

Share your essays with at least one or two people who know you well—such as a parent, teacher, counselor, or friend—and ask for feedback. Remember that you ultimately have control over your essays, and your essays should retain your own voice, but others may be able to catch mistakes that you missed and help suggest areas to cut if you are over the word limit. ( Yale University )

Proofread and then ask someone else to proofread for you. Although we want substance, we also want to be able to see that you can write a paper for our professors and avoid careless mistakes that would drive them crazy. ( Oberlin College )

On Watching Out for Too Much Outside Influence

Limit the number of people who review your essay. Too much input usually means your voice is lost in the writing style. ( Carleton College )

Ask for input (but not too much). Your parents, friends, guidance counselors, coaches, and teachers are great people to bounce ideas off of for your essay. They know how unique and spectacular you are, and they can help you decide how to articulate it. Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. ( Vanderbilt University )

Now let's talk about some potential people to approach for your college essay editing and proofreading needs. It's best to start close to home and slowly expand outward. Not only are your family and friends more invested in your success than strangers, but they also have a better handle on your interests and personality. This knowledge is key for judging whether your essay is expressing your true self.

Parents or Close Relatives

Your family may be full of potentially excellent editors! Parents are deeply committed to your well-being, and family members know you and your life well enough to offer details or incidents that can be included in your essay. On the other hand, the rewriting process necessarily involves criticism, which is sometimes hard to hear from someone very close to you.

A parent or close family member is a great choice for an editor if you can answer "yes" to the following questions. Is your parent or close relative a good writer or reader? Do you have a relationship where editing your essay won't create conflict? Are you able to constructively listen to criticism and suggestion from the parent?

One suggestion for defusing face-to-face discussions is to try working on the essay over email. Send your parent a draft, have them write you back some comments, and then you can pick which of their suggestions you want to use and which to discard.

Teachers or Tutors

A humanities teacher that you have a good relationship with is a great choice. I am purposefully saying humanities, and not just English, because teachers of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, and any other classes where you do a lot of writing, are all used to reviewing student work.

Moreover, any teacher or tutor that has been working with you for some time, knows you very well and can vet the essay to make sure it "sounds like you."

If your teacher or tutor has some experience with what college essays are supposed to be like, ask them to be your editor. If not, then ask whether they have time to proofread your final draft.

Guidance or College Counselor at Your School

The best thing about asking your counselor to edit your work is that this is their job. This means that they have a very good sense of what colleges are looking for in an application essay.

At the same time, school counselors tend to have relationships with admissions officers in many colleges, which again gives them insight into what works and which college is focused on what aspect of the application.

Unfortunately, in many schools the guidance counselor tends to be way overextended. If your ratio is 300 students to 1 college counselor, you're unlikely to get that person's undivided attention and focus. It is still useful to ask them for general advice about your potential topics, but don't expect them to be able to stay with your essay from first draft to final version.

Friends, Siblings, or Classmates

Although they most likely don't have much experience with what colleges are hoping to see, your peers are excellent sources for checking that your essay is you .

Friends and siblings are perfect for the read-aloud edit. Read your essay to them so they can listen for words and phrases that are stilted, pompous, or phrases that just don't sound like you.

You can even trade essays and give helpful advice on each other's work.

If your editor hasn't worked with college admissions essays very much, no worries! Any astute and attentive reader can still greatly help with your process. But, as in all things, beginners do better with some preparation.

First, your editor should read our advice about how to write a college essay introduction , how to spot and fix a bad college essay , and get a sense of what other students have written by going through some admissions essays that worked .

Then, as they read your essay, they can work through the following series of questions that will help them to guide you.

Introduction Questions

• Is the first sentence a killer opening line? Why or why not?
• Does the introduction hook the reader? Does it have a colorful, detailed, and interesting narrative? Or does it propose a compelling or surprising idea?
• Can you feel the author's voice in the introduction, or is the tone dry, dull, or overly formal? Show the places where the voice comes through.

Essay Body Questions

• Does the essay have a through-line? Is it built around a central argument, thought, idea, or focus? Can you put this idea into your own words?
• How is the essay organized? By logical progression? Chronologically? Do you feel order when you read it, or are there moments where you are confused or lose the thread of the essay?
• Does the essay have both narratives about the author's life and explanations and insight into what these stories reveal about the author's character, personality, goals, or dreams? If not, which is missing?
• Does the essay flow? Are there smooth transitions/clever links between paragraphs? Between the narrative and moments of insight?

Reader Response Questions

• Does the writer's personality come through? Do we know what the speaker cares about? Do we get a sense of "who he or she is"?
• Where did you feel most connected to the essay? Which parts of the essay gave you a "you are there" sensation by invoking your senses? What moments could you picture in your head well?
• Where are the details and examples vague and not specific enough?
• Did you get an "a-ha!" feeling anywhere in the essay? Is there a moment of insight that connected all the dots for you? Is there a good reveal or "twist" anywhere in the essay?
• What are the strengths of this essay? What needs the most improvement?

Should You Pay Money for Essay Editing?

One alternative to asking someone you know to help you with your college essay is the paid editor route. There are two different ways to pay for essay help: a private essay coach or a less personal editing service , like the many proliferating on the internet.

My advice is to think of these options as a last resort rather than your go-to first choice. I'll first go through the reasons why. Then, if you do decide to go with a paid editor, I'll help you decide between a coach and a service.

When to Consider a Paid Editor

In general, I think hiring someone to work on your essay makes a lot of sense if none of the people I discussed above are a possibility for you.

If you can't ask your parents. For example, if your parents aren't good writers, or if English isn't their first language. Or if you think getting your parents to help is going create unnecessary extra conflict in your relationship with them (applying to college is stressful as it is!)

If you can't ask your teacher or tutor. Maybe you don't have a trusted teacher or tutor that has time to look over your essay with focus. Or, for instance, your favorite humanities teacher has very limited experience with college essays and so won't know what admissions officers want to see.

If you can't ask your guidance counselor. This could be because your guidance counselor is way overwhelmed with other students.

If you can't share your essay with those who know you. It might be that your essay is on a very personal topic that you're unwilling to share with parents, teachers, or peers. Just make sure it doesn't fall into one of the bad-idea topics in our article on bad college essays .

If the cost isn't a consideration. Many of these services are quite expensive, and private coaches even more so. If you have finite resources, I'd say that hiring an SAT or ACT tutor (whether it's PrepScholar or someone else) is better way to spend your money . This is because there's no guarantee that a slightly better essay will sufficiently elevate the rest of your application, but a significantly higher SAT score will definitely raise your applicant profile much more.

Should You Hire an Essay Coach?

On the plus side, essay coaches have read dozens or even hundreds of college essays, so they have experience with the format. Also, because you'll be working closely with a specific person, it's more personal than sending your essay to a service, which will know even less about you.

But, on the minus side, you'll still be bouncing ideas off of someone who doesn't know that much about you . In general, if you can adequately get the help from someone you know, there is no advantage to paying someone to help you.

If you do decide to hire a coach, ask your school counselor, or older students that have used the service for recommendations. If you can't afford the coach's fees, ask whether they can work on a sliding scale —many do. And finally, beware those who guarantee admission to your school of choice—essay coaches don't have any special magic that can back up those promises.

Should You Send Your Essay to a Service?

On the plus side, essay editing services provide a similar product to essay coaches, and they cost significantly less . If you have some assurance that you'll be working with a good editor, the lack of face-to-face interaction won't prevent great results.

On the minus side, however, it can be difficult to gauge the quality of the service before working with them . If they are churning through many application essays without getting to know the students they are helping, you could end up with an over-edited essay that sounds just like everyone else's. In the worst case scenario, an unscrupulous service could send you back a plagiarized essay.

Getting recommendations from friends or a school counselor for reputable services is key to avoiding heavy-handed editing that writes essays for you or does too much to change your essay. Including a badly-edited essay like this in your application could cause problems if there are inconsistencies. For example, in interviews it might be clear you didn't write the essay, or the skill of the essay might not be reflected in your schoolwork and test scores.

Should You Buy an Essay Written by Someone Else?

Let me elaborate. There are super sketchy places on the internet where you can simply buy a pre-written essay. Don't do this!

For one thing, you'll be lying on an official, signed document. All college applications make you sign a statement saying something like this:

I certify that all information submitted in the admission process—including the application, the personal essay, any supplements, and any other supporting materials—is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented... I understand that I may be subject to a range of possible disciplinary actions, including admission revocation, expulsion, or revocation of course credit, grades, and degree, should the information I have certified be false. (From the Common Application )

For another thing, if your academic record doesn't match the essay's quality, the admissions officer will start thinking your whole application is riddled with lies.

Admission officers have full access to your writing portion of the SAT or ACT so that they can compare work that was done in proctored conditions with that done at home. They can tell if these were written by different people. Not only that, but there are now a number of search engines that faculty and admission officers can use to see if an essay contains strings of words that have appeared in other essays—you have no guarantee that the essay you bought wasn't also bought by 50 other students.

• You should get college essay help with both editing and proofreading
• A good editor will ask questions about your idea, logic, and structure, and will point out places where clarity is needed
• A good editor will absolutely not answer these questions, give you their own ideas, or write the essay or parts of the essay for you
• A good proofreader will find typos and check your formatting
• All of them agree that getting light editing and proofreading is necessary
• Parents, teachers, guidance or college counselor, and peers or siblings
• If you can't ask any of those, you can pay for college essay help, but watch out for services or coaches who over-edit you work
• Don't buy a pre-written essay! Colleges can tell, and it'll make your whole application sound false.

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications and then explore our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .

Using the Common Application for your college applications? We have an excellent guide to the Common App essay prompts and useful advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you . Wondering how other people tackled these prompts? Then work through our roundup of over 130 real college essay examples published by colleges .

Stressed about whether to take the SAT again before submitting your application? Let us help you decide how many times to take this test . If you choose to go for it, we have the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

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Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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