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19 College Essay Topics and Prompts

Not sure what to write for your college essay? We've got you covered with a number of topics and prompts to help shape your unique story.

As part of your college application materials, you'll likely be asked to submit a college essay. These tend to be between 250 and 650 words , and are a unique opportunity to showcase your personality. Admissions panels are typically looking for students who will positively represent the school as a whole. In the end, your goal is to show them that you and the college are a good match. 

When drafting your college essay, you may be expected to answer a prompt or come up with a topic on your own. In this article, we've rounded up several ideas to get you thinking—and writing.

19 college essay topics

Each school sets different requirements around the college essay, so it's important to review the expectations around every application you intend to submit. Some give you creative freedom, while others expect you to respond to a pre-developed prompt. Either way, a strong college essay conveys to the admissions team who you are, why you want to attend that particular school, and what matters to you. It's a way to personalize an application that often focuses on quantitative data, such as GPA and SAT scores.

If you're given the creative freedom to write about whatever you want, consider a college essay topic that allows you to be honest and original. We've compiled the following ideas to help you brainstorm:

What's an important issue you care about? How have you gotten involved?

Have you changed your mind about something in recent years? What was it and why?

What's a situation that caused you to grow?

Explain a time when you failed. What did you learn from that moment?

Share a surprising pastime or hobby and what interested you about it.

What extracurricular activity are you involved in that speaks to your personality?

Detail a meaningful volunteer experience.

Dive into a meaningful travel experience.

Who do you most admire and why?

If you have a unique background, share a bit about it. How did you get where you are?

What's the best advice you've ever received?

Was there ever a time when you had to stand up for something—or someone?

What's something you might change about the world to make it better?

What do you hope to accomplish by attending college?

Is there something you want to do after graduating college?

Have you ever made or created something? Talk about it.

Do you have a big idea that could potentially impact your community?

What is most valuable to you? Dive into your values and share an example.

What are you most passionate about? Why?

Pre-developed college essay prompts

Some colleges and universities will give you a series of prompts to choose from. These will vary from school to school, and can either be questions or statements. Here are a few examples of both.

Sample question prompts:

What excites your intellectual curiosity?

How has your upbringing shaped the person you are today?

Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

Sample statement prompts:

Talk about an unusual circumstance in your life

Share how you hope to use your college education

Discuss a list of books you have read in the last year

Common App essay prompts

Common App is an online platform designed to simplify the college application process. Over 900 colleges use Common App, making it possible for you to fill out one application that's then submitted to multiple schools.

If you choose to complete the Common App, you'll have a choice of several distinctive prompts that change every academic year. Here's a sample of the 2022-2023 essay prompts [ 1 ]:

Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

Stick to the prompt.

No matter what type of prompt you receive, it's your job to stick to it. The admissions team has a lot of essays to read, so you'll have a better chance of standing out if you develop a cohesive response that stays on topic.

Start by identifying the prompt's main topic, then spend some time brainstorming to find the idea that resonates most with you. For many people, it's the topic that makes them feel some sort of emotion or reminds them of an entertaining story. Understanding what you're being asked to write about should make staying on topic throughout the entire composition easier.

5 additional college essay tips

Once you decide what you'd like to write, follow the tips below to craft a standout essay. You can also find more advice about college essays in our article College Essay Format: Writing and Editing Tips .

1. Be considerate with humor.

Showing off your sense of humor lets your personality show through your words and can make reading the essay more entertaining. Try including a few sentences that you think will bring a smile to the reader's face, or use adjectives to insert some colorful comedy.

2. Offer insight.

Beyond recounting an event, experience, or memory, a great essay shows insight aka an ability to highlight meaningful takeaways. For example, if you choose to write about your unique hobby, try to discuss what you've learned from that pastime—or how you've grown as a result of it.

3. Add details

Great essays also invite the reader to connect with the story on an emotional level. With that in mind, it can help to recount a specific memory rather than answer a prompt without those colorful details. More than discussing something on a surface level—or vaguely—you want to provide enough particulars to keep your readers engaged. For example, if you choose to write about the best advice you ever received, set the scene and take the reader back to that moment.

4. Have an editor.

Your essay should ideally be error-free. Ask a trusted friend or family member to review your essay and suggest edits. An editor can help you catch grammatical errors or points out ways to better develop your response.

Avoid passing your paper along to too many people, though, so you don't lose your own voice amid all of the edits and suggestions. The admissions team wants to get to know you through your writing and not your sister or best friend who edited your paper.

5. Revise your essay.

Your first draft is just that: a draft. Give yourself plenty of time to read and revise your first pass and make sure you fully developed your response, stayed on topic, and shared your personality.

When revising your essay, you may find it helpful to read it aloud so you hear the words as you're saying them. Some people prefer to print a copy on paper and write notes by hand. Both options give your brain a new way to process the information to catch details you may miss if you keep everything in your head and on the computer.

Watch to find out why the essay many admission counselor's favorite part of the application:

Next steps: Apply with confidence

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Article sources

Common App. " First-year essay prompts , https://www.commonapp.org/apply/essay-prompts." Accessed February 8, 2023.

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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.

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.

• PDFs for all 136 Lit Terms we cover
• Downloads of 1915 LitCharts Lit Guides
• Teacher Editions for every Lit Guide
• Explanations and citation info for 40,355 quotes across 1915 books
• Downloadable (PDF) line-by-line translations of every Shakespeare play

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How to Write Your College Essay: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide

Getting ready to start your college essay? Your essay is very important to your application — especially if you’re applying to selective colleges.

Become a stronger writer by reviewing your peers’ essays and get your essay reviewed as well for free.

We have regular livestreams during which we walk you through how to write your college essay and review essays live.

College Essay Basics

Just getting started on college essays? This section will guide you through how you should think about your college essays before you start.

• Why do essays matter in the college application process?
• What is a college application theme and how do you come up with one?
• How to format and structure your college essay

Before you move to the next section, make sure you understand:

How a college essay fits into your application

What a strong essay does for your chances

How to create an application theme

Learn the Types of College Essays

Next, let’s make sure you understand the different types of college essays. You’ll most likely be writing a Common App or Coalition App essay, and you can also be asked to write supplemental essays for each school. Each essay has a prompt asking a specific question. Each of these prompts falls into one of a few different types. Understanding the types will help you better answer the prompt and structure your essay.

• How to Write a Personal Statement That Wows Colleges
• Personal Statement Essay Examples
• How to Write a Stellar Extracurricular Activity Essay
• Extracurricular Essay Examples
• Tips for Writing a Diversity College Essay
• Diversity Essay Examples
• Tips for Writing a Standout Community Service Essay
• How to Write the “Why This Major” Essay
• How to Write a “Why This Major” Essay if You’re Undecided
• How to write the “Why This College” Essay
• How to Research a College to Write the “Why This College” Essay
• Why This College Essay Examples
• How to Write The Overcoming Challenges Essay
• Overcoming Challenges Essay Examples

Identify how each prompt fits into an essay type

What each type of essay is really asking of you

How to write each essay effectively

The Common App essay

Almost every student will write a Common App essay, which is why it’s important you get this right.

• How to Write the Common App Essay
• Successful Common App Essay Examples
• 5 Awesome College Essay Topics + Sample Essays
• 11 Cliché College Essay Topics + How to Fix Them

How to choose which Common App prompts to answer

How to write a successful Common App essay

What to avoid to stand out to admissions officers

Supplemental Essay Guides

Many schools, especially competitive ones, will ask you to write one or more supplemental essays. This allows a school to learn more about you and how you might fit into their culture.

These essays are extremely important in standing out. We’ve written guides for all the top schools. Follow the link below to find your school and read last year’s essay guides to give you a sense of the essay prompts. We’ll update these in August when schools release their prompts.

See last year’s supplemental essay guides to get a sense of the prompts for your schools.

Essay brainstorming and composition

Now that you’re starting to write your essay, let’s dive into the writing process. Below you’ll find our top articles on the craft of writing an amazing college essay.

• Where to Begin? 3 Personal Essay Brainstorming Exercises
• Creating the First Draft of Your College Application Essay
• How to Get the Perfect Hook for Your College Essay
• What If I Don’t Have Anything Interesting To Write About In My College Essay?
• 8 Do’s and Don’t for Crafting Your College Essay
• Stuck on Your College Essay? 8 Tips for Overcoming Writer’s Block

Understand how to write a great hook for your essay

Complete the first drafts of your essay

Editing and polishing your essay

Have a first draft ready? See our top editing tips below. Also, you may want to submit your essay to our free Essay Peer Review to get quick feedback and join a community of other students working on their essays.

• 11 Tips for Proofreading and Editing Your College Essay
• Getting Help with Your College Essay
• 5 DIY Tips for Editing Your College Essay
• How Long Should Your College Essay Be?
• Essential Grammar Rules for Your College Apps
• College Essay Checklist: Are You Ready to Submit?

Proofread and edited your essay.

Had someone else look through your essay — we recommend submitting it for a peer review.

Make sure your essay meets all requirements — consider signing up for a free account to view our per-prompt checklists to help you understand when you’re really ready to submit.

Advanced College Essay Techniques

Let’s take it one step further and see how we can make your college essay really stand out! We recommend reading through these posts when you have a draft to work with.

• 10 Guidelines for Highly Readable College Essays
• How to Use Literary Devices to Enhance Your Essay
• How to Develop a Personalized Metaphor for Your College Applications

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College admissions

Course: college admissions   >   unit 4.

• Writing a strong college admissions essay
• Avoiding common admissions essay mistakes
• Brainstorming tips for your college essay
• How formal should the tone of your college essay be?
• Taking your college essay to the next level
• Sample essay 1 with admissions feedback
• Sample essay 2 with admissions feedback
• Student story: Admissions essay about a formative experience
• Student story: Admissions essay about personal identity
• Student story: Admissions essay about community impact
• Student story: Admissions essay about a past mistake
• Student story: Admissions essay about a meaningful poem

Writing tips and techniques for your college essay

Pose a question the reader wants answered, don't focus exclusively on the past, experiment with the unexpected, don't summarize, want to join the conversation.

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Money-Saving Services for Writing College Essays Online

Writing argumentative essay like an expert.

Having big plans for the future? Willing to enter the best college that will develop your skills and talents? Unfortunately, thousands of other students think the same. Writing college essay is the first step to understanding that your career will be bright!

On the basis of your work, admission committee will decide whether you’re worthy to be enrolled in the college. Just imagine how many application they receive annually. Some of them are brilliant, others are commonplace and naive. But your task here is not to turn writing a persuasive essay into a nightmare by thinking about it.

What should you start with? The first step to write college essay is think about the main idea you want to describe. There should be something important, impressing, heartwarming in your work. And, of course, it should be truthful and original as well. Even if you know how to write an argument essay, there’s also a necessity to follow the right structure and composition. And here, you might need help of professionals.

Special services that help students in writing college essays exist all over the world. You can see it for yourself. Type “write my essay” and scroll through the results – the amount of websites will surprise you. Be careful when choosing a cheap service: you might end getting your paper done by a non-native English speaker. Do you actually want to waste your money on that? Make a little research before you start writing an argument essay, read the examples you find on the Internet, make notes and try to write down all the thoughts you have during the day (not when you actually seat in front your PC).

In attempt to write a college essay, people are spending countless night drinking one cup of coffee after another and rotating thousands thoughts in their heads. However, it might not be enough. People who write a persuasive essay also seeking help on the side. There’s no shame in that.

Quality guarantee

Margaret Atwood and Lauren Groff on Writing About Women in Moments of Survival

A uthors Margaret Atwood and Lauren Groff agree: it can be more effective to write truthfully about the contemporary world by situating stories in the past or in the future.

Both writers discussed their creative choices in conversation with TIME correspondent Eliana Dockterman on Wednesday at the TIME100 Summit in New York City. Atwood, who has written dozens of books spanning fiction, essays and poetry, based her setting for The Handmaid’s Tale on 17th century New England. Groff set her most recent work, survivalist novel The Vaster Wilds, in that time and place as well.

Both works deal with issues facing women, greater culture and the environment today: As Dockterman put it, they are “stories about women in moments of survival.”

“I wanted to talk about the modern age, but do it slant,” Groff said. “Historical fiction is an amazing way to do that. Every book is of the time you’re actually in, even if you put it into the future or put it into the past.” 

Atwood noted that the challenge of writing a contemporary story is a general writers’ problem. “Present times are moving so quickly that it’s hard to get a point of fixation,” she said. “As soon as you write about something in the present day, it’s all changed.”

Those stories can nonetheless have profound effects on modern day society. Atwood published Handmaid’s Tale in 1985, and nearly 40 years later, the novel has taken on renewed significance after the fall of Roe v. Wade and threats to abortion access across the nation. Many protestors, in a nod to the garb in The Handmaid’s Tale, have been pictured filling legislative chambers and protest lines wearing long red robes and white bonnetts.

Groff also spoke of the current, growing threat in the U.S. to books themselves as groups push to ban books from schools or libraries that have content they disagree with. “Banning books is the first step to burning them,” she added.

Groff and her husband are opening a bookstore in Florida, where they have watched book bans grow to make up roughly 40 percent of the total bans in the country over the last few years.

“Talk about a Puritan theocracy,” Groff said with a nod to Atwood: “That’s what Florida is right now.”  Even the massive number of Florida’s book bans and challenges alone isn’t the extent of the issue, Groff explained, as teachers are afraid of attempting to teach books that could be challenged, whether for LGBTQ+ content, issues about race, or other targeted topics. She added that a certain county of Florida has banned the dictionary because it includes the word “sex.” 

“We wanted to be a lighthouse, we wanted to spread freedom of expression. We’re literally in the middle of the state in Gainesville, Florida, in the swamp, and we wanted to show that we’re watching. We’re here. The people whose voices are being erased, they matter,” Groff said. “The state of Florida doesn’t seem to value them, but we value them. We think that they’re important and they need to be heard and they need to see themselves reflected in the books.” 

The TIME100 Summit convenes leaders from the global TIME100 community to spotlight solutions and encourage action toward a better world. This year’s summit features a variety of speakers across a diverse range of sectors, including politics, business, health and science, culture, and more.

Speakers for the 2024 TIME100 Summit include actor Elliot Page, designer Tory Burch, Olympic medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad, WNBA champion A'ja Wilson, NYSE president Lynn Martin, comedian Alex Edelman, professor Yoshua Bengio, 68th Secretary of State John Kerry, actor Jane Fonda, and many more.

The TIME100 Summit was presented by Booking.com, Citi, Merck, Northern Data Group, Glenfiddich Single Malt Scotch Whisky, and Verizon.

More Must-Reads From TIME

• The 100 Most Influential People of 2024
• Coco Gauff Is Playing for Herself Now
• Scenes From Pro-Palestinian Encampments Across U.S. Universities
• 6 Compliments That Land Every Time
• If You're Dating Right Now , You're Brave: Column
• The AI That Could Heal a Divided Internet
• Fallout Is a Brilliant Model for the Future of Video Game Adaptations
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Write to Julia Zorthian at [email protected]

Turnitin's AI writing detection available now

Turnitin’s AI writing detection helps educators identify when AI writing tools such as ChatGPT may have been used in students’ submissions.

Academic integrity in the age of AI writing

Over the years, academic integrity has been both supported and tested by technology. Today, educators are facing a new frontier with AI writing and ChatGPT.

Here at Turnitin, we believe that AI can be a positive force that, when used responsibly, has the potential to support and enhance the learning process. We also believe that equitable access to AI tools is vital, which is why we’re working with students and educators to develop technology that can support and enhance the learning process. However, it is important to acknowledge new challenges alongside the opportunities.

We recognize that for educators, there is a pressing and immediate need to know when and where AI and AI writing tools have been used by students. This is why we are now offering AI detection capabilities for educators in our products.

Gain insights on how much of a student’s submission is authentic, human writing versus AI-generated from ChatGPT or other tools.

Reporting identifies likely AI-written text and provides information educators need to determine their next course of action. We’ve designed our solution with educators, for educators.

AI writing detection complements Turnitin’s similarity checking workflow and is integrated with your LMS, providing a seamless, familiar experience.

Turnitin’s AI writing detection capability available with Originality, helps educators identify AI-generated content in student work while safeguarding the interests of students.

Turnitin AI Innovation Lab

Welcome to the Turnitin AI Innovation Lab, a hub for new and upcoming product developments in the area of AI writing. You can follow our progress on detection initiatives for AI writing, ChatGPT, and AI-paraphrasing.

Understanding the false positive rate for sentences of our AI writing detection capability

We’d like to share more insight on our sentence level false positive rate and tips on how to use our AI writing detection metrics.

Understanding false positives within our AI writing detection capabilities

We’d like to share some insight on how our AI detection model deals with false positives and what constitutes a false positive.

Have questions? Read these FAQs on Turnitin’s AI writing detection capabilities

Helping solve the AI writing puzzle one piece at a time

AI-generated writing has transformed every aspect of our lives, including the classroom. However, identifying AI writing in students’ submissions is just one piece in the broader, complex, ever-evolving AI writing puzzle.

Research corner

We regularly undertake internal research to ensure our AI writing detector stays accurate and up-to-date. If you are interested in what external testing has revealed about Turnitin's AI-writing detection capabilities, check out the links below. Notably, these studies position Turnitin among the foremost solutions in identifying AI-generated content within academia.

Research shows Turnitin's AI detector shows no statistically significant bias against English Language Learners

• In response to feedback from customers and papers claiming that AI writing detection tools are biased against writers whose first language is not English, Turnitin expanded its false positive evaluation to include writing samples of English Language Learners (ELL) and tested another nearly 2,000 writing samples of ELL writers.
• What Turnitin found was that in documents meeting the 300 word count requirement, ELL writers received a 0.014 false positive rate and native English writers received a 0.013.
• This means that there is no statistically significant bias against non-native English speakers.

Turnitin’s AI writing detector identified as the most accurate out of 16 detectors tested

• Two of the 16 detectors, Turnitin and Copyleaks, correctly identified the AI- or human-generated status of all 126 documents, with no incorrect or uncertain responses.
• Three AI text detectors – Turnitin, Originality, and Copyleaks, – have very high accuracy with all three sets of documents examined for this study: GPT-3.5 papers, GPT-4 papers, and human-generated papers.
• Of the top three detectors identified in this investigation, Turnitin achieved very high accuracy in all five previous evaluations. Copyleaks, included in four earlier analyses, performed well in three of them.

Teaching in the age of AI writing

As AI text generators like ChatGPT quickly evolve, our educator resources will, too. Curated and created by our team of veteran educators, our resources help educators meet these new challenges. They are built for professional learning and outline steps educators can take immediately to guide students in maintaining academic integrity when faced with AI writing tools.

A guide to help educators determine which resource is more applicable to their instructional situation: the AI misuse checklist or the AI misuse rubric.

A guide sharing strategies educators can consider to help when confronted with a false positive.

A guide sharing strategies students can consider to help when confronted with a false positive.

The Turnitin Educator Network is a space to meet, discuss and share best practices on academic integrity in the age of AI.

Learn more about AI writing in our blog

Written by experts in the field, educators, and Turnitin professionals, our blog offers resources and thought leadership in support of students, instructors, and administrators. Dive into articles on a variety of important topics, including academic integrity, assessment, and instruction in a world with artificial intelligence.

In this blog post, we’re going to address frequently asked questions about AI writing tool misuse for students. Specifically, what does AI writing tool misuse look like? How can you self-check to make sure you’re using AI writing tools properly?

Stay up to date with the latest blog posts delivered directly to your inbox.

Turnitin ai tools in the news.

Never miss an update or announcement. Visit our media center for recent news coverage and press releases.

Cheat GPT? Turnitin CEO Chris Caren weighs in on combating A.I. plagiarism | CNBC Squawk Box

Since the inception of AI-generated writing, educators and institutions are learning how to navigate it in the classroom. Turnitin’s CEO Chris Caren joins ‘Squawk Box’ to discuss how it is being used in the classroom and how educators can identify AI writing in student submissions.

Trouble viewing? View the video on YouTube or adjust your cookie preferences .

Some U.S. schools banning AI technology while others embrace it | NBC Nightly News

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence program, can write college-level essays in seconds. While some school districts are banning it due to cheating concerns, NBC News’ Jacob Ward has details on why some teachers are embracing the technology.

BestColleges

Artificial intelligence, it seems, is taking over the world. At least that's what alarmists would have you believe . The line between fact and fiction continues to blur, and recognizing what is real versus what some bot concocted grows increasingly difficult with each passing week.

ThriveinEDU Podcast

On this episode of the ThriveinEDU podcast, host Rachelle Dené Poth speaks with Turnitin’s Chief Product Officer Annie Chechitelli about her role in the organization, her experience as a parent with school-age children learning to navigate AI writing, and the future of education and original thought.

District Administration

Following the one year anniversary of the public launch of ChatGPT, Chief Product Officer Annie Chechitelli sits down with the publication to discuss Turnitin’s AI writing detection feature and what the educational community has learned.

For press and media inquiries, contact us at [email protected]

Awards & recognition.

Let’s innovate together

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 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.

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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Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub.PrepScholar.com , allow you to interact with your peers and the PrepScholar staff. See how other students and parents are navigating high school, college, and the college admissions process. Ask questions; get answers.

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Author Interviews

Emily henry on 'embarrassing, giddy, freefall' of writing, reading and being in love.

Elena Burnett

William Troop

Juana Summers

NPR's Juana Summers speaks with Emily Henry about her new book FUNNY STORY and the difficulty of writing a genuinely nice person while also creating obstacles in getting two people together.

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Picture this - you have the dream job, a dream home and are planning a dream wedding with the love of your life. And then said love of your life realizes they are in love with someone else. That is the exact nightmare scenario children's librarian Daphne Vincent finds herself in at the start of Emily Henry's new book, "Funny Story." Daphne's fiance Peter breaks up with her for his childhood best friend, and her plans are thrown into chaos. All this leads Daphne to move in with Miles, a guy who knows all too well what Daphne is going through, since the childhood friend who ran off with Peter is Miles' now ex-girlfriend, Petra. It's a premise that Henry wondered about after writing about a best friendship turn more in a different novel.

EMILY HENRY: Every time I kind of investigate one kind of trope or story line, I'm always curious, like, ooh, what happens to, you know, the rest of the cast? What about the woman who just got dumped? She's not the star of this rom-com, and I wanted to make her the star.

SUMMERS: I asked Henry what shades of Daphne she saw in herself.

HENRY: That feeling of not being enough is a real common fear for so many people, and especially in romantic relationships, you know, you can just feel like there's just this whole world that you should be, like, providing to this person. And you're aware of everyone else around you and how they interact with this person that means the world to you. And I think that that fear of, like - I'm not enough - is just a really pressing thing that gets kind of triggered in romantic relationships especially.

SUMMERS: I now want to talk about Miles, who is just this kind, warm, comforting person. He's tattooed. He wears Crocs. I am curious - when you're writing romance books where a lot of the tension comes from the obstacles that come when it comes to getting two people together, how hard is it to write a character who is just so genuinely kind and warm?

HENRY: This is the exact battle that this whole book was - to realize these two people really like each other, and they're really connecting. And he's kind, and he's emotionally available, and he's present. And so I had to really dig deep into kind of their histories and their traumas and figure out which things about themselves would sort of trip each other up, if that makes sense. You know, I think when you meet someone and you really click, there's all these facets of your personality that just complement each other, and that's a really exciting feeling. But of course, they're always also going to be things that really grate against each other. And for Daphne, this person who has, you know, kind of built her life on needing to have this sense of control and order, it's a real challenge to start falling for someone who's sort of the total opposite of that.

SUMMERS: I spend more time than I should probably admit on the radio on TikTok, specifically BookTok, and reading reviews, and something that I watched or read somewhere suggested that you happen to be very good at writing male characters, men who have gone to therapy and worked on themselves.

HENRY: Yes (laughter).

SUMMERS: How do you feel about that?

HENRY: I mean, I'm passionate about that. I'm passionate about men going to therapy.

SUMMERS: Me too.

HENRY: I mean, I'm passionate about everyone going to therapy. But, yeah, I mean, if you're a really introspective person and have really great friends and all of that, that can go a really long way. But, you know, if you want to have a sustained relationship that goes through all of these different phases of life and that really challenges all of your own hang-ups and triggers and all of that - I don't know. A lot of us need help. I need help, and I think it's always beneficial to a relationship to have an outside source you can lean on.

SUMMERS: One of the things that really stands out, not just in this book but also in your other books, is the fact that there is this quick-witted, fun, kind of steamy banter between characters, and it is certainly there all throughout with Daphne and Miles. Their voices, their chemistry, the intense attraction between them just jumps off the page. I guess I wonder - when you're writing, do you hear their voices in your head kind of having this back-and-forth, or how do you capture that?

HENRY: Definitely. I mean, in the best case scenario, that is what's happening. And I'll admit that sometimes the earlier drafts are not that, and it's just sort of writing filler dialogue and cranking out beats to a specific plot that I've decided. But I think the magic moment for any writer is when you feel those characters just take over. And I feel like I was really lucky with this one that while there were a lot of challenges, the dialogue was really there from the beginning. The dynamic was there. I understood that he was sort of the softer, sunnier one, and she was, you know, a little bit sharper edged. And I just loved the feeling of bouncing between their voices.

SUMMERS: I think one of the things that is so fun, whether it's in a book or in real life, about being in love is that you lose yourself in it. You have those little cringeworthy moments where you smack yourself in the head and you're like, oh, my gosh, I cannot believe I am saying this right now.

HENRY: Yes.

SUMMERS: How do you think about writing those kinds of scenes that feel almost unbelievable, but yet they're so relatable for us?

HENRY: I do think that writing romance and reading romance and falling in love all feel very similar for that exact reason. It's this kind of embarrassing, giddy freefall. And if you're - you know, it's so easy to judge yourself, to have this sort of out-of-body experience where you're replaying every conversation and smacking yourself on the head and feeling humiliated. But that's also the joy of it. It's, like, just the most vulnerable thing a person can do.

And as hard as vulnerability is, I think it's beautiful because it's the only thing that can ever lead to true intimacy and to truly being known. And so, you know, I think it's good for us. I think it's good for us to engage with stories like this where we kind of see raw vulnerability on display and the cringe that you're talking about. It's like you kind of have to learn to roll with those punches and enjoy it. And later, you know, like, in real life, when you have those things happen, later, it is a funny story.

SUMMERS: I'm also curious about your personal philosophy on love. Where does that come from?

HENRY: I mean, I got very lucky with my parents, I would say. They have been married since they were 17 and 19. They're in their late 60s now. So from the very beginning of my life, I had this view of what love was, and it was, you know, patient and kind. And they can bicker with each other, but there's always an apology. Like, there's just no pride in themselves. There's no ego getting in the way. And their partnership is just so beautiful. And, you know, I've gotten to now watch it grow and change for over 30 years. And it's just such a special thing to see two people who really got to grow up together and go through all these different seasons of life and be a witness to the other's experience.

SUMMERS: It's an incredible story. There was something that I read on your substack a few weeks back, and it was about how you think about the reader as you write your books. You wrote that traditionally, authors try to forget about their readers when they're writing. And you said that recently, we've been a little bit more present in your mind. What has that done to your writing process?

HENRY: Oh, I honestly think it's made me a better writer. I think, you know, it can slow things down. It can make me a lot more nervous. With "Funny Story," specifically, I remember telling my editor that I spent the whole editing process telling myself, you've done this before. You can do it again. There's no need to worry. It all works itself out in the end. And then the last couple of months were just sheer panic. And so we decided next time, we're going to panic a little bit throughout instead of at the end. But I do feel this - you know, this pressure and this responsibility because I see it as my readers having given me this amazing gift in being able to do the work that really means the world to me. And I want to show that I appreciate that. I want them to feel like they are part of the journey.

SUMMERS: That is author Emily Henry. Her new book, "Funny Story," is out now. Emily, thank you so much.

HENRY: Thank you so much. This really was a joy.

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Taylor Swift's elementary school teacher described what the pop star was like as a kid, and it's exactly what you'd expect

• Seems like Taylor Swift has been into writing poetry since she was in elementary school.
• Barbara Kolvek, a retired music teacher, spoke to  CBS Philadelphia about what Swift was like as a student.
• "She always was writing poetry, always. Even in music class when she shouldn't," Kolvek said.

Taylor Swift has been honing her lyrical prowess ever since she was an elementary school student.

Retired music teacher Barbara Kolvek — who taught Swift from first through fourth grade at Wyndcroft School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania — told CBS Philadelphia that she still remembers what the singer was like as a student.

"She always was writing poetry, always. Even in music class when she shouldn't," Kolvek said. "I did give her her very first singing solo. 'Fast Talk Freddie,' I believe it was called."

According to a page on the Wyndcroft website , Swift attended the school through fourth grade, before leaving to pursue her music career.

Kolvek added that she and Swift had stayed in touch for a while after.

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"I feel like maybe I gave her a little spark or encouragement to do what she was doing," Kolvek said.

Kolvek's support of creativity may have played a bigger part than she imagined. Creativity is one of the top skills a person needs to thrive in the workplace, per the World Economic Forum's 2023 Future of Jobs Report . According to the organization's estimates, building soft skills in children could contribute $2.54 trillion to the global economy . It's clear Swift still really loves poetry: Kolvek's interview comes amid the release of Swift's 11th studio album " The Tortured Poets Department ," which broke records on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music — even with a subdued promotional strategy .

In the caption of an Instagram post celebrating the album's surprise songs on Friday, Swift even referred to the songs as "tortured poetry."

The " Cruel Summer " singer writes her own songs and has always been known for her lyrics, especially among her fans. She also often references famous authors and their literary works in her music.

In 2020, while accepting the award for songwriter-artist of the decade at the Nashville Songwriters Awards, Swift even referenced the poet Emily Dickinson in her speech.

"If my lyrics sound like a letter written by Emily Dickinson's great-grandmother while sewing a lace curtain, that's me writing in the Quill genre," she said, per Billboard .

But poetry does seem to run in her blood: As it turns out, Swift and Dickinson are sixth cousins, three times removed, according to genealogy website Ancestry .

A representative for Swift did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.

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• The WA GOP put it in writing that they’re not into democracy

Political forecasters called it that the state Republican convention would feature turmoil ending in endorsements of the most extreme candidates , all to match the party’s current MAGA mood.

Among the jilted was the Republican front-runner for governor, former Sheriff Dave Reichert, who was left putting out an APB for the GOP.  

“The party’s been taken hostage,” he told The Spokesman-Review .

But there was another strain to the proceedings last weekend that didn’t get much attention. Political conventions are often colorful curiosities; this one took a darker turn.

The Republican base, it turns out, is now opposed to democracy. Their words, not mine, as you’ll soon see.

After the candidates left, the convention’s delegates got down to crafting a party platform . Like at most GOP gatherings in the Donald Trump era, this one called for restrictions on voting. In Washington state, the delegates called for the end of all mail-in voting . Instead, we would have a one-day-only, in-person election, with photo ID and paper ballots, with no use of tabulating machines or digital scanners to count the ballots. All ballots would be counted by hand, by Trappist monks.

OK, I made up the monk part. I did not make up the part about banning the use of machines to count votes. All in all it would make voting less convenient and harder, by rolling it back at least half a century.

But then the convention veered into more unexpected anti-democratic territory.

A resolution called for ending the ability to vote for U.S. senators. Instead, senators would get appointed by state legislatures, as it generally worked 110 years ago prior to the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913.

“We are devolving into a democracy, because congressmen and senators are elected by the same pool,” was how one GOP delegate put it to the convention . “We do not want to be a democracy.”

We don’t? There are debates about how complete of a democracy we wish to be; for example, the state Democratic Party platform has called for the direct election of the president (doing away with the Electoral College). But curtailing our own vote? The GOPers said they hoped states’ rights would be strengthened with such a move.

Then they kicked it up a notch. They passed a resolution calling on people to please stop using the word “democracy.”

“We encourage Republicans to substitute the words ‘republic’ and ‘republicanism’ where previously they have used the word ‘democracy,’ ” the resolution says. “Every time the word ‘democracy’ is used favorably it serves to promote the principles of the Democratic Party, the principles of which we ardently oppose.”

The resolution sums up: “We … oppose legislation which makes our nation more democratic in nature.”

It wasn’t that long ago when Republican presidents would extol democracy as America’s greatest export. Or sometimes try to share it with others down the barrel of a gun (see George W. Bush, Iraq).

Now the party is saying they don’t even want to hear the d-word anymore.

Of course we are not donning togas and rushing down to the acropolis to vote on legislation. So it’s true we don’t often act as a direct democracy (initiatives and referendums being exceptions).

It’s a hybrid system, a representative democracy, with the people periodically voting for elected leaders to do that legislating work for us. During much of our lifetimes the debate in this arena has been: How can representative democracy be made more representative? How can more voices be heard?

It’s jarring to hear a major political party declare that they’re done with that. They’re not even paying it lip service. You can’t get any blunter than “we oppose making our nation more democratic.”

Not everyone at the convention agreed with those sentiments, though they were strongly outvoted. Some of the delegates seemed to have contempt for voting and voters — at least when they come out on the losing end of it.

“The same people who select the baboons in Olympia are the ones selecting your senators,” said one delegate in remarks to the convention hall.

A party platform is a statement of principles; it has little to no chance of being implemented. So it’s tempting to ignore it. Or wish it away, as Reichert is trying to do, by suggesting the real party is out there somewhere having been abducted by impostors.

When people say “democracy itself is on the ballot” in this election, though, I think this is what they’re talking about.

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For years now, since Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, some Republicans have been on the defensive about charges they’re flirting with anti-democratic impulses or authoritarianism.

A while back, this newspaper ran an Op-Ed from a leading conservative, the editor of the National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru. He argued that despite Trump’s attempts to block the transfer of power, and the party largely backing him up on that, the whole thing has been blown out of proportion. It’s become a myth that Democrats hold about Republicans, he suggested. It’s similar, he argued, to the misconceptions Republicans have that Democrats are committing mass election fraud.

“Republicans aren’t against democracy,” was the headline of that Op-Ed .

Well a few years have passed, and now they’re putting it in writing.

The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.

‘Funny Story’ Author Emily Henry Breaks Down New Romance Novel, ‘Very Discreet’ Easter Eggs for Previous Books and ‘Scary’ Feelings About What She’s Writing Next

By Jennifer Maas

Jennifer Maas

TV Business Writer

• ‘Funny Story’ Author Emily Henry Breaks Down New Romance Novel, ‘Very Discreet’ Easter Eggs for Previous Books and ‘Scary’ Feelings About What She’s Writing Next 16 hours ago
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SPOILER ALERT:   This article contains spoilers for  Emily Henry ‘s new romance novel, “ Funny Story ,” released April 23.

“Happy Place” and “Book Lovers” author Emily Henry’s latest book “Funny Story” starts with its two leads, Daphne and Miles, sharing one very humorless tale: being left by their respective partners, Peter and Petra, a pair of childhood best friends who have realized their love for each other.

And then Daphne gets kicked out of her house and has to move in with Miles, so Petra can move in with Peter.

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Henry found that “anger was a good entry point into humor,” because “most of what makes something a funny story really is things going wrong, but in a surprising way.”

Henry — who is currently having her previous books “People We Meet on Vacation,” “Book Lovers” and “Beach Read” adapted into films — spoke with Variety about crafting the romance in “Funny Story” and why she’s “scared” about what she’s writing next. See more from the Q&A below.

Daphne maintains throughout the book that Petra is genuinely a nice person and is not faking her kindness. Why did you make that choice for Daphne to have that stance and not villainize Petra, the woman whom her fiancé left her for ?

For Daphne, her self awareness is almost painful in some ways. I think we’ve all had that situation where there’s someone we really don’t like, and then we’re recounting the horrible thing that they did to someone and we’re kind of realizing as we say it aloud, “I think I just don’t like them? They didn’t actually wrong me.” In this case, Petra did wrong Daphne, but she’s her own main character, she’s not just the villain of someone else’s story. She’s her own main character with her own reason for doing things. And I think there’s almost nothing more frustrating than wanting to be able to blame someone, but you’re kind of inoculated against it because they really are genuinely kind, they did not set out to hurt someone. And I think most of the time, people are not setting out to hurt you.

I also feel like every book that I write has been a reaction to another book that I’ve written. And I really loved writing Alex and Poppy in “People We Meet on Vacation,” but that [Peter and Petra story] was basically the setup — it was these two people who’ve been best friends since college, and have taken this trip every summer for 10 years. And they’ve had other relationships, but those relationships haven’t been actually as important to them as this friendship. And Poppy, in Alex’s ex-girlfriend’s story, could have been the villain. Or Alex’s ex-girlfriend could have been Poppy’s villain, but it’s not that simple. That would make it easy. I think people are probably going to get pissed off reading about Peter and Petra because if it were happening to you or to a friend, you would be furious and you would be the one telling Daphne, “No, these people are horrible, they’re evil,” so she could maintain the openness of heart to acknowledge that it’s not that simple.

I took this third-act breakup between Daphne and Miles harder than your previous books, because I really didn’t know how Daphne was going to forgive Miles and what circumstances would make it OK for him to go over to help Petra and then shut out Daphne. What is your method for how you push it as far as you do, and do you wonder in the back of your head, will the justification you have plotted get the reader back around in the end?

I think if anything, because I do think that Miles is so kind and in a way so openhearted, the hardest thing for this book really was kind of finding that conflict, and figuring out how to have these characters fail each other in certain ways that are rooted in their own history and their own character development. To have them fail each other in these very specific ways that when they’re just so nice, especially him, he’s so nice, and it’s so much easier to write characters with a little edge having conflict and friction. But for this book, I think I have seven drafts of it, which is way more than usual for me. And so much of that was just trying to figure out this arc of, why can’t they be together? At the beginning, they’re both nursing broken hearts and so that did really help but after a certain point, you have to figure out, what else about them? What is it that they need to overcome as individuals to possibly get together?

You’ve connected your other books in certain ways with little references. Are there any Easter eggs in “Funny Story” that call back to your previous romance novels?

There are two very discreet ones. One of them is so discreet that I don’t know if anyone will get it. I’m excited to say that and hopefully for that to make it to your final piece, so I’ll find out if anyone can find it. I want them to scour because there’s still an Easter egg in “Happy Place” that I don’t know if people have caught. It’s for “Book Lovers.”

Have you found your sex scenes have evolved since “People We Meet on Vacation,” and is there a specific way you approach them to make it intimate and special for whatever new couple you are writing?

I’ll say the more books that I do, the harder it gets to find a way to make it special and intimate because I’m like, “Well, there’s only so many ways you can do it!” There’s a lot more ways than I’ve tapped into, but my books are relatively tame, as far as the romance spectrum. The way that I write them has kind of stayed the same where I write as quickly as possible to convince myself that no one’s ever going to read it. I don’t think of myself as a prude but it is kind of hard to remove your brain. My grandparents are still living, they’re in their 90s and 80s, and my grandma still reads my books. You have to separate your personal self from your professional self. So I tend to write them quickly and it’s fine when I’m the one editing them but then when it get to copy edits, and you have a copy editor pointing out, “Oh, this doesn’t seem physically possible. Didn’t they already take their pants off two scenes ago?” So that is a very humbling experience that has not gotten much easier for me mentally.

One thing I’ve noticed consistently is you’re very big on safe sex in your books and you make it pretty clear in every single situation when the condom comes out and that conversation is had between the couple. Is that something that’s really important to you to have explicitly stated for readers?

I feel two different ways about it. Because on the one hand, I’m a big proponent of the idea that art should be art and it’s not like necessarily there to teach a lesson. But I also think that what makes romance really appealing to me as a reader, one of many things, is how important the element of respect is in a lot of these relationships. Especially growing up in the 90s, there was all this messaging that respect only matters to men and love and affection matters to women. But respect is so important to me and having that be a part of the conversation around intimacy, shows that those characters have a lot of respect for each other. Maybe it’s not totally realistic, people don’t always make that decision. Sometimes you’re like, “I’ll deal with this however, whatever happens.” But what I’m trying to make sure is you can really see the foundational respect between the characters that comes up. And honestly, sometimes I do forget and my editor will flag and be like, “Do we want there to be a condom moment?” And usually I’m like, “Yeah, sure.” I think there’s this idea that it interrupts the flow and it makes it less sexy. And it’s like, well, not really. Not having to worry about pregnancy or disease is kind of sexy.

In this book, I noticed you have more children characters featured than you’ve had in any of your books so far — with Daphne being a children’s librarian, and her best friend Ashley is a mother. Is that intentional and is parenthood an area you’ve become more interested in writing about?

And online, there’s all of this manufactured, propagated intergenerational drama, but in real life, it’s so fun and rewarding to have friends who are at different places in life than you. You learn so much and it makes aging and growing up a lot less scary. I was really excited to play with what it looks like when you have a friendship that straddles different stages of life. And I had started doing that with “Happy Place,” exploring what you do when the dynamic shifts to accommodate the fact that you’re not in the same place. And this is the more settled version of it, where it’s fun to have single friends who tell you their horrible dating stories, even if you’re in a serious relationship, and it’s fun to have friends who have kids or who are empty nesters and want you to be their stand-in children or whatever. I’m just delighting in what adult friendship looks like because it can be so hard to make it, but it’s so nice when you find it. What comes next for you after “Funny Story”?

I am working on something new. I took a few months off writing, which I had not done since before college. And I thought I would need a year off but then I started working on this new thing and it’s really been exciting to me. It feels different, but it’s still a love story with a romantic love story in it. And I think the writing feels the same, it just feels a little bit, I don’t know, bigger. Just talking about “Funny Story” playing with the idea of this intergenerational friendship between these three women, I think that sensibility and that interest is only increasing for me. I love having people of different ages and backgrounds in a scene together and seeing what that brings out of them.

And so I’m really excited about this new book. It feels scary. I haven’t felt really scared to write a new book since maybe “Beach Read.” I was excited about “Beach Read,” because I wasn’t originally going to try and publish it — but when I started editing it, I was scared because I didn’t really know if people want this kind of thing. And with this one, again, as soon as I felt this tug in my chest while I was writing, I knew that it felt really special to me and different and like there was a heart already there. And I got very nervous. So I’m excited to talk more about it soon, once “Funny Story” is out. But I have both very good feelings and huge amounts of trepidation.

Are you exploring writing other genres outside contemporary romance, similar to what Ali Hazelwood has just done with branching out into paranormal romance with “Bride”?

But I want to do everything. I want to write everything. I want to screen write. I want to maybe someday direct. I just love making, bottomline.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Taylor Swift Has Given Fans a Lot. Is It Finally Too Much?

Swift has been inescapable over the last year. With the release of “The Tortured Poets Department,” her latest (very long) album, some seem to finally be feeling fatigued.

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By Matt Stevens and Shivani Gonzalez

Four new studio albums. Four rerecorded albums, too. A $1 billion oxygen-sucking world tour with a concert movie to match. And, of course, one very high-profile relationship that spilled over into the Super Bowl .

For some, the constant deluge that has peaked in the past year is starting to add up to a new (and previously unthinkable) feeling: Taylor Swift fatigue.

And it is a feeling that has only solidified online in the days following the release of “The Tortured Poets Department,” which morphed from a 16-song album into a 31-song, two-hour epic just hours after its release .

Many critics (including The New York Times’s own) have suggested that the album was overstuffed — simply not her best. And critiques of the music have now opened a sliver of space for a wider round of complaint unlike any Swift has faced over her prolific and world-conquering recent run.

“It’s almost like if you produce too much… too fast… in a brazen attempt to completely saturate and dominate a market rather than having something important or even halfway interesting to say… the art suffers!” Chris Murphy, a staff writer at Vanity Fair, posted on X .

Which is not to say nobody listened to the album; far from it. Spotify said “Poets,” which was released on Friday, became the most-streamed album in a single day with more than 300 million streams .

And of course, many of Swift’s most ardent fans, known as “Swifties,” loved her 11th album or, at least, have decided to air any reservations in private conversations. The first days of the album’s release have been greeted with the usual lyrical dissections for key allusions hidden within the songs, attention to every word that few other artists receive.

But others, including some self-identified Swift fans, have freely admitted frustration. Fans and critics alike have contended that Swift’s lyrics have become a tad verbose and that the tracks on this latest album — many of them breakup songs — sounded a whole lot like others she has already put out . The internet has also provided an almost unlimited supply of jokes about the length of the album .

Some admonished Swift for selling so many versions of “Poets” only to double its size after those orders were in, part of a cynically corporate rollout . (Care for the CD , vinyl or the Phantom Clear vinyl ?) The Daily Mail cobbled together what it deemed “The 10 WORST lyrics in Taylor Swift’s new album — ranked!”

For its part, Reductress , the satirical women’s magazine, offered a post titled “Woman Doing Her Best to Like New Taylor Swift Album Lest She Face the Consequences.”

Those who dare to publicly criticize Swift are acutely aware of the potential for backlash. Murphy, the Vanity Fair writer, made a dark joke about it . At least one X user who posted a lengthy thread eviscerating Swift, the album and its rollout took the post private after it got more than three million views. Paste Magazine opted not to put a byline on its harsh review of Swift’s album, citing safety concerns for the writer.

In an unusual twist, even Swift herself is widely viewed as admonishing her most militant defenders in one particular song on the new album, “But Daddy I Love Him.” Some contingents of Swift’s fanbase strongly disapproved of her brief relationship with Matty Healy of the 1975 and appear to now be bristling at the amount of record real estate Healy consumes on the latest album .

Weird, complicated times in Taylor land.

“It might be a tough few days for the fanbase,” Nathan Hubbard, a co-host of the Ringer podcast, “ Every Single Album ,” wrote in a social media thread about “Poets” on Friday . “They’ll hear some valid criticism they aren’t used to (if the critics dare), and for many they’ll have to reconcile their own truth that this isn’t their favorite, while still rightly celebrating it and supporting her.”

Indeed, grinding through the 31-song double album after midnight had felt like “a hostage situation,” Hubbard wrote.

On a new podcast episode, which was released over the weekend, Hubbard and his co-host, Nora Princiotti, were among those who pointed out that while the album may be imperfect, Swift simply may have needed to purge herself of the songs on “Poets” to process a turbulent time in her life.

Princiotti said she enjoyed much of the album and was careful to stipulate that “Poets” did contain several “special songs.”

But she also allowed for some “tough love.”

“Musically, I do not really hear anything new,” she said, adding that Swift “could have done a little bit more self editing.”

“I don’t think the fact that this is a double-album that is more than two hours in length serves what’s good about it,” Princiotti said. “And I think that for the second album in a row, I’m still sort of left going, ‘OK, where do we go from here?’”

Princiotti ultimately graded “Poets” a “B.” And in the world of her podcast and universe of Taylor Swift, Princiotti acknowledged — that might have been an all-time low.

An earlier version of this article misstated the title of Taylor Swift’s new album. It is “The Tortured Poets Department,” not “The Tortured Poets Society.”

How we handle corrections

Matt Stevens writes about arts and culture news for The Times. More about Matt Stevens

Shivani Gonzalez is a news assistant at The Times who writes a weekly TV column and contributes to a variety of sections. More about Shivani Gonzalez

Inside the World of Taylor Swift

A Triumph at the Grammys: Taylor Swift made history  by winning her fourth album of the year at the 2024 edition of the awards, an event that saw women take many of the top awards .

‘The T ortured Poets Department’: Poets reacted to Swift’s new album name , weighing in on the pertinent question: What do the tortured poets think ?  

In the Public Eye: The budding romance between Swift and the football player Travis Kelce created a monocultural vortex that reached its apex  at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. Ahead of kickoff, we revisited some key moments in their relationship .

Politics (Taylor’s Version): After months of anticipation, Swift made her first foray into the 2024 election for Super Tuesday with a bipartisan message on Instagram . The singer, who some believe has enough influence  to affect the result of the election , has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.

Conspiracy Theories: In recent months, conspiracy theories about Swift and her relationship with Kelce have proliferated , largely driven by supporters of former President Donald Trump . The pop star's fans are shaking them off .