Writing college essays are never been that easy! Imagine coping up with your professor’s standards and you’ve been up all night making necessary adjustments but still it’s not enough. Would it be exhausting? Some students would go straight into the essays without making some time planning about what to write and how to write one. The best essays require thorough planning to help you organize your thoughts and to make it easier for you to begin.
A college essay outline is simply an academic guide to make your thoughts organized and straight to the point. It is important that all the ideas written in your essay is connected with your introduction, supporting facts and conclusion. Here you present your main idea and arguments contained in a paragraph. Take a look at the example of an essay written by a student from Johns Hopkins University.
Why is there a need to make an essay outline? First, writing an essay outline would help you organize your thoughts and manage all of your ideas. Second, it would help the structure of your essay to eventually make sense. Lastly, you can easily keep track of the information you have written. If you are too loaded with information, there is a possibility that you will be able to forget the other needed information.
An ideal college essay contains a well-written introduction, body paragraph and conclusion. Your topic may vary depending on the request of your professor.
In writing your introduction, your personal goal is to grab the attention of your readers by supplying the main points of your argument. Those main points should be perfectly related to the topic of your essay. It may explain briefly the purpose of your paper. Let’s say your topic is about intellectual ability. You may write an introduction like this:
Intellectual ability is a person’s potential to make use of his or her intellect in solving problems, reasoning, analyzing, making connections and more. What makes it special is that each person has a unique intellectual ability. Some companies view intellectual ability as one of the most valuable asset each employee would have. Research would say that employees with more intelligence tend to adapt and solve issues quickly. Companies believe to be setting standards to their employees for some various reasons.
The body paragraph may contain at least three paragraphs to support your main idea using valid arguments. Begin writing your body paragraph with a topic sentence followed by supporting facts which includes data, examples and other evidences. This contains a series of information that are considered to be logical to prove the accuracy of the supporting ideas. Always make sure that all your arguments are a hundred percent related to your main idea.
The conclusion would require you to restate your thesis statement. Aside from that, it would require you to have a summary of the evidences you provided. This is also the part where you are allowed to point out your insights or personal thoughts about the given topic.
An essay outline would look like this:
Essay Outline
I. Introduction
– introduction of the topic and its importance
– thesis statement
II. Body Paragraph 1
– topic sentence
– supporting argument (data, examples, evidences)
III. Body Paragraph 2
– topic sentence
– supporting argument (data, examples, evidences)
IV. Body Paragraph 3
– topic sentence
– supporting argument (data, examples, evidences)
V. Conclusion
– summary of the main points
– restate the thesis statement
– call of action
Writing an essay outline doesn’t have to be in a complete sentence. You can write anything in a manner that would be comfortable to you. Also, you have to assume that your readers doesn’t know anything about your topic. So when you begin to write your college essay, you have to be specific in a way that they won’t be having a hard time understanding it.
The use of dialogues can be allowed or not allowed under some certain circumstances. You are allowed to use a dialogue if there is a need to emphasize the expression of the character’s feelings through words. However, you are not allowed to put a dialogue if it takes away the whole point of your essay.
The best time to write an essay is when you feel less distracted and no pressure at all.
You should always proofread, make necessary corrections and seek help to your advisers.
