Sample Graduate School Essays That Will Help You Get an Interview

Although the application process for admission to graduate school can really give you a tough time, this is not the sole purpose of all these admission requirements. What a university's admission committee wants to find out is if you have what it takes to survive and finish graduate studies. Of course, you have the results of the battery of tests and your transcript of records. Unfortunately, these are not sufficient on their own, especially since graduate school is not just a matter of aptitude but attitude as well. It's good that former professors and mentors at work can submit their recommendation forms to improve your chances. It's even better that an admission interview is part of the selection process, so you will be able to discuss your objectives more extensively. But before you get to that, you will have to submit an excellent graduate admission essay. It is advisable to read through a lot of sample graduate school essays to accomplish this.

What can sample graduate school essays do for you?

You may think that your writing abilities have enabled you to complete your bachelor's in flying colors and that you no longer need to read other students' sample graduate school essays. You may want to re-think that. Graduate school is an entirely different environment from college, and graduate school admission essays should go beyond the elements of style. Your essay should reflect your determination and suitability for graduate studies. For this reason, reading several essays should help you think of various ways that you can show the clarity of your personal and career development goals and your consistency in fulfilling these goals.

Where can you start looking?

If you're lucky, you may have friends who have successfully got into or completed their graduate programs. They could help you with your application by providing tips on what admission committees usually look for. They might even allow you to read the essays which they have submitted to give you a better idea. If you aren't that lucky, you can still access sample essays through the Internet. Choose the ones that are sure to catch and hold attention from the first line to the end.

What makes for a good essay?

As a statement of purpose, essays typically explain why you would want to get into graduate school. Make sure that you have the right reasons for wanting a master's degree or a PhD. The minimum or maximum number of pages or words for admission essays is often given, so you have to write one that is concise but comprehensive. Do your homework and research whatever you could find on the program and the university of your choice, so you can make a good match between your personal goals and their academic objectives. Cite personal experiences which can show how you deal with difficulties with a positive outlook. Be creative, and start with something catchy, such as a story that you grew up on. Relate how insights from the story or the values of a character shaped your goals the way they are now. It would also be great to write about social responsibility. After all, society should benefit from your graduate degree in the end.

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Help Your Child or Student Write Good Essays

In order to help your child write a good essay you need to set a good example and teach the student how to prioritize. You should always know what your child's assignments are and what their deadlines are. As a parent or guardian you cannot hover over your kids, however you can remind them that they have deadlines and also provide consequences to their actions.

If the child has deadlines such as note cards, outline, rough draft, and final draft, the parent should know what the deadlines are as well as any activities the child may want to do that coincides with those deadlines. For example, if they want to go to a football game on a Friday night but are not playing in the game or performing at the game in some form, and they have an essay due on Monday, you can let them know that they are not allowed to go to the football game to hang out with their friends until the essay is either done or at least all of the research for the essay is completed if it's a long essay.

Even though this sounds like tough love, it shows your child you care about not just their grades but about what is going on in their life. It also opens up communication with you and your child about any issues or problems that the child may have with a project. Last it also teaches your child time management skills at an early age that they can take into adulthood with them and help them develop skills that most adults struggle with. Keeping on top of your child's school work also gives you a perfect opportunity to communicate with your child's teacher and make sure they are making adequate progress in class prior to progress reports or report cards coming out.

In order of time management, helping your child write good essays and teaching them how to do research for those essays, also provides you the parent or guardian the opportunity to make sure that when the child is on the computer they are doing research or writing their essay as opposed to playing games on Facebook or chatting on Twitter or any other social networking site. Lastly, as the child progresses on an essay project, it provides you the opportunity to teach your children what are credible sources and what are non-credible sources. By teaching this to your child, you can also explain plagiarism and to read all the information and summarize the information in their own words and not just taking an article and change a word here or there and claim it as their own. This skill also teaches the child independent thinking and rationalization skills which will also take them into adulthood.

So as you can tell, helping your child write a terrific essay writing will also teach them life skills and put them way ahead of the curve of other children their age and prepare them for life after high school and college is over and prepare them for the real world. Life skills will eventually help them be better prepared for job interviews and those first jobs out of college with confidence ahead of their peers applying for the same positions.

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5 Steps to Write the Perfect Essay

Well presented essay writing is a vital craft to help you win at school and university exams, however it is surprising how difficult it is to get guidance on how to write a winning essay. Students are often left feeling let down when they receive a marked essay back from their lecturer, with no clear indication as to how they are to improve. Here are some pointers to help you improve your essays.

Enthusiasm

One common issue for many students is that they dread writing the essay at all. The semester goes by and the work remains unwritten. You need to start working out coping routines as soon as you can. Throughout your working life there will be times when you are given tiring tasks that you feel bored by, so building up your self motivation now is an ability that will be useful for the rest of your life. Perhaps you feel more focused after a trip to the gym or maybe you need to reward yourself at the end of the time you ringfence for essays. Work out which tools are best for you.

Schedules

Once you are given the essay questions, set about planning your time. Consider the time you have until the assignment is due, get out your calendar and start making plans. You want to be done with the main writing of the essay weeks before it is due, so that you have plenty of time to type it up. Don't leave it so late that you're rushing.

Essay Plans

Spend time on an essay plan in order to save time later in the essay writing process.

Making a plan should be completed every time you begin a new essay. Start by making sure you understand the question. Then brainstorm the ideas that might be useful for the essay. After that, organize your thoughts in a logical order in an essay plan.

Hitting the library

Once you have an idea of the essay structure, you need to head to the library to find the recommended reading material or search for journal articles through an online journal archive like JSTOR. With a university essay, you want to have completed this stage (and the steps listed above) as quickly as you can. You are competing for research material with everyone else in the class, so get into the library as quickly as possible. If one of your classmates has already got to the materials you need, it is advisable that you put your name on the waiting list for those books to make sure you get them next.

Begin Writing

Begin fleshing out the body of your essay. Each paragraph should deliver a point in your argument. Write the introduction last. This is particularly important with university essays. You will have read a great amount of material and will have constructed a complex argument within the course of the term. Your argument about the essay subject may have changed during the course of the term and you need to express your final analysis in the introduction.

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College Essays - How to Write them Fast

Whether your grammar or punctuation is poor, you don't know how to spell or you just can not get the words flowing, writing an essay is one of your least favorite activities. You are not alone. A whole industry exists for both ethical and unethical ways to help you with your essay writing. This article will explore a few ideas on making your essay writing experience less painful while still creating a quality paper.

If you write like you talk you will end up with a very unprofessional paper. However, if you are among the people that can not get started this is exactly what you need to do. Just start writing with out regards to quality. Then after you have twice as many paragraphs as needed cherry pick the best and rewrite them in an academic manner.

Another technique for getting started is the Question and Answer method. Simply write down ten questions about the subject and then research and answer them. It is important to know your audience. The questions need to include a definition of the subject itself to make sure all the readers are up to speed. Of course, when you are done it is necessary to put them in the format needed for the assignment.

A great method to get started fast is to use another essay as a template. The trick here is to use an essay on another topic, but the same style. For example, if you are doing a biography of Abraham Lincoln an essay on Benjamin Franklyn may make a good template. It is important not to use the same topic as that would lend itself to plagiarism. This technique can be used with compare and contrast essays, classification essays, etc.

Choosing the right subject or the right angle on the subject can really speed up your research. The ideal subject is not to broad in scope ("dogs" is too broad -- "dogs at work" is better) and with plenty of information available. If a subject is to broad you may have a hard time deciding what to include in your essay and the reader may feel it is incomplete. A narrow subject will tend to write itself as there is only so much to say. It is important that you find plenty of information on the subject so that you can choose the best sources to quote. Do a Google search. If you do not find what you want on the first page of your first search, change you topic.

The second part of speeding up research for your essay is to limit your searches to reliable resources. You need to make sure any source you site is respected and accurate. One way to do this when doing internet research is to limit your searches to .gov, .edu and journal articles. This will remove a lot of the less desirable search results.

Spelling, Grammar. Style and Punctuation.

Here is the hard truth, if you are in college and still struggle with this you probably always will. I do recommend taking a remedial writing course if you believe it may help. There is another option. Ask for help or pay for help. There are plenty of people that can proofread and edit your paper. It is important that the people that edit your work have strong writing skills.

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Ten Ways to Improve Your Grades For Essay Writing

It is possible to improve your grades by self-editing your essay or assignment before you hand it in. Many students fail to look over their work once they have completed it, or they do not know what to look for.

This means that students are handing in work that contains spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, unclear or clumsy writing, and referencing and formatting errors. Some students have even greater problems with issues like the clarity and consistency of their argument or their essay organisation. These types of mistakes are costing you grades!

You might be very surprised how much your grades can be improved through editing your own work before you hand it in. This article will explain ten ways you can improve your essay writing yourself.

1. Spelling and Consistency

Spelling is a very important aspect of essay writing that many students overlook. Usually this is because of spell-checking programs, upon which many students rely. However, it is important to remember that if you have mistyped a word that is not a spelling mistake, the spell-checker will not find it. For example, you could mistype 'hole' instead of 'whole', 'four' instead of 'for', or 'though' instead of 'thought'. Once you have completed writing your first draft, read your work through carefully to look for these kinds of mistakes.

It is crucial that you are consistent throughout your essay. This applies to many things such as the spelling of words (some people switch between American and Australian/British English), the spelling of names, and the capitalisation of words. For example, if you are using Australian/British English you must do so throughout your essay. You cannot use the word 'recognise' and then later use the word 'organize'. You must stick with 'organise.' If you capitalise the first letter of 'Church' the first time, you cannot refer to it as 'church' later in your essay.

2. Grammar

It is very difficult to write an essay with perfect grammar, as there are many rules that must be followed and thousands of exceptions to these rules that you must know. However, there are many things that you do yourself to improve the grammar in your essay and assignment writing.

Ensuring consistency of tenses is one of these. Often students change tenses in the middle of an essay without realising; changing from present to past or vice versa. A quick check at the completion of writing your essay can ensure that you have used the correct tense throughout the essay.

Here is another grammar tip: When writing about a decade, you must write (for example) 1980s not 1980's. If you write 1980's, this indicates something belonging to the year 1980, because you are using a possessive apostrophe. To indicate a decade, you must write 1980s.

3. Paragraphing

Many students write paragraphs that are too long. A paragraph should only contain one main idea. There is no definite length for a paragraph, but normally you would have at least three paragraphs on one type-written page. Long paragraphs can cause confusion for the reader, since they would contain several ideas, and they make your essay look poorly planned.

4. Repetition

Developing a sophisticated and creative writing style can take time. One thing you can do immediately to improve your writing style is ensure that you do not repeat the same words too often in your essays. Using varied language to express yourself with mean that your writing is interesting, and will appear more stylish.

5. Essay Organisation

For some reason, many schools and universities do not spend sufficient time teaching students how to organise their essays properly. Beyond the knowledge that an essay must contain an introduction, a body and a conclusion, many students do not have a clear understanding of how to organise an essay correctly.

Here are a few tips. When writing an argumentative essay, your introduction must do two things to be considered an introduction. It must first answer the essay question. It must then introduce all the main ideas you will discuss in your essay to convince the reader why your answer is correct. An introduction should be roughly ten per cent of your essay length. So for an essay of 1,000 words, write an introduction of 100 words.

Use topic sentences. These are sentences at the beginning of each new topic that tie your essay together. They introduce new topics and explain why they are relevant to the essay question. Topic sentences give your essay an internal logic, and help you to write a convincing argument.

6. Direct and Indirect Quotations

This is an example of a direct quotation: Dr. Lisa Lines argues that 'the role of women in combat during the Spanish Civil War is highly significant'.

This is an example of an indirect quotation: Dr Lisa Lines believes the women played a very important role in combat during the Spanish Civil War.

It is preferable not to include too many direct quotations in an essay. Essays of a very high standard are written almost entirely in the student's own words, with many references to the sources they have used (using indirect quotations). You should only quote directly from a source when it is absolutely necessary, for example, if you had a need to point out a particular person's opinion on an issue, or if an issue or opinion is particularly controversial. Otherwise, it is highly favourable for you to demonstrate that you have read, understood, and assimilated the source into your own knowledge of the subject. The best way to do that is to present the ideas in your own words and then provide the reference.

7. Formal Language

When writing an academic essay, you must use formal language. You cannot use contractions such as 'don't', 'can't' or 'won't'. You must write these words out in full ('do not', 'cannot' or 'will not'). You should also refrain from using any colloquial language (slang) in an academic essay.

8. Your Research

The research component of writing an essay should take up the majority of your time. It is the longest stage of the essay writing process. How much time you spend will depend on your year level, the word length of the essay, the type of essay (minor, major or tutorial paper) and what percentage of your grade it is worth. It also depends on what grade you are aiming for.

The way that you record your research is vital to the essay writing process. If you do not record your research properly, you could spend hours (or even days or weeks) doing your research, and then when you begin to write your essay you may discover that you have to go back and re-do things, like search for page numbers or correct quotations. This is a waste of your time!

You must record your research in a way that makes essay writing easier for you. It must be accurate, include all the information you need, and give you a chance to record your own ideas and thoughts on the material you are reading as you go along. Do not leave this to the end!

9. Referencing and Bibliography

(This point may not be relevant to high school students who are not yet required to include references in their essays.)

This stage is crucial to essay writing; however, it is often over-looked by students. If you do not reference properly at university you can get in serious trouble for what is called 'unintentional plagiarism'. One type of unintentional plagiarism is when students have found information during their research and included it in their essay (even if they have completely re-worded it) but then did not provide a reference. If you do this, you are actually claiming someone else's work as your own, which is plagiarism. Unintentional plagiarism is very different to deliberate plagiarism, which is when students are cheating on purpose. However, it can get you in just as much trouble. This is why you must learn how to reference correctly!

You must find out from your school or university which referencing system you need to use for each subject you study. Then, spend some time learning how to reference using that system correctly.

Once you know how to do it, and if you have organised and recorded your research properly, referencing your research as you are writing your essay should be simple. You should have all the information you need right in front of you. That is why it is so important for you to keep track of which books you use and on which page numbers you find information while you are doing your research.

10. Polish Your Writing

After you have written your first draft, you should edit it yourself before you have anyone else look at it. This means that you should read it very carefully; looking for mistakes and things you can improve. Since editing requires that you look for a number of different things, it can be a good idea to read over your essay several times.

The first time you read your essay, just concentrate on the writing itself. Look for spelling mistakes, things that are not explained clearly, and grammar that could be improved. Do not look for anything else at this stage.

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College Essay Help to Get Good Grades

College essay should be completed promptly in order to maintain good grades in your college. There are few points which you have to keep in mind in order to master every college essay. Whatever be the topic, it is important that you present it with complete information. If required you should get college essay help from reliable source to complete your job correctly on time. There are quite a few ways where in you can get appropriate college essay help. These papers would be a great guide in to complete your essays. These are opinion style format and they help you writing your essays in appropriate format. This format can be used to convey your message and it is not necessary that it should be right or wrong as it is just a medium of expression. The completeness of the message is taken into account.

There are educational solutions which provide persuasive college essay help to students so that they can easily complete their assignments on time. The persuasive kinds of essays are designed with proper format consisting of solid structure with thesis statement in the beginning, followed by the essay which would speak about the thesis. The following are some of important points which are to be included in persuasive college essays:

1. Introduction
2. Thesis statement
3. 2 to 3 paragraphs supporting the thesis
4. Conclusion of the essay

Such formats are very good college essay helps, as the students can stick to the formats and acquire good grades. But three things are common and mandatory for all college essays: Introduction, Body and Conclusion. At times, college essay help is available within the university itself. This proves to be an advantage for students as they don't have to waste time searching for assistance in completing their assignments.

It is very important to get in to a good college for quality education. In order to get admission in good university, one has to score well in SAT or ACT. These test results are stepping stones towards a bright future of the student. One can easily decide which stream to take up with the help of the results acquired in these tests. You need to find tout the most appropriate ACT prep course which will help you in preparing perfectly for your exams. There are quite a few educational institutes which will help you for the above mentioned Courses. By taking up this course you will get a clear picture of the respective exams. It is the best way to evaluate yourself. It is always advisable to take up these courses in order to score good grades in both SAT and ACT.

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How to Write Distinction Essays Every Time - The Six Steps to Academic Essay Writing

There are six steps to writing an academic essay. If you follow each of these steps correctly, you will find that you can write university essays that will earn you a distinction (or high distinction) every time. It is simply a matter of understanding what steps to follow, and then completing each of them thoroughly.

This article provides an outline and brief description of each of these steps. It is an introduction to a series of articles that will examine each step in more depth. Reading just this article alone will provide you with assistance in learning how to plan, research and write your essays. However, reading all the articles in the series will allow you to gain a more sophisticated insight into essay writing, and to improve your grades even further.

These are the six steps you need to follow to write high quality university essays:

1. Analyse the Question

There are generally two types of essays: argumentative essays and explanatory essays. In an argumentative essay, you are expected to put forward an academic argument in answer to the essay question and support your argument with academic sources (references). In an explanatory essay, you are expected to explain or describe a process or topic in answer to an essay question and support your argument with academic sources (references). Regardless of the type of essay you are writing, it is very important that you understand what is being asked of you before you begin your research and writing your essay.

You must be sure that you understand all parts of the question and what it is asking you to do. You must be able to recognise the 'task words' in the question, which tell you what you have to do (for example, 'discuss', 'compare', 'analyse' or 'argue') and the 'key words' in the question, which tell you what you are being asked to write about (for example, Critical Thinking, or the roles of registered nurses). (More information on this step will be provided in the article 'How to Write Distinction Essays Every Time: Step 1. Analyse the Question.')

2. Draft the Essay Plan

You must write the first draft of your essay plan before you start your research. This will give your research direction and ultimately make it easier for you to write your essay. Having a plan will let you know what you need to research and how much research you need on each topic or subject that you will be writing about.

You will base this first draft of your essay plan on your essay question, and your current knowledge of your subject. It will not happen very often that you are asked to write an essay on a topic you know nothing about, since you will already be studying the subject and will normally have had one or more lectures or tutorials on the topic.

It is acceptable if your essay plan is rough or vague at this point, or if you do not have a great deal of detail. You will develop your essay plan (expanding it and including more detail) and possibly even change it as you go through the research process.

3. Conduct the Research

Part One: Organising your Research using a Research Document

Your research should be organised so that the transition from doing your research to writing your essay is simple. The best way to do this is to organise your research so that it matches the organisation of the essay. In Step 2 of writing an academic essay, you would have written a rough essay plan before you began your research. This essay plan is the guide you need to use to organise your research.

Copy and paste this essay plan into a Word document. All your research for this essay will be recorded in this one document. Use each of the dot points from your essay plan (topics you are planning to discuss) as a heading in your research document. When you do your research, you will organise it in the order that the information will appear in your essay. Doing this means you will be organising your research by theme or topic, not by source.

Part Two: Research Skills and Academic Sources

Being able to tell the difference between an academic source and a non-academic source, knowing where to find academic sources and deciding what sources are relevant to your research are important skills that you will develop during your tertiary studies.

The first place you should go is the library, even if this means ordering in books from other libraries. For academics to have their books (and journal articles) published, they must go through a process called peer-reviewing. During this process, one or more other academics who are experts in the field will read and assess a book or article to decide if it is of publishable standard. This is why your research will be of the highest quality if you use books, monographs, textbooks and journal articles written by academics for your research, because the work had to meet academic standards. There is no such process for publishing on the internet; anyone can write whatever they like on any subject.

Your second stop after books, monographs and textbooks will be journal articles. Some of these will only be available in hardcopy from the library, but many will be available in their full-text versions through online electronic databases, such as JStore, ProQuest and Ingenta.

4. Finalise the Essay Plan

In Step 2, you would have drafted a rough essay plan before you began your research. During the research process (in Step 3), you would have developed this plan further as you learned more information on your topic. Once you have completed your research, and before you begin writing your first draft, you need to re-think your essay plan and write a final version based on what you discovered during your research. Your final essay plan will contain more detail than your first draft and be a very specific guide to how to write your essay. Once you have completed the final draft of your essay plan, you are ready to begin writing the first draft of your essay.

5. Write the First Draft of the Essay

Now that you have completed your research in an organised way and have written a final draft of your essay plan, writing the first draft of your essay will be easier than it ever has been. All of the following decisions about your essay have already been made:

* What your answer to the essay question is
* What main points you will discuss in order to back up your argument
* The order in which to discuss your main points
* How long to spend discussing each main point
* What information each paragraph will contain (i.e. what information you will use to discuss each of your main points)
* What references you will use to back up your argument

Thus, there is no reason for you to feel lost or stare at your computer screen not knowing what to write. If you do get stuck for any reason, the best thing to do is to just keep writing. You can always improve something once you have written something down. If you have not written anything, not much can be done until you do.

6. Professional Academic Editing

Once you have completed writing your essay, it is vital that you have it professionally edited by an academic editor. You have just spent a significant amount of time doing the best possible job on your essay or assignment, doing your research and writing up your results. After all this effort, it is critical that your work is presented in the best possible way. Using a professional academic editor will ensure that your work is polished, well written, and presented correctly.
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