A well-crafted college paper is an often dreaded but essential ingredient to academic success in college. Unfortunately, many students don’t even know where to begin.

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To take the fear and mystery out of the process, we turn to a Rutgers University–Camden scholar who is literally writing – and editing – the book on the topic.

As you take on a broader range of writing assignments in your college classes, it can be helpful to read as a writer, often called reading to write. “Reading to write” means approaching reading material with a variety of tools that help prepare you to write about that reading material. Considering Writing Your College Essay About Harry Potter? A good interest essay shows a reader what makes you tick - why you are different (and ultimately, a better candidate. Different ways of writing essays. Studying in college most students forget about their leisure time. The reason of it: an insane amount of workload. Entering college a person learns how to think and express his own ideas on a new level, higher than in school. One of the hardest tasks is writing an essay. Write revealing, concise essays that inform, enlighten and amuse. Present yourself as genuinely humble, modest, perhaps even self-effacing. Answer each and every aspect of the essay question as best you can AND within the character/word limit provided.

The English professor says that an assignment of more than a page or two should take a week or more to draft whether one is writing an analysis, a critical essay, or a source-based research paper.

William FitzGerald, an associate professor of English at Rutgers–Camden, recently teamed with Boston University scholar Joe Bizup to revise and steward the fifth edition of the late Kate L. Turabian’s The Student’s Guide to Writing College Papers.

FitzGerald offers a few key points for tackling college papers and staying on track throughout the writing process.

For starters, what are five easy-to-remember tips for writing college papers?

Start early. Some of us have learned to write the one draft all-nighter, but you owe it to yourself to let your ideas develop over time and through several drafts. Research takes time, discovering what you want to say takes time.

An assignment of more than a page or two should take a week or more to draft whether you are writing an analysis, a critical essay, or a source-based research paper. This advice applies to teachers as well. Give out assignments early and build in steps along the way; that way, students have to start early.

FitzGerald recently teamed with Boston University scholar Joe Bizup to revise and steward the fifth edition of the late Kate L. Turabian’s The Student’s Guide to Writing College Papers.

Answer a question. A real paper doesn’t just report information about a topic or summarize what you have read. Instead of topics, think about questions you want answers to and that your readers want answers to. That way you avoid the “all about” paper or the data dump, and the paper that tells more about your research process than about any conclusions you reach.

All good academic papers imagine a problem of some kind, typically something we want to understand better, and seek to provide an answer to a question that addresses that problem. In a novel, why does a character behave a particular way? In the lab, how do we measure the effects of a certain stimulus on a research subject, animal, or human?

Plan, but don’t over outline. Many students believe they have to know everything they are going to say before they write. The five-paragraph essay learned in high school reinforces this belief with an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion that restates the opening.

However, unless you are writing in a specific format, it is better to avoid a detailed outline until you get down your ideas, sources, and evidence, experimenting with how to organize your argument. Once you finish your draft, you can do a reverse outline to see if your paper has a structure that best represents your argument.

Dialogue with your sources and your readers. A paper is a conversation with its readers. This is the most important point. Successful papers imagine a community of readers who are interested in what the writer has to say because the writer has thought about the reader’s needs and interests.

Students think that the point of a paper is to show the teacher that they understand the material, but a research paper is also a dialogue with its sources. Students might also think that sources exist to back up an argument or let sources do their arguing for them. However, successful writers approach sources in a “they say/I say” format, at times agreeing with, at other times disagreeing, with sources.

Too often, students and teachers get hung up on the mechanics of citing sources and concerns over possible plagiarism that they miss the basic idea of writing and research as a conversation. But once you get that idea, everything else begins to fall into place.

FitzGerald says that writing at the college level is learning to revise on the basis of how actual readers, including the writer, respond to the writing.

Revise in response to feedback. Finally, writing at the college level is learning to revise on the basis of how actual readers, including the writer, respond to the writing. A surprisingly large number of college students never read what they have written, let alone revise. And when they do “revise,” it is often in the manner of correcting things that a teacher has circled. It can take a while, but eventually, with encouragement, students can begin to see how to use comments and reactions of readers to refine and develop their arguments.

How do you avoid procrastination?

I don’t avoid procrastination, I’m embarrassed to say! But what I do is to start early and work my way toward meeting writing tasks by spreading the work out. It has taken me many years to learn that lesson. I also share early drafts with people whose opinions I value, even if it’s just a few paragraphs or main points.

What are some tips for staying motivated and keeping your energy up throughout the writing process?

When the words don’t come out as you expect, it’s frustrating. I’ve learned that this is normal, so I’m more patient with myself and the process. The words will come or they are there on the page but need some tweaking. We don’t really know what we want to say until we put our ideas into words. Trust the process.

What are some ideas for dealing with writer’s block and getting back on track?

From experience, I can say that writer’s block is real, even if that term covers many forms of avoidance or anxiety. It’s important to acknowledge our fears and take baby steps, and write just a sentence or two or for just five minutes. Usually, the anxiety will subside and we’ll get further than we predicted.

What are some tips for balancing writing with other priorities and personal interests?

The best writers write every day; all that experience adds up. Most of us can’t or won’t do that, but we can schedule writing time just as we would exercise or do household chores and stick to it. It helps to set realistic goals.

What this handout is about

This handout will help you figure out what your college instructors expect when they give you a writing assignment. It will tell you how and why to move beyond the five-paragraph essays you learned to write in high school and start writing essays that are more analytical and more flexible.

What is a five-paragraph essay?

High school students are often taught to write essays using some variation of the five-paragraph model. A five-paragraph essay is hourglass-shaped: it begins with something general, narrows down in the middle to discuss specifics, and then branches out to more general comments at the end. In a classic five-paragraph essay, the first paragraph starts with a general statement and ends with a thesis statement containing three “points”; each body paragraph discusses one of those “points” in turn; and the final paragraph sums up what the student has written.

Why do high schools teach the five-paragraph model?

The five-paragraph model is a good way to learn how to write an academic essay. It’s a simplified version of academic writing that requires you to state an idea and support it with evidence. Setting a limit of five paragraphs narrows your options and forces you to master the basics of organization. Furthermore—and for many high school teachers, this is the crucial issue—many mandatory end-of-grade writing tests and college admissions exams like the SAT II writing test reward writers who follow the five-paragraph essay format.

Writing a five-paragraph essay is like riding a bicycle with training wheels; it’s a device that helps you learn. That doesn’t mean you should use it forever. Once you can write well without it, you can cast it off and never look back.

Why don’t five-paragraph essays work well for college writing?

The way college instructors teach is probably different from what you experienced in high school, and so is what they expect from you.

While high school courses tend to focus on the who, what, when, and where of the things you study—”just the facts”—college courses ask you to think about the how and the why. You can do very well in high school by studying hard and memorizing a lot of facts. Although college instructors still expect you to know the facts, they really care about how you analyze and interpret those facts and why you think those facts matter. Once you know what college instructors are looking for, you can see some of the reasons why five-paragraph essays don’t work so well for college writing:

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• Five-paragraph essays often do a poor job of setting up a framework, or context, that helps the reader understand what the author is trying to say. Students learn in high school that their introduction should begin with something general. College instructors call these “dawn of time” introductions. For example, a student asked to discuss the causes of the Hundred Years War might begin, “Since the dawn of time, humankind has been plagued by war.” In a college course, the student would fare better with a more concrete sentence directly related to what he or she is going to say in the rest of the paper—for example, a sentence such as “In the early 14th century, a civil war broke out in Flanders that would soon threaten Western Europe’s balance of power.” If you are accustomed to writing vague opening lines and need them to get started, go ahead and write them, but delete them before you turn in the final draft. For more on this subject, see our handout on introductions.
• Five-paragraph essays often lack an argument. Because college courses focus on analyzing and interpreting rather than on memorizing, college instructors expect writers not only to know the facts but also to make an argument about the facts. The best five-paragraph essays may do this. However, the typical five-paragraph essay has a “listing” thesis, for example, “I will show how the Romans lost their empire in Britain and Gaul by examining military technology, religion, and politics,” rather than an argumentative one, for example, “The Romans lost their empire in Britain and Gaul because their opponents’ military technology caught up with their own at the same time as religious upheaval and political conflict were weakening the sense of common purpose on the home front.” For more on this subject, see our handout on argument.
• Five-paragraph essays are often repetitive. Writers who follow the five-paragraph model tend to repeat sentences or phrases from the introduction in topic sentences for paragraphs, rather than writing topic sentences that tie their three “points” together into a coherent argument. Repetitive writing doesn’t help to move an argument along, and it’s no fun to read.
• Five-paragraph essays often lack “flow.” Five-paragraph essays often don’t make smooth transitions from one thought to the next. The “listing” thesis statement encourages writers to treat each paragraph and its main idea as a separate entity, rather than to draw connections between paragraphs and ideas in order to develop an argument.
• Five-paragraph essays often have weak conclusions that merely summarize what’s gone before and don’t say anything new or interesting. In our handout on conclusions, we call these “that’s my story and I’m sticking to it” conclusions: they do nothing to engage readers and make them glad they read the essay. Most of us can remember an introduction and three body paragraphs without a repetitive summary at the end to help us out.
• Five-paragraph essays don’t have any counterpart in the real world. Read your favorite newspaper or magazine; look through the readings your professors assign you; listen to political speeches or sermons. Can you find anything that looks or sounds like a five-paragraph essay? One of the important skills that college can teach you, above and beyond the subject matter of any particular course, is how to communicate persuasively in any situation that comes your way. The five-paragraph essay is too rigid and simplified to fit most real-world situations.
• Perhaps most important of all: in a five-paragraph essay, form controls content, when it should be the other way around. Students begin with a plan for organization, and they force their ideas to fit it. Along the way, their perfectly good ideas get mangled or lost.

How do I break out of writing five-paragraph essays?

Let’s take an example based on our handout on thesis statements. Suppose you’re taking a United States History class, and the professor asks you to write a paper on this topic:

Compare and contrast the reasons why the North and South fought the Civil War.

Alex, preparing to write her first college history paper, decides to write a five-paragraph essay, just like she learned in high school. She begins by thinking, “What are three points I can talk about to compare the reasons the North and South fought the Civil War?” She does a little brainstorming, and she says, “Well, in class, my professor talked about the economy, politics, and slavery. I guess I can do a paper about that.” So she writes her introduction:

A civil war occurs when two sides in a single country become so angry at each other that they turn to violence. The Civil War between North and South was a major conflict that nearly tore apart the young United States. The North and South fought the Civil War for many reasons. In some cases, these reasons were the same, but in other cases they were very different. In this paper, I will compare and contrast these reasons by examining the economy, politics, and slavery.

This is a classic five-paragraph essay introduction: it goes from the general to the specific, and it introduces the three points that will be the subjects of each of the three body paragraphs.

But Alex’s professor doesn’t like it. She underlines the first two sentences, and she writes, “This is too general. Get to the point.” She underlines the third and fourth sentences, and she writes, “You’re just restating the question I asked. What’s your point?” She underlines the final sentence, and then writes in the margin, “What’s your thesis?” because the last sentence in the paragraph only lists topics. It doesn’t make an argument.

Is Alex’s professor just a grouch? Well, no—she is trying to teach this student that college writing isn’t about following a formula (the five-paragraph model), it’s about making an argument. Her first sentence is general, the way she learned a five-paragraph essay should start. But from the professor’s perspective, it’s far too general—so general, in fact, that it’s completely outside of the assignment: she didn’t ask students to define civil war. The third and fourth sentences say, in so many words, “I am comparing and contrasting the reasons why the North and the South fought the Civil War”—as the professor says, they just restate the prompt, without giving a single hint about where this student’s paper is going. The final sentence, which should make an argument, only lists topics; it doesn’t begin to explore how or why something happened.

If you’ve seen a lot of five-paragraph essays, you can guess what Alex will write next. Her first body paragraph will begin, “We can see some of the different reasons why the North and South fought the Civil War by looking at the economy.” What will the professor say about that? She might ask, “What differences can we see? What part of the economy are you talking about? Why do the differences exist? Why are they important?” After three such body paragraphs, the student might write a conclusion that says much the same thing as her introduction, in slightly different words. Alex’s professor might respond, “You’ve already said this!”

What could Alex do differently? Let’s start over. This time, Alex doesn’t begin with a preconceived notion of how to organize her essay. Instead of three “points,” she decides that she will brainstorm until she comes up with a main argument, or thesis, that answers the question “Why did the North and South fight the Civil War?” Then she will decide how to organize her draft by thinking about the argument’s parts and how they fit together.

After doing some brainstorming and reading the Writing Center’s handout on thesis statements, Alex thinks of a main argument, or thesis statement:

Both Northerners and Southerners believed they fought against tyranny and oppression, but Northerners focused on the oppression of slaves while Southerners defended their rights to property and self-government.

Then Alex writes her introduction. But instead of beginning with a general statement about civil wars, she gives us the ideas we need to know in order to understand all the parts of her argument:

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The United States broke away from England in response to British tyranny and oppression, so opposition to tyranny and a belief in individual freedom and liberty were important values in the young republic. But in the nineteenth century, slavery made Northerners and Southerners see these values in very different ways. By 1860, the conflict over these values broke out into a civil war that nearly tore the country apart. In that war, both Northerners and Southerners believed they fought against tyranny and oppression, but Northerners focused on the oppression of slaves while Southerners defended their rights to property and self-government.

Every sentence in Alex’s new introduction leads the reader down the path to her thesis statement in an unbroken chain of ideas.

Now Alex turns to organization. You’ll find more about the thinking process she goes through in our handout on organization, but here are the basics: first, she decides, she’ll write a paragraph that gives background; she’ll explain how opposition to tyranny and a belief in individual liberty came to be such important values in the United States. Then she’ll write another background paragraph in which she shows how the conflict over slavery developed over time. Then she’ll have separate paragraphs about Northerners and Southerners, explaining in detail—and giving evidence for—her claims about each group’s reasons for going to war.

Note that Alex now has four body paragraphs. She might have had three or two or seven; what’s important is that she allowed her argument to tell her how many paragraphs she should have and how to fit them together. Furthermore, her body paragraphs don’t all discuss “points,” like “the economy” and “politics”—two of them give background, and the other two explain Northerners’ and Southerners’ views in detail.

Finally, having followed her sketch outline and written her paper, Alex turns to writing a conclusion. From our handout on conclusions, she knows that a “that’s my story and I’m sticking to it” conclusion doesn’t move her ideas forward. Applying the strategies she finds in the handout, she decides that she can use her conclusion to explain why the paper she’s just written really matters—perhaps by pointing out that the fissures in our society that the Civil War opened are, in many cases, still causing trouble today.

Is it ever OK to write a five-paragraph essay?

Yes. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where somebody expects you to make sense of a large body of information on the spot and write a well-organized, persuasive essay—in fifty minutes or less? Sounds like an essay exam situation, right? When time is short and the pressure is on, falling back on the good old five-paragraph essay can save you time and give you confidence. A five-paragraph essay might also work as the framework for a short speech. Try not to fall into the trap, however, of creating a “listing” thesis statement when your instructor expects an argument; when planning your body paragraphs, think about three components of an argument, rather than three “points” to discuss. On the other hand, most professors recognize the constraints of writing blue-book essays, and a “listing” thesis is probably better than no thesis at all.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial. We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Blue, Tina. 2001. “AP English Blather.” Essay, I Say (blog), January 26, 2001. http://essayisay.homestead.com/blather.html.

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Blue, Tina. 2001. “A Partial Defense of the Five-Paragraph Theme as a Model for Student Writing.” Essay, I Say (blog), January 13, 2001. http://essayisay.homestead.com/fiveparagraphs.html.

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Denecker, Christine. 2013. “Transitioning Writers across the Composition Threshold: What We Can Learn from Dual Enrollment Partnerships.” Composition Studies 41 (1): 27-50.

Fanetti, Susan et al. 2010. “Closing the Gap between High School Writing Instruction and College Writing Expectations.” The English Journal 99 (4): 77-83.

Hillocks, George. 2002. The Testing Trap: How State Assessments Control Learning. New York and London: Teachers College Press.

Hjortshoj, Keith. 2009. The Transition to College Writing, 2nd ed. New York: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Shen, Andrea. 2000. “Study Looks at Role of Writing in Learning.” Harvard Gazette (blog). October 26, 2000. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2000/10/study-looks-at-role-of-writing-in-learning/.

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