unsw essay writing help

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Hand in Your Essay

You haven’t completed your assignment until you’ve handed it in. It’s important to READ the assignment guidelines in your course outlines and to follow them. Find out how your lecturer/tutor would like assignments presented. and make sure you comply with their requirements.

In general:

• Make sure you know the date the assignment is due. Submitting late work usually incurs a penalty.
• Make sure you know where and to whom your assignment should be submitted.
• Most assignments require a cover sheet (available from your school).
• If you are handing in a hard copy, don’t submit in a plastic folder or sleeve (unless you are asked to do so). Staple it in the top, left-hand corner.
• Ensure your essay is formatted correctly . Use double-line spacing and a readable font (for example, Times or Ariel, size 10-12).
• Number pages and set wide margins.
• Keep an extra copy for yourself.

Further reading

Cuba, I 1998, A Short Guide to Writing About Social Science , Harper Collins, Australia.

Emmerson, L (ed.) 2005, Writing Guidelines for Social Science Students , 2nd edn, Dunmore Press, Southbank, Victoria.

Oshima, A & Hogue, A 1991, Writing Academic English , Addison-Wesley, London.

University of Toronto Writing Centre, Some General Advice on Academic Essay Writing , University of Toronto, accessed 2010,  http://writing.utoronto.ca

Essay and assignment writing guide

• Getting started
• Research the topic
• Organise your ideas
• Write your essay
• Reference your essay
• Edit your essay
• Hand in your essay
• Essay and assignment planning
• Answering assignment questions
• Editing checklist
• Writing a critical review
• Annotated bibliography
• Reflective writing
• ^ More support

English Language Support Initiative

We support students’ academic English language development through several initiatives including Studiosity, Academic Confidence Essentials and myEnglish Week.

Please direct students to our student-facing website:  student.unsw.edu.au/english  

How can we help you and your students?

We provide two free tools that can be embedded in your course to support academic English language and literacy:

We do the work of tailoring these tools for your course and embedding them in Moodle along with guides and support for students. 

The tools are useful for all students, but particularly helpful for first year students (UG, PG or HDR) for whom English is an additional language (EAL).

Please get in touch using the EOI form below. An initial 30-minute meeting will provide us with all the information we need to tailor the implementation for you. (If the embedded form does not load for you, please  access the form here  or send us an email via  [email protected] .)

Feedback Hub: Studiosity

UNSW has recently partnered with Studiosity to deliver online writing support to students. The service is available 24/7. Students receive formative feedback on their written drafts on various aspects of writing, including grammar, vocabulary, structure and use of sources, by subject specialists. The feedback is personalised, ethical and quick, as students receive it within 24 hours of submission. Other features include personalised referrals to UNSW services, a range of learning resources and early alerts.

Our team does the work of embedding Studiosity into your Moodle site. We also assist with any questions about the service and its use and can deliver guest presentations in lectures.

Please contact us via the form above to integrate Studiosity into your course.

Academic Confidence Essentials (ACE)

Academic Confidence Essentials (ACE) are online self-study modules on various academic language and skills topics. Each module can be used on its own or in combination with other ACE modules. The modules contain essential information on specific academic literacy concepts, examples and interactive activities, which quiz the students’ understanding of the concept discussed. Each module takes approximately 20 minutes to complete. ACE currently contains the following modules, but more will be added to the list:

• unpacking assessments
• critical thinking
• appraising evidence
• integrating evidence (quoting, paraphrasing and summarising)
• principles of report writing
• paragraphs for essay writing 
• assessment structure  

While the ACE modules can be used for independent learning, they can also be seamlessly integrated into the course's Moodle page, situating each skill in relation to the assessment task they contribute to. These embedded modules allow students to effortlessly transition between their course materials and interactive lessons, allowing for a cohesive and integrated approach to learning. You can request embedding of all or specific ACE modules into your Moodle course site(s).   

Please contact us via the form above to integrate ACE into your course   

myEnglish Week: language and communication workshops

myEnglish Week is a series of interactive workshops held in the week prior to O-Week. It is designed to build students’ English language confidence and connect them to the range of programs and services available at UNSW to continue their ongoing communication development. 

What do participants say?

• “Lovely teachers and classmates. All of them offered helpful advice and tips.” 
• “myEnglish Week gave me an opportunity to practice my oral English. During the training, we were free to have group discussions … which I found very useful.”
• “Lots of useful links, good presenters, good audience engagement via breakout rooms.”

Let’s CommUNIcate: peer-led discussion groups

In 2021, we partnered with the Peer Connections team to develop the curriculum for Let’s CommUNIcate . The program aims to support international students’ speaking confidence and discussion skills in a supportive peer-led environment. We worked with students as partners to develop the discussion activities and facilitator guides for the sessions. 

We are open to opportunities to partner with others across the university who are working to support academic language and communication development initiatives. Please get in touch.   

The English Language Support Initiative team is part of the Student Success theme within the Education Pillar of the PVCESE portfolio. We apply our shared expertise to partner with teaching staff across all faculties and provide tailored support for you and your students.

• Dr Neda Chepinchikj is a linguist and educator with over twenty years of experience in English language teaching. She is the Implementation Manager for English Language Support at UNSW. 
• Lucy Neville  is an Academic English Facilitator with over 15 years experience teaching Academic English and English as an Additional Language. She has recently completed a Master of Educational Psychology and has a deep interest in the role that emotions and wellbeing play in the language learning process.

To contact us, please email [email protected]

Other useful contacts at UNSW

A number of teams provide relevant support for communication and academic literacies.

• Academic Skills provide one-on-one consultations and workshops for students, as well as teaching and curriculum design in enabling programs and other academic skills courses.
• Peer Connections run various peer support programs, including the Cultural Mentor program , Peer Mentor Connect  and Let’s CommUNIcate .
• Student Support advisors provide personalised advice and information about university life, student visas, wellbeing and academic performance.
• EF Communities of Practice : several CoPs are interested in questions around supporting language development, including Teaching for Equity and Diversity, Student Wellbeing and Enhancing First Year Experience.

Events & news

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HOW TO APPROACH PROOFREADING AND EDITING

BY Jeremy Ellis

Listen – I know how easily it is to ‘proofread’ thirty minutes before something is due. However, proofreading involves so much more than just running a quick spell check.

Writing is a way to express ideas, beliefs, opinions and our own selves. It has evolved in multiple cultures, and as such, there are countless ways to go about it. I say this because there is no one correct way to write nor edit. That said, particularly in a Western and relatively academic context, I would suggest the following analytical process when proofreading. I believe in its general structure – the specific tools that come under it are a matter of preference.

Do me a favour and picture a building. You have to set its foundations, build its structure, fill it out and decorate it. This is the kind of process you should approach the stage of proofreading with. I do not consider proofreading a simple grammatical check. It involves assuring yourself that you have covered the relevant topics, organised the structure, made sense, and then covered your grammar.

In a sense, the analysis I am suggesting starts at a macro level and moves down to a micro level. That is, from huge structural or topical issues, all the down to where that pesky comma needs to be.

The Foundations

The first step is to reconsider your piece, and what it addresses. If you are writing an essay, ask yourself whether you have taken the right approach – is it formal? Has the appropriate language been used? Is its structure suitable for an essay? Perhaps you are writing an article. Have you met your target demographic? Are you writing for a more informal audience, and used the right colloquial language? Basically, you want to ask yourself whether you have written an essay, or an article, or maybe a blog post.

The content follows – reassess the essay question or article topic. Have you addressed it well? To be sure of your argumentation and writing, I would suggest sitting an external party down, preferably someone with no relevant knowledge of the field. Explain the topic, and then explain your own arguments in response to that. If they or you don’t understand it, you’re going to have to rewrite at least some sections. Listen to their questions about your piece – they may be indicative of another path you could take in addressing the question, relating to my next point.

Sit down with pen and paper, and create a mind map. Centralise the question or topic, and write as many alternate ways of addressing it that you can. You may surprise yourself in finding better alternatives. Don’t be afraid to be messy; scribble and draw connecting lines! It’s the most natural expression of our cognitive function and will help you organise any last-minute thoughts. If you do find yourself with better alternate arguments or points to address, see if you can include them.

The Scaffolding

Once your foundations are sorted, you’ll want to consider the structure – the framework of the building. Think about your piece sectionally, starting with paragraphs. Read it through, particularly focussing on the first and last few lines of each paragraph, and see if they flow on to the next. If it feels clunky or disjointed, you may need to reorganise your paragraphs.

This can be as simple as swapping them! In a high school extended reflection, I had my English teacher take one look at it, say “No”, and simply swap the second and third paragraph. Suddenly my piece had a good, flowing structure. Sometimes all it takes is a step back or a fresh pair of eyes.

On a more micro-analytical level, you should next consider sentence order. This is less likely to be as problematic as paragraph order. After all, we often write an internal monologue onto the page, which is simply an expression of connecting one logical thought to the next. However, in an essay it’s easy to confuse where to make a point with evidence, and where to explain it. I do not believe in hyper-formulaic approaches to this; you may have some PTSD flashbacks to high school ramming TEEL (Topic Sentence – Evidence – Explanation – Link) down your throat or something similar. That is not the organic process of writing.

Yet, it is valid to look paragraph by paragraph, and check where things such as evidence and explanation match up. Often, we add further explanation of a point towards the end of the paragraph as an after-thought, but that ruins the flow. It may also further confuse your reader if, as they read, they keep finding recursive points, an “ oh I just want to add ” moment on the part of the writer. Basically, put the same points in the same place. You could identify the purpose of each sentence and the argument/point it falls under with different colour pens, and see if you’ve simply thrown too many thoughts in varying areas.

Occasionally our placement of sentences, specifically quotes, can be moved to an entirely different spot and be substantially more impactful. I am fortunate to work as a writing consultant to a company director. In one article draft he used a quote from Maya Angelou to preface a paragraph about two-thirds down in the article, yet I noticed it was relevant to the message of the entire piece. I suggested starting with it. This meant his message could be understood from the very beginning, rather than weakly enforced later on.

Don’t be afraid to cut entire sentences or paragraphs! A lot of people will hold fast to their first full draft, thinking they just need to change a few words. However, often we will have added unnecessary chunks for the sake of explanation or attempting a flowing nature. Go back through and ask yourself if it is necessary to the piece.

You’ve got your foundations, your structure – now you’re ready to fill it out, create the guts of the building. As writers, we will often reread our piece to see if it makes sense. However, remember that as the writer, they are your own thoughts manifested on paper. Of course it’s going to make the most sense to you!

One of the most consistent problems I see is sentence length. As we monologue and write, we often create sentences that rival the length of the Berlin Wall. Semantically this is a problem due to having far too many ‘clauses’. That is, separable sections of a sentence that could and often should be separate. These clauses often contain separate pieces of information. Reading lengthy sentences is a challenge for our linguistic performance. This means that while a huge sentence may make grammatical sense, a person may not be able to comprehend it due to far too many clauses and varying ideas.

An important step is to check your phrasing. Is your tone consistent throughout the piece? Does it change where you’ve accidentally switched to more informal language, or the converse? We often use clichés and predictable lines because they come easily to us. This will bore your reader. As you read it, highlight any sentences you think may be too obvious or cliché. Regardless of the text type there is no harm in being creative.

This ties directly into another problem I often see – far too much phrasal or lexical repetition. We often get a certain phrase or word stuck in our head that we think is just great, and use it multiple times in a small space. Again, this is problematic and interrupts the flow. Find alternate ways to express the same idea. Please don’t get this confused with the times when you do need to repeat. In an essay we often repeat words or phrases that are essential vocabulary to the topic. This is perfectly acceptable. It is in our explanatory points where repetition becomes a problem.

Your building is standing in front of you, ready to be decorated – congratulations! Now you get to furnish, pick the colour scheme, focus on the minute details. In writing this means proofreading the grammar, spelling, punctuation and citations. There are a few techniques you can employ to ensure you don’t miss anything.

Firstly, please oh please print it out . It has been relentlessly proven that it is hard to remain attentive when reading from a screen (find a great article here about it). I would encourage this even when assessing your foundations, but it is essential here.

Do your first read through as a standard check for any issues in spelling, grammar or punctuation. As you do this, keep a list of any re-occurring errors that may be specifically challenging for you. You may have consistently misspelt a word or used the wrong ‘its/it’s’. Keeping this list will help you scan the document later for those same errors. If you’re unsure of anything, access the endless resources online that will explain any grammar point you can think of.

Read the entire document backwards. It may seem strange, but this ensures we don’t read the piece in its natural flow and forces us to analyse one word at a time. This way you are far more likely to catch subtle spelling errors.

Check your use of language. We live in a society that should know well enough to ensure our language is inclusive. Have you used the correct gender pronouns to refer to specific people? Have you used gender-neutral pronouns to refer to individuals or collectives that are not gender-specific? Is any of your writing racially implicit of anything? This is so important in ensuring your work is valid and accessible to all.

Citations – unfortunately, I do not believe there is a big secret to this. Checking citations is laborious work. Ensure you have used the right referencing system for your context (often Harvard referencing in uni essays, AGLC for law students etc.). Don’t skip this step – it may be boring but referencing correctly maintains the integrity of your own piece.

My final recommendation, once you’ve built and dressed up this building, is to give it to someone you consider better than yourself. Let them read through it and take their feedback, making the changes you think are valid. Do remember that an external party doesn’t always have the contextual understanding to suggest appropriate changes.

Your final checklist:

·       Check your format, topic and the way in which you addressed it

·       Check your paragraph and sentence order

·       Check if your sentences are clear and make sense

·       Check your spelling, grammar, punctuation and citations

While I know what I’ve suggested is an exhaustive and complex process, please take note of this. Many of us believe that our writing has to be perfect – in fact we are often socially and academically trained to think this. Please, tell me how anything subjective can be objectively perfect.

Proofreading and editing is about improving our writing as much as possible in order to express our thoughts on a matter as clearly as we can. Once you’ve written, once you’ve analysed it to check you’ve done as best as you can, you should be proud of yourself! Writing can be daunting and tiring. It can only ever be improved, just remember to do it from the macro to the micro.

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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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