When you take the bold step of starting a university undergraduate course, you are moving into a new field of education, which in turn requires you to deliver a new level of academic work. This will involve giving presentations, completing research, and writing college-level essays. In order to meet the requirements of these essays, there are a number of tips that you need to follow that will put you on the path to academic success.
First of all, remember that college essays should be well researched and contain plenty of supporting evidence in terms of other people’s previous findings. This supporting evidence could be a review of the literature or simply citing the work of others throughout your essay. Any references to other resources must be properly credited. Be sure to follow your university’s specific guidelines in this regard, as valuable points can be lost simply by not applying the correct benchmark method or by applying the correct method incorrectly. It can be helpful to familiarize yourself with whatever style your university uses, even before you start writing. A common referencing style is the Harvard referencing system, which has very strict rules about accrediting authors, research papers, and journals, etc., but your university should be able to provide you with personalized guidance.
Second, a college-level essay should try to go deeper than a college-level essay necessarily would. It should expand and question theories and allow you to add your own knowledge and opinions to draw conclusions, some of which may never have been drawn before. This means you can’t just recite your lecture notes, there must be some individual application of the knowledge, and this is a challenge many new students struggle with.
As with all essays, a college-level essay should have a strong introduction, a thorough research and analysis section, and strong conclusions. This should be followed by a full list of references and a bibliography. Within all of these elements you need to ensure that you format your paper according to your university’s guidelines, this is good practice for when writing your dissertation as correct formatting and adhering to style guidelines could mean the difference between a first and a 2:1, in the same way, any essay, whether written in college or university, should be proofread, preferably by a third party, to ensure that it is free of spelling or grammatical errors. Following all of these tips will allow your college-level essays to achieve the grades they deserve and give you a good foundation when it comes to writing your dissertation.
