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How to Format an Essay

Last Updated: April 11, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Carrie Adkins, PhD and by wikiHow staff writer, Aly Rusciano . Carrie Adkins is the cofounder of NursingClio, an open access, peer-reviewed, collaborative blog that connects historical scholarship to current issues in gender and medicine. She completed her PhD in American History at the University of Oregon in 2013. While completing her PhD, she earned numerous competitive research grants, teaching fellowships, and writing awards. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 90,240 times.

You’re opening your laptop to write an essay, knowing exactly what you want to write, but then it hits you—you don’t know how to format it! Using the correct format when writing an essay can help your paper look polished and professional while earning you full credit. There are 3 common essay formats—MLA, APA, and Chicago Style—and we’ll teach you the basics of properly formatting each in this article. So, before you shut your laptop in frustration, take a deep breath and keep reading because soon you’ll be formatting like a pro.

Setting Up Your Document

Step 1 Read over the assignment’s guidelines before you begin.

If you can’t find information on the style guide you should be following, talk to your instructor after class to discuss the assignment or send them a quick email with your questions.
If your instructor lets you pick the format of your essay, opt for the style that matches your course or degree best: MLA is best for English and humanities; APA is typically for education, psychology, and sciences; Chicago Style is common for business, history, and fine arts.

Step 2 Set your margins to 1 inch (2.5 cm) for all style guides.

Most word processors default to 1 inch (2.5 cm) margins.

Do not change the font size, style, or color throughout your essay.

Change the spacing on Google Docs by clicking on Format , and then selecting “Line spacing.”
Click on Layout in Microsoft Word, and then click the arrow at the bottom left of the “paragraph” section.

Step 6 Put the page number and your last name in the top right header for all styles.

Using the page number function will create consecutive numbering.
When using Chicago Style, don’t include a page number on your title page. The first page after the title page should be numbered starting at 2. [4] X Research source
In APA format, a running heading may be required in the left-hand header. This is a maximum of 50 characters that’s the full or abbreviated version of your essay’s title. [5] X Research source

Step 7 Use a title page with APA or Chicago Style format.

For APA formatting, place the title in bold at the center of the page 3 to 4 lines down from the top. Insert one double-spaced line under the title and type your name. Under your name, in separate centered lines, type out the name of your school, course, instructor, and assignment due date. [6] X Research source
For Chicago Style, set your cursor ⅓ of the way down the page, then type your title. In the very center of your page, put your name. Move your cursor ⅔ down the page, then write your course number, followed by your instructor’s name and paper due date on separate, double-spaced lines. [7] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source

Step 8 Create a left-handed heading for MLA Style essays.

Double-space the heading like the rest of your paper.

Writing the Essay Body

Step 1 Center the title of your paper in all style formats.

Use standard capitalization rules for your title.
Do not underline, italicize, or put quotation marks around your title, unless you include other titles of referred texts.

Step 2 Indent the first line of each paragraph by 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) for all styles.

A good hook might include a quote, statistic, or rhetorical question.
For example, you might write, “Every day in the United States, accidents caused by distracted drivers kill 9 people and injure more than 1,000 others.”

Step 4 Include a thesis statement at the end of your introduction.

"Action must be taken to reduce accidents caused by distracted driving, including enacting laws against texting while driving, educating the public about the risks, and giving strong punishments to offenders."
"Although passing and enforcing new laws can be challenging, the best way to reduce accidents caused by distracted driving is to enact a law against texting, educate the public about the new law, and levy strong penalties."

Step 5 Present each of your points in 1 or more paragraphs.

Use transitions between paragraphs so your paper flows well. For example, say, “In addition to,” “Similarly,” or “On the other hand.” [12] X Research source

Step 6 Complete your essay with a conclusion.

A statement of impact might be, "Every day that distracted driving goes unaddressed, another 9 families must plan a funeral."
A call to action might read, “Fewer distracted driving accidents are possible, but only if every driver keeps their focus on the road.”

Using References

Step 1 Create parenthetical citations...

In MLA format, citations should include the author’s last name and the page number where you found the information. If the author's name appears in the sentence, use just the page number. [14] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
For APA format, include the author’s last name and the publication year. If the author’s name appears in the sentence, use just the year. [15] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
If you don’t use parenthetical or internal citations, your instructor may accuse you of plagiarizing.

Step 2 Use footnotes for citations in Chicago Style.

At the bottom of the page, include the source’s information from your bibliography page next to the footnote number. [16] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
Each footnote should be numbered consecutively.

Step 3 Center the title of your reference page.

If you’re using MLA format, this page will be titled “Works Cited.”
In APA and Chicago Style, title the page “References.”

Step 4 List your sources on the references page by author’s last name in alphabetical order.

If you have more than one work from the same author, list alphabetically following the title name for MLA and by earliest to latest publication year for APA and Chicago Style.
Double-space the references page like the rest of your paper.
Use a hanging indent of 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) if your citations are longer than one line. Press Tab to indent any lines after the first. [17] X Research source
Citations should include (when applicable) the author(s)’s name(s), title of the work, publication date and/or year, and page numbers.
Sites like Grammarly , EasyBib , and MyBib can help generate citations if you get stuck.

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Learn the Standard Essay Format: MLA, APA, Chicago Styles

Being able to write an essay is a vital part of any student's education. However, it's not just about linearly listing ideas. A lot of institutions will require a certain format that your paper must follow; prime examples would be one of a basic essay format like MLA, the APA, and the Chicago formats. This article will explain the differences between the MLA format, the APA format, and the Chicago format. The application of these could range from high school to college essays, and they stand as the standard of college essay formatting. EssayPro — dissertation services , that will help to make a difference!

What is an Essay Format: Structure

Be it an academic, informative or a specific extended essay - structure is essential. For example, the IB extended essay has very strict requirements that are followed by an assigned academic style of writing (primarily MLA, APA, or Chicago):

Title Page	Paragraph 1 must include a research question, thesis, and outline of the essay’s importance.
Abstract	Comprised of 3 paragraphs, totaling about 300 words, with 100 words in each. Paragraph 2 covers key resources, scope and limits of research, etc. Paragraph 3 concludes what you’ve already reached in your essay.
Table of Contents (with page numbers)	Includes sections like Research question, Thesis, Introduction, Arguments, Sub-headings, Conclusion, Appendix, Works cited (bibliography).
Introduction	The research question is required.
Body
Conclusion
Bibliography/Works Cited

This outline format for an extended essay is a great example to follow when writing a research essay, and sustaining a proper research essay format - especially if it is based on the MLA guidelines. It is vital to remember that the student must keep track of their resources to apply them to each step outlined above easily. And check out some tips on how to write an essay introduction .

Lost in the Labyrinth of Essay Formatting?

Navigate the complexities of essay structures with ease. Let our experts guide your paper to the format it deserves!

How to Format an Essay (MLA)

To write an essay in MLA format, one must follow a basic set of guidelines and instructions. This is a step by step from our business essay writing service.

Font	12pt Times New Roman
Spacing	Double spaced everywhere No extra spaces, especially between paragraphs
Heading	Example of the heading on the first page of the essay (upper left corner):
Margins	One-inch margin on the top, bottom, left and right
Page Numbers	Last name and page number must be put on every page of the essay as a “header”. Otherwise, it would go in place of the text.
Title	There needs to be a proper essay title format, centered and above the first line of the essay of the same font and size as the essay itself
Indentation	Just press tab (1/2 inch, just in case)
Align	Align to the left-hand side, and make sure it is aligned evenly

Essay in MLA Format Example

Mla vs. apa.

Before we move on to the APA essay format, it is important to distinguish the two types of formatting. Let’s go through the similarities first:

The formatting styles are similar: spacing, citation, indentation.
All of the information that is used within the essay must be present within the works cited page (in APA, that’s called a reference page)
Both use the parenthetical citations within the body of the paper, usually to show a certain quote or calculation.
Citations are listed alphabetically on the works cited / reference page.

What you need to know about the differences is not extensive, thankfully:

MLA style is mostly used in humanities, while APA style is focused more on social sciences. The list of sources has a different name (works cited - MLA / references - APA)
Works cited differ on the way they display the name of the original content (MLA -> Yorke, Thom / APA -> Yorke T.)
When using an in-text citation, and the author’s name is listed within the sentence, place the page number found at the end: “Yorke believes that Creep was Radiohead’s worst song. (4).” APA, on the other hand, requires that a year is to be inserted: “According to Yorke (2013), Creep was a mess.”

Alright, let’s carry over to the APA style specifics.

Order an Essay Now & and We Will Cite and Format It For Free :

How to format an essay (apa).

The APA scheme is one of the most common college essay formats, so being familiar with its requirements is crucial. In a basic APA format structure, we can apply a similar list of guidelines as we did in the MLA section:

Font	12pt Times New Roman
Spacing	Double-space
Page Numbers	Add a concise title header to the top left of each page, keeping it under 50 characters. Also, include a page number in the top right corner.
Title Page
Headings	Format all headings in bold and title case. Apply specific additional criteria for different heading levels as needed.

If you ask yourself how to format an essay, you can always turn to us and request to write or rewrite essay in APA format if you find it difficult or don't have time.

Note that some teachers and professors may request deviations from some of the characteristics that the APA format originally requires, such as those listed above.

If you think: 'I want someone write a research paper for me ', you can do it at Essaypro.

Essay in APA Format Example

Apa format chronobiology, chicago style.

The usage of Chicago style is prevalent in academic writing that focuses on the source of origin. This means that precise citations and footnotes are key to a successful paper.

Chicago Style Essay Format

The same bullet point structure can be applied to the Chicago essay format.

Title Page	Below the page, put the title in regular text. If it's longer than one line, double-space it. Center your full name in the middle. Double-space each line for the course number, instructor's name, and the date separately.
Margins	Use one-inch margins apart from the right side.
Spacing	Double spaced everywhere. No extra spaces, especially between paragraphs.
Font	Times New Roman (12pt)
Page Numbers	On each page, add your last name and page number in the top right corner. Don't number the title page. Begin numbering the text from the second page.
Footnotes	The Chicago format requires footnotes on paraphrased or quoted passages.
Bibliography	The bibliography is very similar to that of MLA. Gather the proper information and input it into a specialized citation site.

Tips for Writing an Academic Paper

There isn’t one proper way of writing a paper, but there are solid guidelines to sustain a consistent workflow. Be it a college application essay, a research paper, informative essay, etc. There is a standard essay format that you should follow. For easier access, the following outline will be divided into steps:

Choose a Good Topic

A lot of students struggle with picking a good topic for their essays. The topic you choose should be specific enough so you can explore it in its entirety and hit your word limit if that’s a variable you worry about. With a good topic that should not be a problem. On the other hand, it should not be so broad that some resources would outweigh the information you could squeeze into one paper. Don’t be too specific, or you will find that there is a shortage of information, but don’t be too broad or you will feel overwhelmed. Don’t hesitate to ask your instructor for help with your essay writing.

Start Research as Soon as Possible

Before you even begin writing, make sure that you are acquainted with the information that you are working with. Find compelling arguments and counterpoints, trivia, facts, etc. The sky is the limit when it comes to gathering information.

Pick out Specific, Compelling Resources

When you feel acquainted with the subject, you should be able to have a basic conversation on the matter. Pick out resources that have been bookmarked, saved or are very informative and start extracting information. You will need all you can get to put into the citations at the end of your paper. Stash books, websites, articles and have them ready to cite. See if you can subtract or expand your scope of research.

Create an Outline

Always have a plan. This might be the most important phase of the process. If you have a strong essay outline and you have a particular goal in mind, it’ll be easy to refer to it when you might get stuck somewhere in the middle of the paper. And since you have direct links from the research you’ve done beforehand, the progress is guaranteed to be swift. Having a list of keywords, if applicable, will surely boost the informational scope. With keywords specific to the subject matter of each section, it should be much easier to identify its direction and possible informational criteria.

Write a Draft

Before you jot anything down into the body of your essay, make sure that the outline has enough information to back up whatever statement you choose to explore. Do not be afraid of letting creativity into your paper (within reason, of course) and explore the possibilities. Start with a standard 5 paragraph structure, and the content will come with time.

Ask for a Peer Review of Your Academic Paper

Before you know it, the draft is done, and it’s ready to be sent out for peer review. Ask a classmate, a relative or even a specialist if they are willing to contribute. Get as much feedback as you possibly can and work on it.

Final Draft

Before handing in the final draft, go over it at least one more time, focusing on smaller mistakes like grammar and punctuation. Make sure that what you wrote follows proper essay structure. Learn more about argumentative essay structure on our blog. If you need a second pair of eyes, get help from our service.

Want Your Essay to Stand Out in Structure and Style?

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What Is Essay Format?

How to format a college essay, how to write an essay in mla format.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

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How to Write an Essay in APA Format

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Emily is a board-certified science editor who has worked with top digital publishing brands like Voices for Biodiversity, Study.com, GoodTherapy, Vox, and Verywell.

What Is APA Format?

Apa essay format basics.

Steps to Follow

Frequently Asked Questions

If your instructor has asked you to write an APA format essay, it might at first seem like a daunting task, especially if you are accustomed to using another style such as MLA or Chicago. But you can master the rules of APA essay format, too.

An essay is one type of paper that can be written in APA format; others include lab reports, experimental reports, and case studies. Before you begin, familiarize yourself with some of the basic guidelines for writing a paper in APA format. Of course, it will also be important to follow any other formatting instructions that are part of your assignment.

How do you write an essay in APA format? The basic elements you need to include are:

A title page
An abstract
An introduction, main body, and conclusion
A reference section
Proper APA formatting with regard to margins, layout, spacing, titles, and indentations

This article discusses how to write an essay in APA format, including the basic steps you should follow and tips for how to get started.

Whether you’re taking an introductory or graduate-level psychology class, chances are strong that you will have to write at least one paper during the course of the semester. In almost every case, you will need to write your paper in APA format, the official publication style of the American Psychological Association . It is also used for academic journals.

Such rules are generally the same whether you are writing a high school essay, college essay, or professional essay for publication.

APA format is used in a range of disciplines including psychology , education, and other social sciences. The format dictates presentation elements of your paper including spacing, margins, and how the content is structured.

Most instructors and publication editors have strict guidelines when it comes to how your format your writing. Not only does adhering to APA format allow readers to know what to expect from your paper, but it also means that your work will not lose critical points over minor formatting errors.

While the formatting requirements for your paper might vary depending on your instructor's directions, writing APA essay format means you will most likely need to include a title page, abstract, introduction, body, conclusion, and reference sections.

Your APA format essay should have a title page . This title page should include the title of your paper, your name, and your school affiliation. In some instances, your teacher might require additional information such as the course title, instructor name, and the date.

The title of your paper should be concise and clearly describe what your paper is about.
Your title can extend to two lines, but it should be no longer than 12 words.

An abstract is a brief summary of your paper that immediately follows the title page. It is not required for student papers, according to APA style. However, your instructor may request one.

If you include an abstract , it should be no more than 100 to 200 words, although this may vary depending upon the instructor requirements.

Your essay should also include a reference list with all of the sources that were cited in your essay,

The reference section is located at the end of your paper.
References should be listed alphabetically by the last name of the author.
References should be double-spaced.
Any source that is cited in your paper should be included in your reference section.

When writing in APA essay format, the text will include the actual essay itself: The introduction, body, and conclusion.

There should be uniform margins of at least one inch at the top, bottom, left, and right sides of your essay.
The text should be in Times New Roman size 12 font or another serif typeface that is easily readable.
Your paper should be double-spaced.
Every page should include a page number in the top right corner.
The first word of each paragraph in your paper should be indented one-half inch.

For professional papers (usually not student papers), every page of the essay also includes a running head at the top left. The running head is a shortened form of the title, often the first few words, and should be no more than 50 characters (including spaces).

Steps to a Successful APA Format Essay

In addition to ensuring that you cite your sources properly and present information according to the rules of APA style, there are a number of things you can do to make the writing process a little bit easier.

Choose a Topic

Start by choosing a good topic to write about. Ideally, you want to select a subject that is specific enough to let you fully research and explore the topic, but not so specific that you have a hard time finding sources of information.

If you choose something too specific, you may find yourself with not enough to write about. If you choose something too general, you might find yourself overwhelmed with information.

Research Your Topic

Start doing research as early as possible. Begin by looking at some basic books and articles on your topic to help develop it further. What is the question you are going to answer with your essay? What approach will you take to the topic?

Once you are more familiar with the subject, create a preliminary source list of potential books, articles, essays, and studies that you may end up using in your essay.

Remember, any source used in your essay must be included in your reference section. Conversely, any source listed in your references must be cited somewhere in the body of your paper.

Write Your Rough Draft

With research in hand, you are ready to begin. Some people like to create an outline to organize their argument prior to drafting. You may want to start with a very rough outline, and then add details.

Once you have a detailed outline, the next step is to translate it from notes to complete sentences and paragraphs. Remember, this is a first draft. It doesn't have to be perfect.

As you write your paper in APA essay format, be sure to keep careful track of the sources that you cite.

How do you start an APA paper? Your paper should begin with an introduction that includes a thesis statement that presents your main ideas, points, or arguments. Your introduction should start on the third page of your paper (after the title page and abstract). The title of your paper should be centered, bolded, and typed in title case at the top of the page.

Review and Revise

After you have prepared a rough draft of your essay, it's time to revise, review, and prepare your final draft. In addition to making sure that your writing is cohesive and supported by your sources, you should also check carefully for typos, grammar errors, and possible formatting mistakes.

When citing information or quotations taken from an interview, APA format requires that you cite the source, how the information was collected, and the date of the interview. They should not be included in the reference section, however, because they are not something that can be located by a reader in any published source or searchable database.

Instead, the information should be cited parenthetically in the main body of the text. For example: “There was an increase in the number of college students who screened positive for depression/anxiety” (R. Heathfield, personal communication, May 9, 2021).

If the essay is in a chapter of a book, edited collection, or anthology, APA format states that you should cite the last name, first name, title of essay, title of collection, publisher, year, and page range. For example: Smith, John, "The Light House," A Book of Poems , editing by Peter Roberts, Allworth Press, 2005, pp. 20-25.

According to APA format, a two-part essay is formatted the same as an essay, however, you'll need to create two title pages.

If you're including a short direct quote in your APA-format essay, you will need to cite the author, year of publication, and page number (p.) or page number span (pp.). Quotations longer than 40 words should omit the quotation marks and be put in the text using block quotation formatting, on its own line and indented 1/2 inch from the left margin.

The cover page or "title page" in APA essay format should always include the title of your paper, your name, and school affiliation as well as the course title, instructor name, and date, if requested by your teacher.

Nagda S. How to write a scientific abstract. J Indian Prosthodont Soc. 2013;13(3):382-383. doi:10.1007/s13191-013-0299-x

American Psychological Association. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). Washington DC: The American Psychological Association; 2019.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Essay Papers Writing Online

Various formats for writing essays – tips and guidelines.

Welcome to the comprehensive guide that will enhance your understanding of various essay writing formats. Crafting a well-structured and organized essay is a crucial skill for students and professionals alike. Different types of essays require adherence to specific formatting guidelines to effectively communicate ideas and arguments.

Whether you are writing a persuasive essay, analytical essay, narrative essay, or any other type, this guide will provide you with valuable insights into the key elements of each format. By mastering the nuances of essay writing formats, you will be able to express your thoughts clearly, logically, and persuasively, captivating your readers and achieving your communication goals.

Through this comprehensive guide, you will learn about the essential components of various essay formats, including thesis statements, introductions, body paragraphs, supporting evidence, and conclusions. By understanding the specific requirements of each format, you can tailor your writing style to meet the expectations of your audience and effectively convey your message.

The Complete Essay Format Guide

Understanding the proper essay format is essential for writing effective essays. Whether you are a student or a professional writer, knowing how to structure your essays can greatly impact the clarity and coherence of your writing. In this guide, we will walk you through the essential elements of essay formats and provide tips on how to structure your essays effectively.

1. Introduction

The introduction is the first paragraph of your essay and should provide a brief overview of the topic you will be discussing.
It should also include a thesis statement, which explains the main argument or point of your essay.

2. Body Paragraphs

The body of your essay should consist of several paragraphs that develop and support your thesis statement.
Each paragraph should focus on a single idea or point and include evidence or examples to support it.

3. Conclusion

The conclusion is the final paragraph of your essay and should summarize your main points and restate your thesis.
It should also provide a closing thought or reflection on the topic you have discussed.

4. Formatting

Essays should be double-spaced and formatted with a clear font, such as Times New Roman, in 12-point size.
Margins should be set to one inch on all sides of the page.

By following these guidelines, you can ensure that your essays are well-structured and easy to read. Remember to revise and edit your essays carefully to ensure that they are well-written and coherent.

Understanding Essay Structure Basics

When it comes to writing an essay, understanding the basic structure is essential. A typical essay consists of three main parts: an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Each of these sections serves a specific purpose and contributes to the overall coherence of the essay.

Introduction: This is where you introduce the topic of your essay and provide some background information. The introduction should also include a thesis statement, which is the main idea or argument that you will be discussing in the essay.
Body Paragraphs: The body of the essay consists of several paragraphs that develop and support the thesis statement. Each paragraph should focus on a single point or idea and provide evidence and examples to support it.
Conclusion: The conclusion brings the essay to a close by restating the thesis statement and summarizing the main points of the essay. It is also a good place to discuss the broader implications of your argument or suggest areas for further research.

By following this basic structure, you can ensure that your essay is well-organized and easy for readers to follow. Remember to use transitions between paragraphs to help connect your ideas and create a smooth flow of information throughout the essay.

Types of Essay Formats

When it comes to writing essays, there are several different formats that you may encounter. Each format has its own unique structure and requirements. Here are some of the most common types of essay formats:

Argumentative Essay: This type of essay presents a claim or argument and supports it with evidence and reasoning.
Descriptive Essay: Descriptive essays focus on describing a person, place, object, or event in detail.
Narrative Essay: Narrative essays tell a story and often include personal experiences or anecdotes.
Expository Essay: Expository essays aim to explain and inform the reader about a specific topic.
Persuasive Essay: Persuasive essays are similar to argumentative essays but focus more on convincing the reader to adopt a particular point of view.
Compare and Contrast Essay: This type of essay analyzes the similarities and differences between two or more subjects.
Cause and Effect Essay: Cause and effect essays explore the reasons behind a particular phenomenon and its outcomes.

It’s important to understand the requirements of each essay format and tailor your writing style accordingly to effectively convey your ideas and arguments.

Exploring Common Essay Styles

When it comes to writing essays, there are several common styles that you may encounter. Understanding the different types of essays can help you determine the best approach for your writing task. Here are some of the most common essay styles that you may come across:

1. Narrative Essays: These essays tell a story or recount an event. They often include personal anecdotes and can be quite engaging for the reader.

2. Descriptive Essays: In a descriptive essay, the writer paints a vivid picture of a person, place, object, or event. These essays appeal to the reader’s senses and emotions.

3. Expository Essays: Expository essays provide information, explain a topic, or analyze a concept. They are typically objective and present facts or opinions in a logical manner.

4. Persuasive Essays: Persuasive essays are meant to convince the reader of a particular point of view or argument. They often use evidence and reasoning to support a specific position.

5. Argumentative Essays: Similar to persuasive essays, argumentative essays present a claim or thesis and support it with evidence and analysis. However, argumentative essays also address counterarguments and refute opposing viewpoints.

By familiarizing yourself with these common essay styles, you can better tailor your writing to meet the requirements of your assignment and effectively communicate your ideas to your audience.

Comparing Argumentative and Narrative Essays

When it comes to essay writing, two common types of essays are argumentative and narrative essays. While they both aim to convey a message or argument, they differ in their purpose and structure.

Argumentative Essays: Argumentative essays are designed to persuade the reader to adopt a particular point of view or take a specific action. These essays present a clear thesis statement and provide evidence to support the argument. They often involve research and logical reasoning to make a compelling case.
Narrative Essays: Narrative essays, on the other hand, focus on telling a story or recounting an experience. They are often more personal and emotional, using descriptive language to engage the reader. Narrative essays may not have a thesis statement but instead focus on engaging the reader through vivid storytelling.

While argumentative essays rely on facts and evidence to support a specific viewpoint, narrative essays rely on personal experiences and storytelling to draw the reader in. It’s essential to understand the differences between these two essay formats to effectively convey your message and engage your audience.

Elements of a Well-Formatted Essay

Introduction : The introduction sets the stage for your essay, providing an overview of the topic and presenting the thesis statement.

Body Paragraphs : The body of the essay presents your arguments and evidence in support of the thesis statement. Each paragraph should focus on a single idea and provide clear evidence to support it.

Transitions : Transitions help to smoothly move from one idea to the next, connecting paragraphs and ensuring the essay flows logically.

Conclusion : The conclusion restates the thesis statement and summarizes the main points of the essay. It may also provide insights or recommendations based on the arguments presented.

Citations : Proper citations are essential in academic writing to give credit to the sources used and avoid plagiarism. Use the appropriate citation style required by your instructor.

Formatting : Pay attention to formatting elements such as font size, margins, spacing, and referencing style. Consistent formatting enhances readability and professionalism of your essay.

Key Components for a Strong Essay

When crafting a strong essay, there are several key components that you should consider to ensure that your writing is clear, coherent, and effective. These key components include:

1. A clear and concise thesis statement that presents the main argument or point of your essay.

2. Well-developed paragraphs that support and expand upon your thesis statement with relevant evidence and analysis.

3. Smooth transitions between paragraphs and ideas to guide the reader through your essay and maintain coherence.

4. Proper organization and structure, including an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion that effectively communicate your ideas.

5. Attention to detail, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling to ensure that your writing is polished and professional.

By incorporating these key components into your essay writing, you can create a strong and compelling piece that effectively conveys your message to your audience.

Choosing the Right Format for Your Essay

When it comes to writing an essay, choosing the right format is crucial for effectively communicating your ideas and arguments. There are several different essay formats to choose from, each with its own unique structure and guidelines. Here are some tips to help you select the best format for your essay:

1. Consider your audience: Think about who will be reading your essay and what format would be most appropriate for them. For example, a formal academic essay might require a more structured format, while a personal essay could be more freeform.

2. Determine your purpose: Consider the purpose of your essay and choose a format that will best suit your goals. If you’re trying to persuade your reader, a persuasive essay format might be most effective. If you’re analyzing a topic, an analytical essay format could be more suitable.

3. Follow guidelines: If you’re writing an essay for a class or publication, make sure to follow any specific guidelines provided. This could include requirements for formatting, citation style, and overall structure.

4. Experiment and revise: Don’t be afraid to experiment with different formats to see what works best for your essay. Once you’ve written a draft, revise and refine your work to ensure that the format enhances your message.

By taking these factors into account, you can choose the right format for your essay and ensure that your ideas are conveyed effectively to your readers.

Considerations for Selecting Essay Styles

When selecting an essay style, consider the purpose of your essay. Are you trying to persuade, inform, or analyze? The style you choose should align with your overall goal and message.

Think about your target audience. Are you writing for a scholarly audience, a general audience, or a specific group of readers? The style of your essay should be tailored to resonate with your intended readers.

Consider the requirements of your assignment. Does your instructor specify a particular style or format to follow? Make sure to adhere to any guidelines provided to ensure you meet the expectations of the assignment.

Reflect on your own writing strengths and weaknesses. Are you more comfortable with a formal, structured style, or do you excel in a more creative, narrative format? Choose a style that plays to your strengths as a writer.

Lastly, consider the conventions of the discipline or field you are writing in. Different subjects may have specific expectations for essay styles, so make sure to research and understand the norms of your field.

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How To Write An Essay

Essay Format

Essay Format - An Easy Guide & Examples

10 min read

Published on: Nov 14, 2020

Last updated on: Jan 31, 2024

What is an Essay Format?

An essay format is a way in which the information is organized for your essay. The format of an essay has a lot to do with the presentation of the text. If your essay is poorly structured or lacks a format, your readers will have difficulty understanding the main argument and the idea.

Readers will never continue reading something that is confusing or gives the impression that a writer is sloppy.

A standard format to write your essay or paper is the linear approach. In this, each idea is presented to make it easier for the readers to understand. If you know how to structure an essay, you are halfway through.

Types of Essay Formats

There are 3 basic formatting styles or types in which all essays and papers are formatted. They are:

Whether you are writing a research paper or a general academic essay, you have to choose a format to draft it. Students are often assigned a format by their instructors, so they should read the guidelines carefully.

How to Write an Essay in MLA Format?

MLA format style is quite common in the humanities world. Papers and essays that are to be written in this format should fulfill the following requirements.

The font you are using should be Times New Roman in 12pt.
Double spacing.
No extra space between the new paragraphs
One inch margin on both sides of the paper
Page number in the header.
Essay title in the center of the page.
Sources mentioned in âwork citedâ

MLA vs. APA

Before we move to another common essay format APA, you should know that MLA and APA are different from each other.

Look at the table below and know their differences and similarities.

How to Write an Essay in APA Format?

Unlike MLA format, the APA format is used for scientific papers and essays. Essays are written for behavioral or social sciences follow this format. Following are the guidelines for the American Psychological Association format:

Font or Text in Times New Roman 12pt
One inch margin (both sides)
Double spacing in the text
A short title on the upper left-hand corner in the header
The page number on the right in the header
A title page with the information, including the writerâs name, institution, instructor, and date.
Reference page (for the citation)

APA Format Essay Example

Chicago Essay Format

Chicago style essay format is a bit similar to the other format style guides. This format includes;

Double spacing
Margins (one inch both left margin and right margin)
Times New Roman 12pt font size
Page number in the header
Footnotes on quoted and paraphrased passages
An alphabetical arrangement of citations on the bibliography page.

Chicago Format Essay Example

Basic Parts of an Essay Format

A typical and general format that an essay uses is simple. Every type of essay can be written in that format. Following are the parts that an essay format is based on:

In order to make sure that your academic essay is effective, each of the parts should be drafted professionally.

Here is an essay structure!

Continue reading to understand each part in detail.

1. Cover Or Title Page

The cover or title page is the first page on which the topic of your paper or essay is presented. Along with this, the title page includes other information such as the name of the writer, instructor, institution, course, and the submission date. 2. An Abstract

An abstract is a brief summary of your essay or research paper. It is usually a 300-word long paragraph and precisely presents the purpose of the essay, the main thesis statement, and the studyâs design.

3. Table Of Contents

When you are drafting a long essay or paper, a table of content is developed. In this table, headings and subheadings are presented along with their page numbers. The reader navigates your work using this table of content.

4. Introduction

An introduction is the first section of your essay. When writing a short essay of about 300 - 1000 words, a writer directly starts with an introduction after stating the essay topic.

An introduction of an essay is as important as the body of it. The essay introduction discloses the main idea of the essay and attempts to motivate readers to read the essay. Apart from the presentation of the main idea, it also contains background information about the topic.

A writer then forms a thesis statement which is the main argument of an essay. A thesis statement is the essence of the essay, and all other information provided in the body of an essay justifies it and proves it.

5. Main Body

The main body is the soul of an essay. Without it, the thesis statement will just be meaningless. The information you gather on the topic is presented in the body, which acts as evidence to prove the argument right or wrong depending on the writer.

A format helps the body give a logical flow that walks the reader towards the end. The point to prove your argument is to persuade the reader that your thesis statement is right. Make sure you give a topic sentence to all your body paragraphs.

6. Conclusion

Then comes the conclusion part of the essay. This is the final verdict of an essay writer. In this, a writer avoids giving new ideas to the readers and tries to sum up the whole conversation. This is done by restating the thesis statement in different words and summarizing the key ideas.

7. Appendix

An appendix is formulated when a writer uses unusual terms, phrases, and words in the document. This is a list prepared to describe those unordinary words for the readers.

8. Bibliography

When gathering information for your essay or paper, a writer has to consult different sources. Therefore, when using such sources and information in your content, a bibliography is created to provide their references.

A bibliography is a reference list presented at the end of the essay where all the cited sources are given along with the details.

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Formatting an Essay

Formatting an essay means working on the essay structure. When writing an academic essay, make sure that every part is drafted according to format. Your title page, in-text citation, essay outline, and reference list should be following the chosen format.

To understand the formatting of the different parts better, continue reading.

Title Page Format

According to the MLA style, the title page of an essay should be written in the following way:

Writing the name of the writer, course, instructor, and date.
Double spacing between paragraphs
Instituteâs name in the top center of a page
Title of your essay or paper
Font Times New Roman (12pt)

If you are using an APA style formatting for your essay, make sure to format your title page in the following way:

Title written in all caps
The margin on both sides (1 inch)
12pt font Times New Roman
Name of writer and institute

A title page is the first thing that an instructor sees in your assignment. Therefore, it is very important to form it in a neat format.

First Page of an Essay

Before you start writing your essay, format your first page. To do this, add a header in which you give your last name and the page number. Place the header on the right-hand corner of your page.

Follow this for every page of your essay except the last page; the âwork citedâ page.

On the left upper corner, write your name, instructorâs, courseâs, and the date. Put the title in the center and use double-spacing throughout the essay.

Cite According to Essay Format

When you are conducting research for your essay, you will come across a lot of text which will complement your essay topic. Without knowing the consequences, people take the text from the internet and add it to the essay.

Citing the source properly is essential. If you do not cite the sources properly, you will be accused of plagiarism, a crime in the writing world. Therefore, even if you are using otherâs words in the form of quotation marks or rephrasing it, it needs to be cited to avoid plagiarism.

Get to know which style of the in-text citations is recommended by your instructor and follow that. In APA format, the citation is done in the following way:

Give the authorâs name (last name), followed by the publication date and the paragraph number of the original work.

The other way is to cite in MLA style:

Give the authorâs last name and the page number of the publication you are taking words from.

Therefore, cite your sources according to the essay format and make your essay writing phase easy.

Format The Bibliography

The last page of your essay is the âworks citedâ page. This page is written in the way presented below:

Sources are alphabetically arranged
Double spacing is used on the entire page
Hanging indention is also used.

Essay Format Examples

There are several types of academic essays that students get assigned. No matter which type the essay is, it has to be properly formatted. Carefully examine the formats provided below for the different essay types:

Argumentative Essay Format

College Essay Format

Narrative Essay Format

Descriptive Essay Format

Scholarship Essay Format

Persuasive Essay Format

Essay Format for University

Expository Essay Format

Essay Format Template

Essay Format Outline

Writing a good essay includes the proper representation of the text. For this purpose, formatting is done. Unfortunately, when students rush to finish their assignments, they often end up with poorly formatted content.

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Paper Format

Consistency in the order, structure, and format of a paper allows readers to focus on a paper’s content rather than its presentation.

To format a paper in APA Style, writers can typically use the default settings and automatic formatting tools of their word-processing program or make only minor adjustments.

The guidelines for paper format apply to both student assignments and manuscripts being submitted for publication to a journal. If you are using APA Style to create another kind of work (e.g., a website, conference poster, or PowerPoint presentation), you may need to format your work differently in order to optimize its presentation, for example, by using different line spacing and font sizes. Follow the guidelines of your institution or publisher to adapt APA Style formatting guidelines as needed.

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Essay Writing Guide

Essay Format

Essay Format: A Basic Guide With Examples

12 min read

What is an Essay Format?

An essay format refers to a set of guidelines that decides how the elements of your paper should be arranged. No matter what type of essay you’re writing, formatting is an essential step in the essay writing process.

The format guidelines cover the essay structure, essay title , citations, and the basic essay outline .

When formatting a paper, there are certain things that you need to pay attention to. These include the structure of an essay, title page, works cited page, and citation styles .

or attention-grabber (main argument)

with a clear .

Note: Essay formats for university, college, and high school students differ mainly in the depth of research and analysis required, with higher academic levels demanding more detailed work. While the structure of most essays follows the basic 5-paragraph essay format.

How To Format Essay in MLA Style

Formatting an essay in MLA style is a common requirement in many academic settings, particularly in the humanities.

MLA provides guidelines for various aspects of your essay, from font and margins to citations and bibliography. Here’s an essay format MLA you can use as a reference:

MLA Essay Format Template

Title Page: MLA does not typically require a separate title page. Instead, place your title at the top of the first page, centered, and do not use bold, italics, or underline for the title. Below the title, include your name, the instructor's name, the course name and number, and the due date, each on a separate line, left-aligned.
Header and Page Numbers: Create a header with your last name and page number in the upper right corner of every page, half an inch from the top, and flush with the right margin. For example: Smith 1.
Margins and Spacing: Set all margins to 1 inch, and use double-spacing throughout the essay.
Font and Size: Use a legible font like Times New Roman or Arial, size 12.
Indentation: Indent the first line of each paragraph by 0.5 inches, which can be done automatically using the "Tab" key.
Paragraphs: Leave only one space after periods or other punctuation marks within sentences.
Title: Place the title of your essay (centered) at the top of the first page. Do not use bold, italics, or underlining for the title. Capitalize major words.
Citations: MLA uses in-text citations to acknowledge sources. When quoting or paraphrasing, include the author's last name and the page number (e.g., Smith 45).
Works Cited Page: At the end of your essay, include a separate page titled "Works Cited." List all sources alphabetically by the author's last name. Follow the specific MLA citation style for different types of sources (books, articles, websites, etc.).

Sample MLA Essay

Take a look at the essay format example in MLA style:

How to Format Essay in APA

Formatting an essay in APA style is commonly used in the social sciences and psychology.

APA provides a set of guidelines for various elements of your essay, including formatting, citations, and references. Here’s how to format essay in apa:

APA Essay Format Template

Title of the Essay (centered, bold, and in title case)
Your Name (centered)
Institutional Affiliation (centered)
Running head [Shortened Title] (flush left, in uppercase)
Page Number (flush right)
Header and Page Numbers: Create a header with the title of your essay in all capital letters, followed by a colon and a shortened version of the title (up to 50 characters), in the upper left corner of every page. The page number should be in the upper right corner.
Font and Size: Use a clear and readable font like Times New Roman or Arial, size 12.
Paragraphs: Indent the first line of each paragraph by 0.5 inches. Use a hanging indent for references on the reference page.
Citations: Use in-text citations to acknowledge sources. Include the author's last name and the publication year (e.g., Smith, 2023) when quoting or paraphrasing.
Title: Use bold and title case for the title of your essay on the title page. On subsequent pages, use a shortened version of the title (in uppercase) as the header.
References Page: At the end of your essay, create a separate page titled "References." List all sources alphabetically by the author's last name. Follow the specific APA citation style for different types of sources (books, articles, websites, etc.).

Sample APA Essay

Here is an essay format sample in APA style:

How to Format Essay in Chicago Style

Formatting an essay in Chicago style, often used in history and some other humanities disciplines, requires specific guidelines for citations and formatting. Here are the guidelines to format your essay in Chicago style:

Chicago Essay Format Template

Title Page: The title page in Chicago style includes: Title of the Essay (centered, in headline-style capitalization) Your Name (centered) Course Name and Number (centered) Instructor's Name (centered) Date (centered)
Margins and Spacing: Set all margins to 1 inch. Use double-spacing throughout the essay.
Page Numbers: Number pages in the upper right corner of each page, beginning with the first page of the main text (usually page 1). Page numbers should be in Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.).
Paragraphs: Indent the first line of each paragraph by 0.5 inches. Use a block paragraph style with no extra space between paragraphs.
Citations: In Chicago style, you have two citation options: footnotes and endnotes. In your text, place a superscript number (e.g., ^1) at the end of the sentence containing the cited information. Corresponding footnotes or endnotes should provide full citation details.
Title: Use headline-style capitalization for the title of your essay (e.g., "The History of Ancient Civilizations").
Bibliography: At the end of your essay, include a separate page titled "Bibliography." List all sources alphabetically by the author's last name. Follow the specific Chicago citation style for different types of sources (books, articles, websites, etc.).

Sample Chicago Essay

Let’s check out a short essay format word sample in chicago style:

Chicago Format Paper - MyPerfectWords.com

Formatting In-Text Citations: APA, MLA, and Chicago Styles

An in-text citation is a brief reference within the body of your essay or research paper that indicates the source of information you have incorporated into your writing.

Each of the formatting style have a unique way for adding in-text citations. Here's a table summarizing the in-text citation formats for the common styles:


	Author's last name, publication date, and page number (if applicable) within parentheses.	(Smith, 2020, p. 27)
	Author's last name and page number without any punctuation between them.	(Jones 42)
	Author's last name and publication date within parentheses.	(Smith 2021) or "According to Smith (2021),..."
	Numbered footnotes or endnotes with a superscript number in the text, corresponding to a full citation in a footnote or endnote.	Johnson argues that "the data is unconvincing."¹ ²

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Essay Format PDF Examples

Here are some essay format sample pdf for students to download and get a better understanding.

Essay Format For IELTS

Essay Format For CSS

How to Determine What Format to Follow

Selecting the appropriate citation format for your academic writing is essential to ensure that your work meets the expected standards. To make an informed decision, consider the following factors:

Factor 1- Subject and Discipline

APA Style: Primarily used in the social sciences, such as psychology, sociology, and education. It is also common in business and nursing disciplines.
MLA Style: Commonly employed in humanities disciplines, including literature, languages, and cultural studies. It's widely used for papers related to literature and the arts.
Chicago Style: Used in history, some social sciences, and certain humanities disciplines. Chicago offers both author-date and notes and bibliography styles, making it versatile for various subjects.

Factor 2- Professor's Instructions

Always adhere to your professor's specific instructions regarding citation style and writing convention . Professors may have preferences or requirements based on the nature of the course or assignment.

For instance, an English professor might prefer MLA for literary analysis essay , while a psychology professor may opt for APA to encourage familiarity with research norms. However, when formatting styles are not specified by the instructor, you can follow whatever is appropriate for your subject.

Factor 3- Institutional Guidelines

Your educational institution may have established guidelines or standards for citation formats.

Check your institution's style guide or consult with academic advisors to ensure compliance with their specific requirements.

By considering the subject matter, your professor's preferences, and your institution's guidelines, you can confidently choose the appropriate citation style to enhance the clarity and professionalism of your academic writing.

To Sum it Up, Now that you've gained a solid understanding of the basics of three major formatting styles, you're well-prepared to tackle your essay formatting with confidence.

Whether you're crafting an essay, a research paper, or any academic document, these formatting principles will help you present your ideas professionally.

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177 College Essay Examples for 11 Schools + Expert Analysis

College Admissions , College Essays

The personal statement might just be the hardest part of your college application. Mostly this is because it has the least guidance and is the most open-ended. One way to understand what colleges are looking for when they ask you to write an essay is to check out the essays of students who already got in—college essays that actually worked. After all, they must be among the most successful of this weird literary genre.

In this article, I'll go through general guidelines for what makes great college essays great. I've also compiled an enormous list of 100+ actual sample college essays from 11 different schools. Finally, I'll break down two of these published college essay examples and explain why and how they work. With links to 177 full essays and essay excerpts , this article is a great resource for learning how to craft your own personal college admissions essay!

What Excellent College Essays Have in Common

Even though in many ways these sample college essays are very different from one other, they do share some traits you should try to emulate as you write your own essay.

Visible Signs of Planning

Building out from a narrow, concrete focus. You'll see a similar structure in many of the essays. The author starts with a very detailed story of an event or description of a person or place. After this sense-heavy imagery, the essay expands out to make a broader point about the author, and connects this very memorable experience to the author's present situation, state of mind, newfound understanding, or maturity level.

Knowing how to tell a story. Some of the experiences in these essays are one-of-a-kind. But most deal with the stuff of everyday life. What sets them apart is the way the author approaches the topic: analyzing it for drama and humor, for its moving qualities, for what it says about the author's world, and for how it connects to the author's emotional life.

Stellar Execution

A killer first sentence. You've heard it before, and you'll hear it again: you have to suck the reader in, and the best place to do that is the first sentence. Great first sentences are punchy. They are like cliffhangers, setting up an exciting scene or an unusual situation with an unclear conclusion, in order to make the reader want to know more. Don't take my word for it—check out these 22 first sentences from Stanford applicants and tell me you don't want to read the rest of those essays to find out what happens!

A lively, individual voice. Writing is for readers. In this case, your reader is an admissions officer who has read thousands of essays before yours and will read thousands after. Your goal? Don't bore your reader. Use interesting descriptions, stay away from clichés, include your own offbeat observations—anything that makes this essay sounds like you and not like anyone else.

Technical correctness. No spelling mistakes, no grammar weirdness, no syntax issues, no punctuation snafus—each of these sample college essays has been formatted and proofread perfectly. If this kind of exactness is not your strong suit, you're in luck! All colleges advise applicants to have their essays looked over several times by parents, teachers, mentors, and anyone else who can spot a comma splice. Your essay must be your own work, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting help polishing it.

And if you need more guidance, connect with PrepScholar's expert admissions consultants . These expert writers know exactly what college admissions committees look for in an admissions essay and chan help you craft an essay that boosts your chances of getting into your dream school.

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Links to Full College Essay Examples

Some colleges publish a selection of their favorite accepted college essays that worked, and I've put together a selection of over 100 of these.

Common App Essay Samples

Please note that some of these college essay examples may be responding to prompts that are no longer in use. The current Common App prompts are as follows:

1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. 2. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? 3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome? 4. Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you? 5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. 6. Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

7. Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Now, let's get to the good stuff: the list of 177 college essay examples responding to current and past Common App essay prompts.

Connecticut college.

12 Common Application essays from the classes of 2022-2025

Hamilton College

7 Common Application essays from the class of 2026
7 Common Application essays from the class of 2022
7 Common Application essays from the class of 2018
8 Common Application essays from the class of 2012
8 Common Application essays from the class of 2007

Johns Hopkins

These essays are answers to past prompts from either the Common Application or the Coalition Application (which Johns Hopkins used to accept).

1 Common Application or Coalition Application essay from the class of 2026
6 Common Application or Coalition Application essays from the class of 2025
6 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2024
6 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2023
7 Common Application of Universal Application essays from the class of 2022
5 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2021
7 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2020

Essay Examples Published by Other Websites

2 Common Application essays ( 1st essay , 2nd essay ) from applicants admitted to Columbia

Other Sample College Essays

Here is a collection of essays that are college-specific.

Babson College

4 essays (and 1 video response) on "Why Babson" from the class of 2020

Emory University

5 essay examples ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ) from the class of 2020 along with analysis from Emory admissions staff on why the essays were exceptional
5 more recent essay examples ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ) along with analysis from Emory admissions staff on what made these essays stand out

University of Georgia

1 “strong essay” sample from 2019
1 “strong essay” sample from 2018
10 Harvard essays from 2023
10 Harvard essays from 2022
10 Harvard essays from 2021
10 Harvard essays from 2020
10 Harvard essays from 2019
10 Harvard essays from 2018
6 essays from admitted MIT students

Smith College

6 "best gift" essays from the class of 2018

Books of College Essays

If you're looking for even more sample college essays, consider purchasing a college essay book. The best of these include dozens of essays that worked and feedback from real admissions officers.

College Essays That Made a Difference —This detailed guide from Princeton Review includes not only successful essays, but also interviews with admissions officers and full student profiles.

50 Successful Harvard Application Essays by the Staff of the Harvard Crimson—A must for anyone aspiring to Harvard .

50 Successful Ivy League Application Essays and 50 Successful Stanford Application Essays by Gen and Kelly Tanabe—For essays from other top schools, check out this venerated series, which is regularly updated with new essays.

Heavenly Essays by Janine W. Robinson—This collection from the popular blogger behind Essay Hell includes a wider range of schools, as well as helpful tips on honing your own essay.

Analyzing Great Common App Essays That Worked

I've picked two essays from the examples collected above to examine in more depth so that you can see exactly what makes a successful college essay work. Full credit for these essays goes to the original authors and the schools that published them.

Example 1: "Breaking Into Cars," by Stephen, Johns Hopkins Class of '19 (Common App Essay, 636 words long)

I had never broken into a car before.

We were in Laredo, having just finished our first day at a Habitat for Humanity work site. The Hotchkiss volunteers had already left, off to enjoy some Texas BBQ, leaving me behind with the college kids to clean up. Not until we were stranded did we realize we were locked out of the van.

Someone picked a coat hanger out of the dumpster, handed it to me, and took a few steps back.

"Can you do that thing with a coat hanger to unlock it?"

"Why me?" I thought.

More out of amusement than optimism, I gave it a try. I slid the hanger into the window's seal like I'd seen on crime shows, and spent a few minutes jiggling the apparatus around the inside of the frame. Suddenly, two things simultaneously clicked. One was the lock on the door. (I actually succeeded in springing it.) The other was the realization that I'd been in this type of situation before. In fact, I'd been born into this type of situation.

My upbringing has numbed me to unpredictability and chaos. With a family of seven, my home was loud, messy, and spottily supervised. My siblings arguing, the dog barking, the phone ringing—all meant my house was functioning normally. My Dad, a retired Navy pilot, was away half the time. When he was home, he had a parenting style something like a drill sergeant. At the age of nine, I learned how to clear burning oil from the surface of water. My Dad considered this a critical life skill—you know, in case my aircraft carrier should ever get torpedoed. "The water's on fire! Clear a hole!" he shouted, tossing me in the lake without warning. While I'm still unconvinced about that particular lesson's practicality, my Dad's overarching message is unequivocally true: much of life is unexpected, and you have to deal with the twists and turns.

Living in my family, days rarely unfolded as planned. A bit overlooked, a little pushed around, I learned to roll with reality, negotiate a quick deal, and give the improbable a try. I don't sweat the small stuff, and I definitely don't expect perfect fairness. So what if our dining room table only has six chairs for seven people? Someone learns the importance of punctuality every night.

But more than punctuality and a special affinity for musical chairs, my family life has taught me to thrive in situations over which I have no power. Growing up, I never controlled my older siblings, but I learned how to thwart their attempts to control me. I forged alliances, and realigned them as necessary. Sometimes, I was the poor, defenseless little brother; sometimes I was the omniscient elder. Different things to different people, as the situation demanded. I learned to adapt.

Back then, these techniques were merely reactions undertaken to ensure my survival. But one day this fall, Dr. Hicks, our Head of School, asked me a question that he hoped all seniors would reflect on throughout the year: "How can I participate in a thing I do not govern, in the company of people I did not choose?"

The question caught me off guard, much like the question posed to me in Laredo. Then, I realized I knew the answer. I knew why the coat hanger had been handed to me.

Growing up as the middle child in my family, I was a vital participant in a thing I did not govern, in the company of people I did not choose. It's family. It's society. And often, it's chaos. You participate by letting go of the small stuff, not expecting order and perfection, and facing the unexpected with confidence, optimism, and preparedness. My family experience taught me to face a serendipitous world with confidence.

What Makes This Essay Tick?

It's very helpful to take writing apart in order to see just how it accomplishes its objectives. Stephen's essay is very effective. Let's find out why!

An Opening Line That Draws You In

In just eight words, we get: scene-setting (he is standing next to a car about to break in), the idea of crossing a boundary (he is maybe about to do an illegal thing for the first time), and a cliffhanger (we are thinking: is he going to get caught? Is he headed for a life of crime? Is he about to be scared straight?).

Great, Detailed Opening Story

It's the details that really make this small experience come alive. Notice how whenever he can, Stephen uses a more specific, descriptive word in place of a more generic one. The volunteers aren't going to get food or dinner; they're going for "Texas BBQ." The coat hanger comes from "a dumpster." Stephen doesn't just move the coat hanger—he "jiggles" it.

Details also help us visualize the emotions of the people in the scene. The person who hands Stephen the coat hanger isn't just uncomfortable or nervous; he "takes a few steps back"—a description of movement that conveys feelings. Finally, the detail of actual speech makes the scene pop. Instead of writing that the other guy asked him to unlock the van, Stephen has the guy actually say his own words in a way that sounds like a teenager talking.

Turning a Specific Incident Into a Deeper Insight

Suddenly, two things simultaneously clicked. One was the lock on the door. (I actually succeeded in springing it.) The other was the realization that I'd been in this type of situation before. In fact, I'd been born into this type of situation.

Stephen makes the locked car experience a meaningful illustration of how he has learned to be resourceful and ready for anything, and he also makes this turn from the specific to the broad through an elegant play on the two meanings of the word "click."

Using Concrete Examples When Making Abstract Claims

"Unpredictability and chaos" are very abstract, not easily visualized concepts. They could also mean any number of things—violence, abandonment, poverty, mental instability. By instantly following up with highly finite and unambiguous illustrations like "family of seven" and "siblings arguing, the dog barking, the phone ringing," Stephen grounds the abstraction in something that is easy to picture: a large, noisy family.

Using Small Bits of Humor and Casual Word Choice

My Dad, a retired Navy pilot, was away half the time. When he was home, he had a parenting style something like a drill sergeant. At the age of nine, I learned how to clear burning oil from the surface of water. My Dad considered this a critical life skill—you know, in case my aircraft carrier should ever get torpedoed.

Obviously, knowing how to clean burning oil is not high on the list of things every 9-year-old needs to know. To emphasize this, Stephen uses sarcasm by bringing up a situation that is clearly over-the-top: "in case my aircraft carrier should ever get torpedoed."

The humor also feels relaxed. Part of this is because he introduces it with the colloquial phrase "you know," so it sounds like he is talking to us in person. This approach also diffuses the potential discomfort of the reader with his father's strictness—since he is making jokes about it, clearly he is OK. Notice, though, that this doesn't occur very much in the essay. This helps keep the tone meaningful and serious rather than flippant.

An Ending That Stretches the Insight Into the Future

But one day this fall, Dr. Hicks, our Head of School, asked me a question that he hoped all seniors would reflect on throughout the year: "How can I participate in a thing I do not govern, in the company of people I did not choose?"

The ending of the essay reveals that Stephen's life has been one long preparation for the future. He has emerged from chaos and his dad's approach to parenting as a person who can thrive in a world that he can't control.

This connection of past experience to current maturity and self-knowledge is a key element in all successful personal essays. Colleges are very much looking for mature, self-aware applicants. These are the qualities of successful college students, who will be able to navigate the independence college classes require and the responsibility and quasi-adulthood of college life.

What Could This Essay Do Even Better?

Even the best essays aren't perfect, and even the world's greatest writers will tell you that writing is never "finished"—just "due." So what would we tweak in this essay if we could?

Replace some of the clichéd language. Stephen uses handy phrases like "twists and turns" and "don't sweat the small stuff" as a kind of shorthand for explaining his relationship to chaos and unpredictability. But using too many of these ready-made expressions runs the risk of clouding out your own voice and replacing it with something expected and boring.

Use another example from recent life. Stephen's first example (breaking into the van in Laredo) is a great illustration of being resourceful in an unexpected situation. But his essay also emphasizes that he "learned to adapt" by being "different things to different people." It would be great to see how this plays out outside his family, either in the situation in Laredo or another context.

Want to build the best possible college application? We can help. PrepScholar Admissions combines world-class admissions counselors with our data-driven, proprietary admissions strategies. We've guided thousands of students to get into their top choice schools, from state colleges to the Ivy League. We know what kinds of students colleges want to admit and are driven to get you admitted to your dream schools. Learn more about PrepScholar Admissions to maximize your chance of getting in:

Example 2: By Renner Kwittken, Tufts Class of '23 (Common App Essay, 645 words long)

My first dream job was to be a pickle truck driver. I saw it in my favorite book, Richard Scarry's "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go," and for some reason, I was absolutely obsessed with the idea of driving a giant pickle. Much to the discontent of my younger sister, I insisted that my parents read us that book as many nights as possible so we could find goldbug, a small little golden bug, on every page. I would imagine the wonderful life I would have: being a pig driving a giant pickle truck across the country, chasing and finding goldbug. I then moved on to wanting to be a Lego Master. Then an architect. Then a surgeon.

Then I discovered a real goldbug: gold nanoparticles that can reprogram macrophages to assist in killing tumors, produce clear images of them without sacrificing the subject, and heat them to obliteration.

Suddenly the destination of my pickle was clear.

I quickly became enveloped by the world of nanomedicine; I scoured articles about liposomes, polymeric micelles, dendrimers, targeting ligands, and self-assembling nanoparticles, all conquering cancer in some exotic way. Completely absorbed, I set out to find a mentor to dive even deeper into these topics. After several rejections, I was immensely grateful to receive an invitation to work alongside Dr. Sangeeta Ray at Johns Hopkins.

In the lab, Dr. Ray encouraged a great amount of autonomy to design and implement my own procedures. I chose to attack a problem that affects the entire field of nanomedicine: nanoparticles consistently fail to translate from animal studies into clinical trials. Jumping off recent literature, I set out to see if a pre-dose of a common chemotherapeutic could enhance nanoparticle delivery in aggressive prostate cancer, creating three novel constructs based on three different linear polymers, each using fluorescent dye (although no gold, sorry goldbug!). Though using radioactive isotopes like Gallium and Yttrium would have been incredible, as a 17-year-old, I unfortunately wasn't allowed in the same room as these radioactive materials (even though I took a Geiger counter to a pair of shoes and found them to be slightly dangerous).

I hadn't expected my hypothesis to work, as the research project would have ideally been led across two full years. Yet while there are still many optimizations and revisions to be done, I was thrilled to find -- with completely new nanoparticles that may one day mean future trials will use particles with the initials "RK-1" -- thatcyclophosphamide did indeed increase nanoparticle delivery to the tumor in a statistically significant way.

A secondary, unexpected research project was living alone in Baltimore, a new city to me, surrounded by people much older than I. Even with moving frequently between hotels, AirBnB's, and students' apartments, I strangely reveled in the freedom I had to enjoy my surroundings and form new friendships with graduate school students from the lab. We explored The Inner Harbor at night, attended a concert together one weekend, and even got to watch the Orioles lose (to nobody's surprise). Ironically, it's through these new friendships I discovered something unexpected: what I truly love is sharing research. Whether in a presentation or in a casual conversation, making others interested in science is perhaps more exciting to me than the research itself. This solidified a new pursuit to angle my love for writing towards illuminating science in ways people can understand, adding value to a society that can certainly benefit from more scientific literacy.

It seems fitting that my goals are still transforming: in Scarry's book, there is not just one goldbug, there is one on every page. With each new experience, I'm learning that it isn't the goldbug itself, but rather the act of searching for the goldbugs that will encourage, shape, and refine my ever-evolving passions. Regardless of the goldbug I seek -- I know my pickle truck has just begun its journey.

Renner takes a somewhat different approach than Stephen, but their essay is just as detailed and engaging. Let's go through some of the strengths of this essay.

One Clear Governing Metaphor

This essay is ultimately about two things: Renner’s dreams and future career goals, and Renner’s philosophy on goal-setting and achieving one’s dreams.

But instead of listing off all the amazing things they’ve done to pursue their dream of working in nanomedicine, Renner tells a powerful, unique story instead. To set up the narrative, Renner opens the essay by connecting their experiences with goal-setting and dream-chasing all the way back to a memorable childhood experience:

This lighthearted–but relevant!--story about the moment when Renner first developed a passion for a specific career (“finding the goldbug”) provides an anchor point for the rest of the essay. As Renner pivots to describing their current dreams and goals–working in nanomedicine–the metaphor of “finding the goldbug” is reflected in Renner’s experiments, rejections, and new discoveries.

Though Renner tells multiple stories about their quest to “find the goldbug,” or, in other words, pursue their passion, each story is connected by a unifying theme; namely, that as we search and grow over time, our goals will transform…and that’s okay! By the end of the essay, Renner uses the metaphor of “finding the goldbug” to reiterate the relevance of the opening story:

While the earlier parts of the essay convey Renner’s core message by showing, the final, concluding paragraph sums up Renner’s insights by telling. By briefly and clearly stating the relevance of the goldbug metaphor to their own philosophy on goals and dreams, Renner demonstrates their creativity, insight, and eagerness to grow and evolve as the journey continues into college.

An Engaging, Individual Voice

This essay uses many techniques that make Renner sound genuine and make the reader feel like we already know them.

Technique #1: humor. Notice Renner's gentle and relaxed humor that lightly mocks their younger self's grand ambitions (this is different from the more sarcastic kind of humor used by Stephen in the first essay—you could never mistake one writer for the other).

My first dream job was to be a pickle truck driver.

I would imagine the wonderful life I would have: being a pig driving a giant pickle truck across the country, chasing and finding goldbug. I then moved on to wanting to be a Lego Master. Then an architect. Then a surgeon.

Renner gives a great example of how to use humor to your advantage in college essays. You don’t want to come off as too self-deprecating or sarcastic, but telling a lightheartedly humorous story about your younger self that also showcases how you’ve grown and changed over time can set the right tone for your entire essay.

Technique #2: intentional, eye-catching structure. The second technique is the way Renner uses a unique structure to bolster the tone and themes of their essay . The structure of your essay can have a major impact on how your ideas come across…so it’s important to give it just as much thought as the content of your essay!

For instance, Renner does a great job of using one-line paragraphs to create dramatic emphasis and to make clear transitions from one phase of the story to the next:

Suddenly the destination of my pickle car was clear.

Not only does the one-liner above signal that Renner is moving into a new phase of the narrative (their nanoparticle research experiences), it also tells the reader that this is a big moment in Renner’s story. It’s clear that Renner made a major discovery that changed the course of their goal pursuit and dream-chasing. Through structure, Renner conveys excitement and entices the reader to keep pushing forward to the next part of the story.

Technique #3: playing with syntax. The third technique is to use sentences of varying length, syntax, and structure. Most of the essay's written in standard English and uses grammatically correct sentences. However, at key moments, Renner emphasizes that the reader needs to sit up and pay attention by switching to short, colloquial, differently punctuated, and sometimes fragmented sentences.

Even with moving frequently between hotels, AirBnB's, and students' apartments, I strangely reveled in the freedom I had to enjoy my surroundings and form new friendships with graduate school students from the lab. We explored The Inner Harbor at night, attended a concert together one weekend, and even got to watch the Orioles lose (to nobody's surprise). Ironically, it's through these new friendships I discovered something unexpected: what I truly love is sharing research.

In the examples above, Renner switches adeptly between long, flowing sentences and quippy, telegraphic ones. At the same time, Renner uses these different sentence lengths intentionally. As they describe their experiences in new places, they use longer sentences to immerse the reader in the sights, smells, and sounds of those experiences. And when it’s time to get a big, key idea across, Renner switches to a short, punchy sentence to stop the reader in their tracks.

The varying syntax and sentence lengths pull the reader into the narrative and set up crucial “aha” moments when it’s most important…which is a surefire way to make any college essay stand out.

Renner's essay is very strong, but there are still a few little things that could be improved.

Connecting the research experiences to the theme of “finding the goldbug.” The essay begins and ends with Renner’s connection to the idea of “finding the goldbug.” And while this metaphor is deftly tied into the essay’s intro and conclusion, it isn’t entirely clear what Renner’s big findings were during the research experiences that are described in the middle of the essay. It would be great to add a sentence or two stating what Renner’s big takeaways (or “goldbugs”) were from these experiences, which add more cohesion to the essay as a whole.

Give more details about discovering the world of nanomedicine. It makes sense that Renner wants to get into the details of their big research experiences as quickly as possible. After all, these are the details that show Renner’s dedication to nanomedicine! But a smoother transition from the opening pickle car/goldbug story to Renner’s “real goldbug” of nanoparticles would help the reader understand why nanoparticles became Renner’s goldbug. Finding out why Renner is so motivated to study nanomedicine–and perhaps what put them on to this field of study–would help readers fully understand why Renner chose this path in the first place.

4 Essential Tips for Writing Your Own Essay

How can you use this discussion to better your own college essay? Here are some suggestions for ways to use this resource effectively.

#1: Get Help From the Experts

Getting your college applications together takes a lot of work and can be pretty intimidatin g. Essays are even more important than ever now that admissions processes are changing and schools are going test-optional and removing diversity standards thanks to new Supreme Court rulings . If you want certified expert help that really makes a difference, get started with PrepScholar’s Essay Editing and Coaching program. Our program can help you put together an incredible essay from idea to completion so that your application stands out from the crowd. We've helped students get into the best colleges in the United States, including Harvard, Stanford, and Yale. If you're ready to take the next step and boost your odds of getting into your dream school, connect with our experts today .

#2: Read Other Essays to Get Ideas for Your Own

As you go through the essays we've compiled for you above, ask yourself the following questions:

Can you explain to yourself (or someone else!) why the opening sentence works well?
Look for the essay's detailed personal anecdote. What senses is the author describing? Can you easily picture the scene in your mind's eye?
Find the place where this anecdote bridges into a larger insight about the author. How does the essay connect the two? How does the anecdote work as an example of the author's characteristic, trait, or skill?
Check out the essay's tone. If it's funny, can you find the places where the humor comes from? If it's sad and moving, can you find the imagery and description of feelings that make you moved? If it's serious, can you see how word choice adds to this tone?

Make a note whenever you find an essay or part of an essay that you think was particularly well-written, and think about what you like about it . Is it funny? Does it help you really get to know the writer? Does it show what makes the writer unique? Once you have your list, keep it next to you while writing your essay to remind yourself to try and use those same techniques in your own essay.

#3: Find Your "A-Ha!" Moment

All of these essays rely on connecting with the reader through a heartfelt, highly descriptive scene from the author's life. It can either be very dramatic (did you survive a plane crash?) or it can be completely mundane (did you finally beat your dad at Scrabble?). Either way, it should be personal and revealing about you, your personality, and the way you are now that you are entering the adult world.

Check out essays by authors like John Jeremiah Sullivan , Leslie Jamison , Hanif Abdurraqib , and Esmé Weijun Wang to get more examples of how to craft a compelling personal narrative.

#4: Start Early, Revise Often

Let me level with you: the best writing isn't writing at all. It's rewriting. And in order to have time to rewrite, you have to start way before the application deadline. My advice is to write your first draft at least two months before your applications are due.

Let it sit for a few days untouched. Then come back to it with fresh eyes and think critically about what you've written. What's extra? What's missing? What is in the wrong place? What doesn't make sense? Don't be afraid to take it apart and rearrange sections. Do this several times over, and your essay will be much better for it!

For more editing tips, check out a style guide like Dreyer's English or Eats, Shoots & Leaves .

What's Next?

Still not sure which colleges you want to apply to? Our experts will show you how to make a college list that will help you choose a college that's right for you.

Interested in learning more about college essays? Check out our detailed breakdown of exactly how personal statements work in an application , some suggestions on what to avoid when writing your essay , and our guide to writing about your extracurricular activities .

Working on the rest of your application? Read what admissions officers wish applicants knew before applying .

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download them for free now:

The recommendations in this post are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links PrepScholar may receive a commission.

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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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How to Write a Formal Essay: Format, Rules, & Example

If you’re a student, you’ve heard about a formal essay: a factual, research-based paper written in 3rd person. Most students have to produce dozens of them during their educational career. 

Writing a formal essay may not be the easiest task. But fear not: our custom-writing team is here to guide you through the process. This article will:

explain what a formal essay is;
show how to write it step by step;
provide you with an essay sample.

👔 Formal Essay Definition

✅ How to Write
✍️ Writing Rules
🖥️ Essay Format
📑 Sample Paper

🔍 References

A formal essay is a well-structured piece of writing with a clear introduction, body, and conclusion. This type of essay often includes cited research, uses an academic tone, and is written in 3rd person. While writing a formal essay, it’s necessary to back up your arguments with factual evidence.

What Is an Informal Essay vs. Formal Essay?

Essays come in two formats: formal and informal (also known as personal .) They differ in terms of style and context. You can choose one of the formats depending on the situation and the type of paper you need to write.

Don’t know how to tell the difference between them? Well, here are some key characteristics of these essay types:

Characteristics	Informal essay	Formal essay
	Usually, the purpose of an informal essay is to share opinions or to entertain the reader.	A formal essay aims to critically analyze facts, details, and ideas to prove a point.
	Addresses the reader directly and uses 1st-person pronouns.	Uses 3rd-person pronouns and doesn’t address the reader.
	Expresses the writer’s thoughts and opinions and tends to be more subjective.	Strives to be objective and uses arguments to support its ideas.
	Doesn’t have to be as structured as a formal essay.	Should be well-structured and logical.
	The thesis may be stated in any part of the work or not explicitly stated at all.	The thesis is clearly stated and located in the essay’s first paragraph.
	Uses everyday language, slang, 1st- and 2nd-person pronouns such as “I,” “you,” and “me.”	Uses jargon and avoids using slang and 1st- or 2nd-person pronouns.

As you can see, these types of writing are almost total opposites. Informal essays are only reserved for creative assignments, which means that most of the papers you write need to be formal.

Our article on creative essays can help you write an informal paper. But how do you craft a perfect formal essay? Keep reading to find out.

✅ How to Write a Formal Essay

Traditionally, a formal essay it’s composed of 3 sections: an introduction, 3 or more body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Let’s examine each part in detail.

Formal Essay Introduction

The introduction is what your essay starts with. Its primary goal is to catch the reader’s attention with a hook, briefly introduce the topic, and lead toward the thesis statement located at the end of the first paragraph.

Here is what you might want to keep in mind while writing the introduction:

✔️	It should be related to the topic and give the reader an overall idea of the paper.
✔️	It’s good to start your introduction with a quotation, an interesting fact, or a statistic.
❌	Try not to make the introduction too far-fetched or in-your-face.
❌	Avoid using questions in an introduction of a formal essay.

If you want some more inspiration for your introduction, check out our article on hooks in writing .

Now on to the thesis statement : the key idea of your essay. When working on it, keep in mind that it should answer the central question in your topic and reflect your essay’s overall structure. your essay’s overall structure.

Suppose your topic is related to the teaching methods involving poetry. In that case, the thesis statement can be like this:

Teaching methods that involve reading and writing poetry in elementary school are beneficial for children as they enhance their capacity for empathy, develop creativity, and help with self-realization.

Formal Essay Body

The next part of an essay is the main body paragraphs. They support the thesis statement with well-developed arguments and explore the topic in-depth. Each body paragraph starts with a topic sentence stating its main point. The length of a paragraph can vary, but the best option is to have between 4 and 7 sentences.

To make the text flow easily, you may use transitional words. Here are some examples:

after all, 
for instance, 
on the one/other hand, 
initially, 
as a result.

How to Write a Formal Essay Conclusion

Lastly, every essay needs closure. A good conclusion summarizes the essay’s main ideas, includes a paraphrased thesis, and encourages the readers to think more about the topic.

The structure of a conclusion may change slightly depending on the subject. For instance, it can suggest some solutions to a problem, express an opinion, or give a recommendation. It’s important to remember that the conclusion is a part that emphasizes your essay’s most important points and doesn’t introduce new information.

If you’re curious about writing each essay part, check out our article on 5-paragraph essays .

✍️ Formal Writing Rules

Just like choosing the proper attire to wear to a formal event, we need to use the right words while writing a formal essay. Here are some suggestions that can help you maintain a formal tone in your paper:  

Dos of formal writing

Pay attention to your vocabulary. The words you will use in a formal essay will likely have a nuanced meaning. Make sure you know exactly what the terms mean, and do your best to sound precise.
Use punctuation correctly. Here are some of the things to watch out for: Avoid exclamation marks; Use dashes for insertions; Use colons with enumerations; If you’re unsure of whether to use a punctuation mark or not, rewrite the sentence in a way that doesn’t require it.
Use varied sentence structure. In formal writing, there is always a danger of sounding monotonous. Avoid repeating sentence structures to make your essay more readable.
Provide references. It’s essential to cite every idea that you borrow. Try to paraphrase quotations from your sources: it will help you avoid plagiarism.

Don’ts of formal writing

Avoid using pronouns.  With words such as “I,” “me,” “we,” or “us,” an essay becomes wordy. It also makes the author seem less sure of their ideas. If you want to use personal pronouns, try substituting them with words like “the reader,” “viewers,” or “one.”
Avoid using slang expressions and nonstandard diction. Slang words in a formal essay will make it less appealing to the readers. If you want to be taken seriously, it’s best to avoid those expressions and use proper Standard English.
Avoid informal tone.  When you write a formal essay, incorporate the language and the expressions you would use while delivering a speech, not the words you use when you casually talk to friends. A formal tone suggests that the author is serious about the topic and respects the audience.
Avoid passive voice. Passive verbs are hard to read, and they are wordy. Use active voice to sound more straightforward and concise.

Contractions in Formal Writing

A contraction is usually a combination of two words into one, such as “don’t,” “isn’t,” “can’t,” and “wouldn’t.” When you work on a formal essay, it’s essential to be careful about contractions. It’s inappropriate to use them in academic writing, so it’s best to stick to the full variant.

However, there are exceptions to this rule. For instance, when working with direct quotations, it’s essential to reproduce words exactly as they are used in the original. To learn more about it, be sure to check out the University of North Florida’s article on in-text citations .

What to Use Instead of “You” in an Essay

Another common mistake students make is using the “you” and “yours” pronouns to address the readers. This mistake can make the essay overly informal and lead to misinterpretations of the text.

How do you fix it? Our advice is to replace 2nd-person pronouns with the following words:

individuals,

You can find more formal writing tips in this informative video from Smrt English:

🖥️ Formal Essay Format

Now that we’ve discussed formal essay writing in detail, it’s time to look at the formatting. A formal essay is usually written in MLA or APA formats. If you’re asked to write a paper in one of these formats, you may find the guidelines below helpful:

	MLA	APA
	Write your name, the instructor’s name, your class, and the date in the upper left corner of the 1st page. Make the title centered and place it after the heading information in the same font as the rest of your paper.	Create a separate . Make your title centered and written in boldface. Add your name, instructor’s name, school affiliation, and date.
	Write your last name and the number of each page in the upper right corner.	Write the number of each page in the upper right corner.
	Use 12-point Times New Roman font.
	Make your essay double-spaced without extra spacing between the paragraphs.
	Add a 1-inch margin on each side of the page.
	Make the 1st line of each paragraph indented 1/5 inch.
	Line up your text flush against the left margin.

📑 Formal Essay Example

Here is an excellent sample of a formal essay that uses all the guidelines mentioned in this article. It will help you to produce a perfect paper of your own:

Title	Adverse effects of sponsorship in the sports industry
	Sponsorship plays a significant role in the sports industry these days. Many sports associations, football leagues, and clubs are entering partnerships with famous brands. However, it does not mean that all sponsorship has a good impact. This essay argues that a questionable sponsorship may undermine the image of a sport or a team and adversely influence the viewers.
	Important sports events such as FIFA or The Olympic Games are sponsored by brands such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Cadbury’s, and Budweiser. These are also brands that promote unhealthy lifestyles and foods that lack nutritional value and have high levels of salt, sugar, and saturated fats. Such kind of sponsorship aims to obtain a favorable change in the attitude toward the brand itself by connecting it with sport and a healthy lifestyle.
	While alcohol and junk food brands link themselves to sports bodies and active lifestyles, their main targets are children and sports fans. The growing popularity of products high in saturated fat, salt, and sugar, including potato chips, sugary drinks, and confectionary, results in them being not simply a treat but a daily staple for many people. It creates various health issues, such as obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay.
	Finally, an association with a widely criticized brand is likely to damage the reputation of a team or even a sport itself (Crompton, 2014). People tend to expect their favorite teams to partner with fair, responsible sponsors. If the partnership is questionable, the fans may think that the sports body compromised their virtue for profit.
	To sum up, some kinds of sponsorship, such as alcohol or junk food, may use the sport’s image to attract more people and increase sales. It leads to the excessive consumption of sponsored products by children and teenagers and causes various health issues. It is also likely to affect the public image of a sports body.

For more information, check out Purdue OWL’s resources on various formatting styles .

Formal Essay Topics

Stress management techniques
The effects of coffee
Negative effects of technology on children
Causes and outcomes of organizational conflicts in sports
Different types of friends
Same-sex marriages in the United States
Are early marriages harmful or beneficial?
How do nutrition and hydration improve athletes’ performance?
Is polygamy morally acceptable?
Different features of sports business
What characterizes friendship in the age of media?
Positive and negative effects of tourism on environment in the Caribbean
How does society treat single parents?
How does the uninvolved parenting style affect child’s future well-being?
The role of family relationships in Odyssey
Financial concepts in sport finance
Main features of a strong marriage
The importance of media coverage for sport teams
Reasons why students choose to get internship
The role of stadiums in the sports industry
The multiracial family: the Carters case analysis
Characteristics of children’s sports
Crucial factors affecting health fitness
How is technology used in hotel management?
Structure and operational context of Four Seasons
What are the main qualities of a true friend?
Different websites that promote rental properties
The imperative aspects of tourism
Importance of hotel training
What factors determine adolescents’ adjustment after they experience parental divorce?
How does tobacco use affect the human body?
The importance of language and world view for communication
What makes a combination of reinforcement and punishment in parenting efficient?
The scientific approach of sports economics
How does divorce affect children?
Living on-campus vs. living off-campus when attending university: a comparison
How does the New Moves program promote a healthy lifestyle?
How to be an effective counselor
Various types of restaurants in Ireland
Carolina Dog’s characteristics
Comparison of Monzameon’s The Love Suicides at Amijima and Tartuffe by Moliere
Comparing homosexual and heterosexual families
How is family presented in Everyday Use by Alice Walker ?
In what ways can Anaerobic Threshold be assessed?
Is bad parenting a healthcare problem?
Why student-athletes should benefit from sports
Mind-body awareness and its health benefits
Can punishment boost academic performance?
Techniques to teach students swimming
Issues faced by the sports licensing field

Thanks for reading through this guide! We hope that you found it helpful and now have a better idea of how to write an excellent formal essay. Don’t hesitate to share our article with a friend who may need it. Good luck!

❓ Formal Essay FAQs

It’s best not to use pronouns such as “I,” “my,” “we,” “our,” etc., in a formal essay since it give the paper an informal tone and the text becomes wordy. It also makes the writer seem less sure about their ideas.

It’s better to avoid using parentheses and dashes in formal academic writing. If the information you want to include in the essay is important enough, it should be a part of the sentence. Otherwise, you can simply omit it.

The formal and informal essays differ in style and context. While a formal essay is a piece of well-structured writing that tries to convince the reader by providing arguments, an informal essay has no set structure. It reflects the author’s personal thoughts or opinions.

Starting your sentence with “because” in formal writing is not the best idea. The word “because” is a subordinate conjunction, which means it’s used to join the main clause to a subordinate clause, not to start a sentence.

It’s best to avoid using 1st- and 2nd-person pronouns, slang expressions, nonstandard diction, and contractions in a formal essay. They are primarily used in daily speech and are considered inappropriate in academic writing. 

Point of View in Academic Writing: St. Louis Community College
Components of a Good Essay: University of Evansville
Introductions & Conclusions: University of Arizona Global Campus
How to Improve Your Academic Writing: University of York
Nine Basic Ways to Improve Your Style in Academic Writing: University of California, Berkeley
Academic Writing Style: Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: University of Southern California
Formal and Informal Style: Northern Illinois University
Formal Writing: Davenport University: LibGuides
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How to Write an Essay: Step by Step Guide With Examples

How to write an essay, examples of an essay

An essay is a brief piece of writing that explains, analyzes, and interprets a topic; it’s also a summary of a particular subject in which the author expresses an opinion.

Does the essay need a title? How many paragraphs does an essay have? Does it have headings and a conclusion? Does the essay have a full stop? Are the introduction, body and conclusion on separate pages? How do you make the cover of an essay?

Here, we will address these frequent questions that come up when you need to write an essay.

What is an essay

The difference between an essay and informational text, like what you might find in an encyclopedia, is that an essay is freer, and its parts are not separated by headings.

The format of an essay and most common doubts

The essay does have each of these parts but they are not identified as in a monographic work, but rather they are written one after another. An example of an essay can be seen at the end of this article.

Justified text, Justified text, Justified text, Justified text, Justified text, Justified text, Justified text, Justified text, Justified text.

Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified,

The parts or structure of an essay

Introduction .

The introduction, as its name implies, introduces the reader to the essay with following steps:

Body of the essay

The body consists of the points that develop the essay in depth. In the example of the essay about soccer, the body could have the history of soccer, the rules of the game, the most important championships, etc.

Form and organization the body

Conclusion .

Here goes the author’s personal opinion, (You, the person doing the essay, your opinion) an essay has, of course, personal opinions in its body, however, in the conclusion these must be emphatic.

In the last part, you write what you think about the subject, if it’s a typical expository essay. What the conclusion will contain depends on the type of essay, it can be the answer to the question, or the solution of the problem as the case may be.

How to write a reference in APA format

Author(s) Last Name, First Initial. Middle Initial. (Year of Publication). Title of Book. Publisher. (Optional: Edition)

Author(s) Last Name, First Initial. Middle Initial. (Year of Publication, Month Day). Title of Webpage. Retrieved from Website URL

Example of an essay

University (Name of the university, or college, school, as the case may be)

Administration and Accounting Area (The subject can go here)

The administrative process

A process can be defined as a set of successive steps, phases or actions of a natural or artificial phenomenon. In the context of the study and practice of management, there are different approaches that have contributed to this discipline with a large number of theories, ideas or concepts from different points of view.

Administration has been studied through experience, decision-making, human relations, it has been studied as a social system, also with a quantitative approach and through the tasks performed by the professionals in the field.

Today, the concept of the administrative process is a fundamental part of management theory. Each one of the functions must be understood and carried out correctly by the management professional, and they have factors, principles, or aspects that, if not taken into account, the administrative process could not fulfill its objectives.

Having said that, the process begins with its first phase, which is planning. Organizations seek to achieve a goal in the future, and there are questions such as: What actions should be taken? How to reach that goal? When? Where? Why? Planning is thinking before acting, it is a decision-making process that takes into account internal and external factors that can influence the achievement of the objective. External factors are not directly controlled and come from the environment, for example, the economy, government regulations and competition. On the other hand, internal factors are controllable, such as the human and technological factor.

The body of the essay continues… When all the topics have been explained, you write the conclusion.

To conclude, it highlights that the administrative process is related to each activity of the company and that the planning, organization, direction, and control are all part of the functions carried out there, such as marketing, finance, production, and personnel management and I can think it’s evident that none of its principles or factors can’t be ignored if the organization wants to be successful.

The stages are not isolated actions, but they make up a whole, i consider that the process is very easy to understand and also, it is easy to adapt and apply in all areas of life, because beings Humans have objectives both inside and outside the organization, they use resources and need to give effectiveness and efficiency to their actions to accelerate their achievement and satisfy their needs, so it is important both as business professionals and as individuals to know the functions of management that constitute the basic and important process explained in this essay.

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The Complete College Essay Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing the Personal Statement and the Supplemental Essays

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The Complete College Essay Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing the Personal Statement and the Supplemental Essays Paperback – July 19, 2021

Want to write memorable college application essays in less time, with less stress? This book will guide you through the process, with hands-on activities, practical tips, and tons of real application essays—personal statements and supplemental essays—by real students!

Finally—the book you’ve been waiting for! The Complete College Essay Handbook demystifies the entire college essay writing process with easy-to-follow directions and hands-on activities that have worked for hundreds of students. Maschal, a former admissions officer, and Wood, a professional writer and writing teacher, draw on their combined expertise to help students craft a successful set of application essays for every school on their list. Supplemental essays in particular can seem overwhelming—some schools ask students to write as many as six essays in addition to the personal statement. Maschal and Wood identify four types of supplemental essays, walking students through how to write each one and then how to recycle these essays for other schools.

The Complete College Essay Handbook walks students through:

What makes an essay stand out, drawing on sample essays by real students to illustrate main points
Brainstorming activities to find the best topics for the personal statement and supplemental essays
How to write the two central components of every application essay: scene and reflection
Editing and revision—including techniques to cut down or expand an essay to hit the word limit
The four types of supplemental essays and how to decode the different essay prompts, using actual essay questions
The strategy behind a well-rounded set of application essays

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This book is for students, high school teachers and counselors, parents, and anyone else who wants to help students through the college essay writing process.

Print length 212 pages
Language English
Publication date July 19, 2021
Dimensions 6 x 0.48 x 9 inches
ISBN-10 173731598X
ISBN-13 978-1737315988
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Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 212 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 173731598X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1737315988
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Brittany maschal.

Dr. Brittany Maschal is the founder of Brittany Maschal Consulting, LLC, an educational consulting firm that works with students applying to college and graduate school.

Brittany has held positions in admissions and student services at the University of Pennsylvania at Penn Law and The Wharton School; Princeton University (undergraduate) and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs; and the Johns Hopkins University-Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She has served on admissions committees with American Councils for International Education and International Research and Exchanges Board; as an invited speaker to numerous community programs in the US and abroad; and as an alumni interviewer and admissions representative for the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Brittany was also an Executive Board member and Membership Director of the Penn GSE Alumni Association.

Brittany received her doctorate in higher education from the George Washington University in 2012. Prior, she attended the University of Pennsylvania for her master’s, and the University of Vermont for her bachelor’s degree—a degree she obtained in three years. Brittany is a member of the Independent Educational Consultants Association and a member of the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches.

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Original article
Open access
Published: 08 July 2024

Can you spot the bot? Identifying AI-generated writing in college essays

Tal Waltzer ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4464-0336 1 ,
Celeste Pilegard 1 &
Gail D. Heyman 1

International Journal for Educational Integrity volume 20 , Article number: 11 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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The release of ChatGPT in 2022 has generated extensive speculation about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will impact the capacity of institutions for higher learning to achieve their central missions of promoting learning and certifying knowledge. Our main questions were whether people could identify AI-generated text and whether factors such as expertise or confidence would predict this ability. The present research provides empirical data to inform these speculations through an assessment given to a convenience sample of 140 college instructors and 145 college students (Study 1) as well as to ChatGPT itself (Study 2). The assessment was administered in an online survey and included an AI Identification Test which presented pairs of essays: In each case, one was written by a college student during an in-class exam and the other was generated by ChatGPT. Analyses with binomial tests and linear modeling suggested that the AI Identification Test was challenging: On average, instructors were able to guess which one was written by ChatGPT only 70% of the time (compared to 60% for students and 63% for ChatGPT). Neither experience with ChatGPT nor content expertise improved performance. Even people who were confident in their abilities struggled with the test. ChatGPT responses reflected much more confidence than human participants despite performing just as poorly. ChatGPT responses on an AI Attitude Assessment measure were similar to those reported by instructors and students except that ChatGPT rated several AI uses more favorably and indicated substantially more optimism about the positive educational benefits of AI. The findings highlight challenges for scholars and practitioners to consider as they navigate the integration of AI in education.

Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming ubiquitous in daily life. It has the potential to help solve many of society’s most complex and important problems, such as improving the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of chronic disease (Jiang et al. 2017 ), and informing public policy regarding climate change (Biswas 2023 ). However, AI also comes with potential pitfalls, such as threatening widely-held values like fairness and the right to privacy (Borenstein and Howard 2021 ; Weidinger et al. 2021 ; Zhuo et al. 2023 ). Although the specific ways in which the promises and pitfalls of AI will play out remain to be seen, it is clear that AI will change human societies in significant ways.

In late November of 2022, the generative large-language model ChatGPT (GPT-3, Brown et al. 2020 ) was released to the public. It soon became clear that talk about the consequences of AI was much more than futuristic speculation, and that we are now watching its consequences unfold before our eyes in real time. This is not only because the technology is now easily accessible to the general public, but also because of its advanced capacities, including a sophisticated ability to use context to generate appropriate responses to a wide range of prompts (Devlin et al. 2018 ; Gilson et al. 2022 ; Susnjak 2022 ; Vaswani et al. 2017 ).

How AI-generated content poses challenges for educational assessment

Since AI technologies like ChatGPT can flexibly produce human-like content, this raises the possibility that students may use the technology to complete their academic work for them, and that instructors may not be able to tell when their students turn in such AI-assisted work. This possibility has led some people to argue that we may be seeing the end of essay assignments in education (Mitchell 2022 ; Stokel-Walker 2022 ). Even some advocates of AI in the classroom have expressed concerns about its potential for undermining academic integrity (Cotton et al. 2023 ; Eke 2023 ). For example, as Kasneci et al. ( 2023 ) noted, the technology might “amplify laziness and counteract the learners’ interest to conduct their own investigations and come to their own conclusions or solutions” (p. 5). In response to these concerns, some educational institutions have already tried to ban ChatGPT (Johnson, 2023; Rosenzweig-Ziff 2023 ; Schulten, 2023).

These discussions are founded on extensive scholarship on academic integrity, which is fundamental to ethics in higher education (Bertram Gallant 2011 ; Bretag 2016 ; Rettinger and Bertram Gallant 2022 ). Challenges to academic integrity are not new: Students have long found and used tools to circumvent the work their teachers assign to them, and research on these behaviors spans nearly a century (Cizek 1999 ; Hartshorne and May 1928 ; McCabe et al. 2012 ). One recent example is contract cheating, where students pay other people to do their schoolwork for them, such as writing an essay (Bretag et al. 2019 ; Curtis and Clare 2017 ). While very few students (less than 5% by most estimates) tend to use contract cheating, AI has the potential to make cheating more accessible and affordable and it raises many new questions about the relationship between technology, academic integrity, and ethics in education (Cotton et al. 2023 ; Eke 2023 ; Susnjak 2022 ).

To date, there is very little empirical evidence to inform debates about the likely impact of ChatGPT on education or to inform what best practices might look like regarding use of the technology (Dwivedi et al. 2023 ; Lo 2023 ). The primary goal of the present research is to provide such evidence with reference to college-essay writing. One critical question is whether college students can pass off work generated by ChatGPT as their own. If so, large numbers of students may simply paste in ChatGPT responses to essays they are asked to write without the kind of active engagement with the material that leads to deep learning (Chi and Wylie 2014 ). This problem is likely to be exacerbated when students brag about doing this and earning high scores, which can encourage other students to follow suit. Indeed, this kind of bragging motivated the present work (when the last author learned about a college student bragging about using ChatGPT to write all of her final papers in her college classes and getting A’s on all of them).

In support of the possibility that instructors may have trouble identifying ChatGPT-generated test, some previous research suggests that ChatGPT is capable of successfully generating college- or graduate-school level writing. Yeadon et al. ( 2023 ) used AI to generate responses to essays based on a set of prompts used in a physics module that was in current use and asked graders to evaluate the responses. An example prompt they used was: “How did natural philosophers’ understanding of electricity change during the 18th and 19th centuries?” The researchers found that the AI-generated responses earned scores comparable to most students taking the module and concluded that current AI large-language models pose “a significant threat to the fidelity of short-form essays as an assessment method in Physics courses.” Terwiesch ( 2023 ) found that ChatGPT scored at a B or B- level on the final exam of Operations Management in an MBA program, and Katz et al. ( 2023 ) found that ChatGPT has the necessary legal knowledge, reading comprehension, and writing ability to pass the Bar exam in nearly all jurisdictions in the United States. This evidence makes it very clear that ChatGPT can generate well-written content in response to a wide range of prompts.

Distinguishing AI-generated from human-generated work

What is still not clear is how good instructors are at distinguishing between ChatGPT-generated writing and writing generated by students at the college level given that it is at least possible that ChatGPT-generated writing could be both high quality and be distinctly different than anything people generally write (e.g., because ChatGPT-generated writing has particular features). To our knowledge, this question has not yet been addressed, but a few prior studies have examined related questions. In the first such study, Gunser et al. ( 2021 ) used writing generated by a ChatGPT predecessor, GPT-2 (see Radford et al. 2019 ). They tested nine participants with a professional background in literature. These participants both generated content (i.e., wrote continuations after receiving the first few lines of unfamiliar poems or stories), and determined how other writing was generated. Gunser et al. ( 2021 ) found that misclassifications were relatively common. For example, in 18% of cases participants judged AI-assisted writing to be human-generated. This suggests that even AI technology that is substantially less advanced than ChatGPT is capable of generating writing that is hard to distinguish from human writing.

Köbis and Mossink ( 2021 ) also examined participants’ ability to distinguish between poetry written by GPT-2 and humans. Their participants were given pairs of poems. They were told that one poem in each pair was written by a human and the other was written by GPT-2, and they were asked to determine which was which. In one of their studies, the human-written poems were written by professional poets. The researchers generated multiple poems in response to prompts, and they found that when the comparison GPT-2 poems were ones they selected as the best among the set generated by the AI, participants could not distinguish between the GPT-2 and human writing. However, when researchers randomly selected poems generated by GPT-2, participants were better than chance at detecting which ones were generated by the AI.

In a third relevant study, Waltzer et al. ( 2023a ) tested high school teachers and students. All participants were presented with pairs of English essays, such as one on why literature matters. In each case one essay was written by a high school student and the other was generated by ChatGPT, and participants were asked which essay in each pair had been generated by ChatGPT. Waltzer et al. ( 2023a ) found that teachers only got it right 70% of the time, and that students’ performance was even worse (62%). They also found that well-written essays were harder to distinguish from those generated by ChatGPT than poorly written ones. However, it is unclear the extent to which these findings are specific to the high school context. It should also be noted that there were no clear right or wrong answers in the types of essays used in Waltzer et al. ( 2023a ), so the results may not generalize to essays that ask for factual information based on specific class content.

AI detection skills, attitudes, and perceptions

If college instructors find it challenging to distinguish between writing generated by ChatGPT and college students, it raises the question of what factors might be correlated with the ability to perform this discrimination. One possible correlate is experience with ChatGPT, which may allow people to recognize patterns in the writing style it generates, such as a tendency to formally summarize previous content. Content-relevant knowledge is another possible predictor. Individuals with such knowledge will presumably be better at spotting errors in answers, and it is plausible that instructors know that AI tools are likely to get content of introductory-level college courses correct and assume that essays that contain errors are written by students.

Another possible predictor is confidence about one’s ability to discriminate on the task or on particular items of the task (Erickson and Heit 2015 ; Fischer & Budesco, 2005 ; Wixted and Wells 2017 ). In other words, are AI discriminations made with a high degree of confidence more likely to be accurate than low-confidence discriminations? In some cases, confidence judgments are a good predictor of accuracy, such as on many perceptual decision tasks (e.g., detecting contrast between light and dark bars, Fleming et al. 2010 ). However, in other cases correlations between confidence and accuracy are small or non-existent, such as on some deductive reasoning tasks (e.g., Shynkaruk and Thompson 2006 ). Links to confidence can also depend on how confidence is measured: Gigerenzer et al. ( 1991 ) found overconfidence on individual items, but good calibration when participants were asked how many items they got right after seeing many items.

In addition to the importance of gathering empirical data on the extent to which instructors can distinguish ChatGPT from college student writing, it is important to examine how college instructors and students perceive AI in education given that such attitudes may affect behavior (Al Darayseh 2023 ; Chocarro et al. 2023 ; Joo et al. 2018 ; Tlili et al. 2023 ). For example, instructors may only try to develop precautions to prevent AI cheating if they view this as a significant concern. Similarly, students’ confusion about what counts as cheating can play an important role in their cheating decisions (Waltzer and Dahl 2023 ; Waltzer et al. 2023b ).

The present research

In the present research we developed an assessment that we gave to college instructors and students (Study 1) and ChatGPT itself (Study 2). The central feature of the assessment was an AI Identification Test , which included 6 pairs of essays. In each case (as was indicated in the instructions), one essay in each pair was generated by ChatGPT and the other was written by college students. The task was to determine which essay was written by the chatbot. The essay pairs were drawn from larger pools of essays of each type.

The student essays were written by students as part of a graded exam in a psychology class, and the ChatGPT essays were generated in response to the same essay prompts. Of interest was overall performance and to assess potential correlates of performance. Performance of college instructors was of particular interest because they are the ones typically responsible for grading, but performance of students and ChatGPT were also of interest for comparison. ChatGPT was also of interest given anecdotal evidence that college instructors are asking ChatGPT to tell them whether pieces of work were AI-generated. For example, the academic integrity office at one major university sent out an announcement asking instructors not to report students for cheating if their evidence was solely based on using ChatGPT to detect AI-generated writing (UCSD Academic Integrity Office, 2023 ).

We also administered an AI Attitude Assessment (Waltzer et al. 2023a ), which included questions about overall levels of optimism and pessimism about the use of AI in education, and the appropriateness of specific uses of AI in academic settings, such as a student submitting an edited version of a ChatGPT-generated essay for a writing assignment.

Study 1: College instructors and students

Participants were given an online assessment that included an AI Identification Test , an AI Attitude Assessment , and some demographic questions. The AI Identification Test was developed for the present research, as described below (see Materials and Procedure). The test involved presenting six pairs of essays, with the instructions to try to identify which one was written by ChatGPT in each case. Participants also rated their confidence before the task and after responding to each item, and reported how many they thought they got right at the end. The AI Attitude Assessment was drawn from Waltzer et al. ( 2023a ) to assess participants’ views of the use of AI in education.

Participants

For the testing phase of the project, we recruited 140 instructors who had taught or worked as a teaching assistant for classes at the college level (69 of them taught psychology and 63 taught other subjects such as philosophy, computer science, and history). We recruited instructors through personal connections and snowball sampling. Most of the instructors were women (59%), white (60%), and native English speakers (67%), and most of them taught at colleges in the United States (91%). We also recruited 145 undergraduate students ( M age = 20.90 years, 80% women, 52% Asian, 63% native English speakers) from a subject recruitment system in the psychology department at a large research university in the United States. All data collection took place between 3/15/2023 and 4/15/2023 and followed our pre-registration plan ( https://aspredicted.org/mk3a2.pdf ).

Materials and procedure

Developing the ai identification test.

To create the stimuli for the AI Identification Test, we first generated two prompts for the essays (Table 1 ). We chose these prompts in collaboration with an instructor to reflect real student assignments for a college psychology class.

Fifty undergraduate students hand-wrote both essays as part of a proctored exam in their psychology class on 1/30/2023. Research assistants transcribed the essays and removed essays from the pool that were not written in third-person or did not include the correct number of sentences. Three additional essays were excluded for being illegible, and another one was excluded for mentioning a specific location on campus. This led to 15 exclusions for the Phonemic Awareness prompt and 25 exclusions for the Studying Advice prompt. After applying these exclusions, we randomly selected 25 essays for each prompt to generate the 6 pairs given to each participant. To prepare the texts for use as stimuli, research assistants then used a word processor to correct obvious errors that could be corrected without major rewriting (e.g., punctuation, spelling, and capitalization).

All student essays were graded according to the class rubric on a scale from 0 to 10 by two individuals on the teaching team of the class: the course’s primary instructor and a graduate student teaching assistant. Grades were averaged together to create one combined grade for each essay (mean: 7.93, SD: 2.29, range: 2–10). Two of the authors also scored the student essays for writing quality on a scale from 0 to 100, including clarity, conciseness, and coherence (combined score mean: 82.83, SD : 7.53, range: 65–98). Materials for the study, including detailed scoring rubrics, are available at https://osf.io/2c54a/ .

The ChatGPT stimuli were prepared by entering the same prompts into ChatGPT ( https://chat.openai.com/ ) between 1/23/2023 and 1/25/2023, and re-generating the responses until there were 25 different essays for each prompt.

Testing Phase

In the participant testing phase, college instructors and students took the assessment, which lasted approximately 10 min. All participants began by indicating the name of their school and whether they were an instructor or a student, how familiar they were with ChatGPT (“Please rate how much experience you have with using ChatGPT”), and how confident they were that they would be able to distinguish between writing generated by ChatGPT and by college students. Then they were told they would get to see how well they score at the end, and they began the AI Identification Test.

The AI Identification Test consisted of six pairs of essays: three Phonemic Awareness pairs, and three Studying Advice pairs, in counterbalanced order. Each pair included one text generated by ChatGPT and one text generated by a college student, both drawn randomly from their respective pools of 25 possible essays. No essays were repeated for the same participant. Figure 1 illustrates what a text pair looked like in the survey.

Example pair of essays for the Phonemic Awareness prompt. Top: student essay. Bottom: ChatGPT essay

For each pair, participants selected the essay they thought was generated by ChatGPT and indicated how confident they were about their choice (slider from 0 = “not at all confident” to 100 = “extremely confident”). After all six pairs, participants estimated how well they did (“How many of the text pairs do you think you answered correctly?”).

After completing the AI Identification task, participants completed the AI Attitude Assessment concerning their views of ChatGPT in educational contexts (see Waltzer et al. 2023a ). On this assessment, participants first estimated what percent of college students in the United States would ask ChatGPT to write an essay for them and submit it. Next, they rated their concerns (“How concerned are you about ChatGPT having negative effects on education?”) and optimism (“How optimistic are you about ChatGPT having positive benefits for education?”) about the technology on a scale from 0 (“not at all”) to 100 (“extremely”). On the final part of the AI Attitude Assessment, they evaluated five different possible uses of ChatGPT in education (such as submitting an essay after asking ChatGPT to improve the vocabulary) on a scale from − 10 (“really bad”) to + 10 (“really good”).

Participants also rated the extent to which they already knew the subject matter (i.e., cognitive psychology and the science of learning), and were given optional open-ended text boxes to share any experiences from their classes or suggestions for instructors related to the use of ChatGPT, or to comment on any of the questions in the Attitude Assessment. Instructors were also asked whether they had ever taught a psychology class and to describe their teaching experience. At the end, all participants reported demographic information (e.g., age, gender). All prompts are available in the online supplementary materials ( https://osf.io/2c54a/ ).

Data Analysis

We descriptively summarized variables of interest (e.g., overall accuracy on the Identification Test). We used inferential tests to predict Identification Test accuracy from group (instructor or student), confidence, subject expertise, and familiarity with ChatGPT. We also predicted responses to the AI Attitude Assessment as a function of group (instructor or student). All data analysis was done using R Statistical Software (v4.3.2; R Core Team 2021 ).

Key hypotheses were tested using Welch’s two-sample t-tests for group comparisons, linear regression models with F-tests for other predictors of accuracy, and Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMMs, Hox 2010 ) with likelihood ratio tests for within-subjects trial-by-trial analyses. GLMMs used random intercepts for participants and predicted trial performance (correct or incorrect) using trial confidence and essay quality as fixed effects.

Overall performance on AI identification test

Instructors correctly identified which essay was written by the chatbot 70% of the time, which was above chance (chance: 50%, binomial test: p < .001, 95% CI: [66%, 73%]). Students also performed above chance, with an average score of 60% (binomial test: p < .001, 95% CI: [57%, 64%]). Instructors performed significantly better than students (Welch’s two-sample t -test: t [283] = 3.30, p = .001).

Familiarity With subject matter

Participants rated how much previous knowledge they had in the essay subject matter (i.e., cognitive psychology and the science of learning). Linear regression models with F- tests indicated that familiarity with the subject did not predict instructors’ or students’ accuracy, F s(1) < 0.49, p s > .486. Psychology instructors did not perform any better than non-psychology instructors, t (130) = 0.18, p = .860.

Familiarity with ChatGPT

Nearly all participants (94%) said they had heard of ChatGPT before taking the survey, and most instructors (62%) and about half of students (50%) said they had used ChatGPT before. For both groups, participants who used ChatGPT did not perform any better than those who never used it before, F s(1) < 0.77, p s > .383. Instructors’ and students’ experience with ChatGPT (from 0 = not at all experienced to 100 = extremely experienced) also did not predict their performance, F s(1) < 0.77, p s > .383.

Confidence and estimated score

Before they began the Identification Test, both instructors and students expressed low confidence in their abilities to identify the chatbot ( M = 34.60 on a scale from 0 = not at all confident to 100 = extremely confident). Their confidence was significantly below the midpoint of the scale (midpoint: 50), one-sample t -test: t (282) = 11.46, p < .001, 95% CI: [31.95, 37.24]. Confidence ratings that were done before the AI Identification test did not predict performance for either group, Pearson’s r s < .12, p s > .171.

Right after they completed the Identification Test, participants guessed how many text pairs they got right. Both instructors and students significantly underestimated their performance by about 15%, 95% CI: [11%, 18%], t (279) = -8.42, p < .001. Instructors’ estimated scores were positively correlated with their actual scores, Pearson’s r = .20, t (135) = 2.42, p = .017. Students’ estimated scores were not related to their actual scores, r = .03, p = .731.

Trial-by-trial performance on AI identification test

Participants’ confidence ratings on individual trials were counted as high if they fell above the midpoint (> 50 on a scale from 0 = not at all confident to 100 = extremely confident). For these within-subjects trial-by-trial analyses, we used Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMMs, Hox 2010 ) with random intercepts for participants and likelihood ratio tests (difference score reported as D ). Both instructors and students performed better on trials in which they expressed high confidence (instructors: 73%, students: 63%) compared to low confidence (instructors: 65%, students: 56%), D s(1) > 4.59, p s < .032.

Student essay quality

We used two measures to capture the quality of each student-written essay: its assigned grade from 0 to 10 based on the class rubric, and its writing quality score from 0 to 100. Assigned grade was weakly related to instructors’ accuracy, but not to students’ accuracy. The text pairs that instructors got right tended to include student essays that earned slightly lower grades ( M = 7.89, SD = 2.22) compared to those they got wrong ( M = 8.17, SD = 2.16), D (1) = 3.86, p = .050. There was no difference for students, D (1) = 2.84, p = .092. Writing quality score did not differ significantly between correct and incorrect trials for either group, D (1) = 2.12, p = .146.

AI attitude assessment

Concerns and hopes about chatgpt.

Both instructors and students expressed intermediate levels of concern and optimism. Specifically, on a scale from 0 (“not at all”) to 100 (“extremely”), participants expressed intermediate concern about ChatGPT having negative effects on education ( M instructors = 59.82, M students = 55.97) and intermediate optimism about it having positive benefits ( M instructors = 49.86, M students = 54.08). Attitudes did not differ between instructors and students, t s < 1.43, p s > .154. Participants estimated that just over half of college students (instructors: 57%, students: 54%) would use ChatGPT to write an essay for them and submit it. These estimates also did not differ by group, t (278) = 0.90, p = .370.

Evaluations of ChatGPT uses

Participants evaluated five different uses of ChatGPT in educational settings on a scale from − 10 (“really bad”) to + 10 (“really good”). Both instructors and students rated it very bad for someone to ask ChatGPT to write an essay for them and submit the direct output, but instructors rated it significantly more negatively (instructors: -8.95, students: -7.74), t (280) = 3.59, p < .001. Attitudes did not differ between groups for any of the other scenarios (Table 2 ), t s < 1.31, p s > .130.

Exploratory analysis of demographic factors

We also conducted exploratory analyses looking at ChatGPT use and attitudes among different demographic groups (gender, race, and native English speakers). We combined instructors and students because their responses to the Attitude Assessment did not differ. In these exploratory analyses, we found that participants who were not native English speakers were more likely to report using ChatGPT and to view it more positively. Specifically, 69% of non-native English speakers had used ChatGPT before, versus 48% of native English speakers, D (1) = 12.00, p < .001. Regardless of native language, the more experience someone had with ChatGPT, the more optimism they reported, F (1) = 18.71, p < .001, r = .37). Non-native speakers rated the scenario where a student writes an essay and asks ChatGPT to improve its vocabulary slightly positively (1.19) whereas native English speakers rated it slightly negatively (-1.43), F (1) = 11.00, p = .001. Asian participants expressed higher optimism ( M = 59.14) than non-Asian participants ( M = 47.29), F (1) = 10.05, p = .002. We found no other demographic differences.

Study 2: ChatGPT

Study 1 provided data on college instructors’ and students’ ability to recognize ChatGPT-generated writing and about their views of the technology. In Study 2, of primary interest was whether ChatGPT itself might perform better at identifying ChatGPT-generated writing. Indeed, the authors have heard discussions of this as a possible solution to recognize AI-generated writing. We addressed this question by repeatedly asking ChatGPT to act as a participant in the AI Identification Task. While doing so, we administered the rest of the assessment given to participants in Study 1. This included our AI Attitude Assessment, which allowed us to examine the extent to which ChatGPT produced attitude responses that were similar to those of the participants in Study 1.

Participants, materials, and procedures

There were no human participants for Study 2. We collected 40 survey responses from ChatGPT, each run in a separate session on the platform ( https://chat.openai.com/ ) between 5/4/2023 and 5/15/2023.

Two research assistants were trained on how to run the survey in the ChatGPT online interface. All prompts from the Study 1 survey were used, with minor modifications to suit the chat format. For example, slider questions were explained in the prompt, so instead of “How confident are you about this answer?” the prompt was “How confident are you about this answer from 0 (not at all confident) to 100 (extremely confident)?”. In pilot testing, we found that ChatGPT sometimes failed to answer the question (e.g., by not providing a number), so we prepared a second prompt for every question that the researcher used whenever the first prompt was not answered (e.g., “Please answer the above question with one number between 0 to 100.”). If ChatGPT still failed on the second prompt, the researcher marked it as a non-response and moved on to the next question in the survey.

Data analysis

Like Study 1, all analyses were done in R Statistical Software (R Core Team 2021 ). Key analyses first used linear regression models and F -tests to compare all three groups (instructors, students, ChatGPT). When these omnibus tests were significant, we followed up with post-hoc pairwise comparisons using Tukey’s method.

AI identification test

Overall accuracy.

ChatGPT generated correct responses on 63% of trials in the AI Identification Test, which was significantly above chance, binomial test p < .001, 95% CI: [57%, 69%]. Pairwise comparisons found that this performance by ChatGPT was not any different from that of instructors or students, t s(322) < 1.50, p s > .292.

Confidence and estimated performance

Unlike the human participants, ChatGPT produced responses with very high confidence before the task generally ( m = 71.38, median = 70) and during individual trials specifically ( m = 89.82, median = 95). General confidence ratings before the test were significantly higher from ChatGPT than from the humans (instructors: 34.35, students: 34.83), t s(320) > 9.47, p s < .001. But, as with the human participants, this confidence did not predict performance on the subsequent Identification task, F (1) = 0.94, p = .339. And like the human participants, ChatGPT’s reported confidence on individual trials did predict performance: ChatGPT produced higher confidence ratings on correct trials ( m = 91.38) than incorrect trials ( m = 87.33), D (1) = 8.74, p = .003.

ChatGPT also produced responses indicating high confidence after the task, typically estimating that it got all six text pairs right ( M = 91%, median = 100%). It overestimated performance by about 28%, and a paired t -test confirmed that ChatGPT’s estimated performance was significantly higher than its actual performance, t (36) = 9.66, p < .001. As inflated as it was, estimated performance still had a small positive correlation with actual performance, Pearson’s r = .35, t (35) = 2.21, p = .034.

Essay quality

The quality of the student essays as indexed by their grade and writing quality score did not significantly predict performance, D s < 1.97, p s > .161.

AI attitude Assessment

Concerns and hopes.

ChatGPT usually failed to answer the question, “How concerned are you about ChatGPT having negative effects on education?” from 0 (not at all concerned) to 100 (extremely concerned). Across the 40% of cases where ChatGPT successfully produced an answer, the average concern rating was 64.38, which did not differ significantly from instructors’ or students’ responses, F (2, 294) = 1.20, p = .304. ChatGPT produced answers much more often for the question, “How optimistic are you about ChatGPT having positive benefits for education?”, answering 88% of the time. The average optimism rating produced by ChatGPT was 73.24, which was significantly higher than that of instructors (49.86) and students (54.08), t s > 4.33, p s < .001. ChatGPT only answered 55% of the time for the question about how many students would use ChatGPT to write an essay for them and submit it, typically generating explanations about its inability to predict human behavior and the fact that it does not condone cheating when it did not give an estimate. When it did provide an estimate ( m = 10%), it was vastly lower than that of instructors (57%) and students (54%), t s > 7.84, p s < .001.

Evaluation of ChatGPT uses

ChatGPT produced ratings of the ChatGPT use scenarios that on average were rank-ordered the same as the human ratings, with direct copying rated the most negatively and generating practice problems rated the most positively (see Fig. 2 ).

Average ratings of ChatGPT uses, from − 10 = really bad to + 10 = really good. Human responses included for comparison (instructors in dark gray and students in light gray bars)

Compared to humans’ ratings, ratings produced by ChatGPT were significantly more positive in most scenarios, t s > 3.09, p s < .006, with two exceptions. There was no significant difference between groups in the “format” scenario (using ChatGPT to format an essay in another style such as APA), F (2,318) = 2.46, p = .087. And for the “direct” scenario, ChatGPT tended to rate direct copying more negatively than students ( t [319] = 4.08, p < .001) but not instructors (t[319] = 1.57, p = .261), perhaps because ratings from ChatGPT and instructors were already so close to the most negative possible rating.

In 1950, Alan Turing said he hoped that one day machines would be able to compete with people in all intellectual fields (Turing 1950 ; see Köbis and Mossink 2021 ). Today, by many measures, the large-language model, ChatGPT, appears to be getting close to achieving this end. In doing so, it is raising questions about the impact this AI and its successors will have on individuals and the institutions that shape the societies in which we live. One important set of questions revolves around its use in higher education, which is the focus of the present research.

Empirical contributions

Detecting ai-generated text.

Our central research question focused on whether instructors can identify ChatGPT-generated writing, since an inability to do so could threaten the ability of institutions of higher learning to promote learning and assess competence. To address this question, we developed an AI Identification Test in which the goal was to try to distinguish between psychology essays written by college students on exams versus essays generated by ChatGPT in response to the same prompts. We found that although college instructors performed substantially better than chance, they still found the assessment to be challenging, scoring an average of only 70%. This relatively poor performance suggests that college instructors have substantial difficulty detecting ChatGPT-generated writing. Interestingly, this performance by the college instructors was the same average performance as Waltzer et al. ( 2023a ) observed among high school instructors (70%) on a similar test involving English literature essays, suggesting the results are generalizable across the student populations and essay types. We also gave the assessment to college students (Study 1) and to ChatGPT (Study 2) for comparison. On average, students (60%) and ChatGPT (63%) performed even worse than instructors, although the difference only reached statistical significance when comparing students and instructors.

We found that instructors and students who went into the study believing they would be very good at distinguishing between essays written by college students versus essays generated by ChatGPT were in fact no better at doing so than participants who lacked such confidence. However, we did find that item-level confidence did predict performance: when participants rated their confidence after each specific pair (i.e., “How confident are you about this answer?”), they did perform significantly better on items they reported higher confidence on. These same patterns were observed when analyzing the confidence ratings from ChatGPT, though ChatGPT produced much higher confidence ratings than instructors or students, reporting overconfidence while instructors and students reported underconfidence.

Attitudes toward AI in education

Instructors and students both thought it was very bad for students to turn in an assignment generated by ChatGPT as their own, and these ratings were especially negative for instructors. Overall, instructors and students looked similar to one another in their evaluations of other uses of ChatGPT in education. For example, both rated submitting an edited version of a ChatGPT-generated essay in a class as bad, but less bad than submitting an unedited version. Interestingly, the rank orderings in evaluations of ChatGPT uses were the same when the responses were generated by ChatGPT as when they were generated by instructors or students. However, ChatGPT produced more favorable ratings of several uses compared to instructors and students (e.g., using the AI tool to enhance the vocabulary in an essay). Overall, both instructors and students reported being about as optimistic as they were concerned about AI in education. Interestingly, ChatGPT produced responses indicative of much more optimism than both human groups of participants.

Many instructors commented on the challenges ChatGPT poses for educators. One noted that “… ChatGPT makes it harder for us to rely on homework assignments to help students to learn. It will also likely be much harder to rely on grading to signal how likely it is for a student to be good at a skill or how creative they are.” Some suggested possible solutions such as coupling writing with oral exams. Others suggested that they would appreciate guidance. For example, one said, “I have told students not to use it, but I feel like I should not be like that. I think some of my reluctance to allow usage comes from not having good guidelines.”

And like the instructors, some students also suggested that they want guidance, such as knowing whether using ChatGPT to convert a document to MLA format would count as a violation of academic integrity. They also highlighted many of the same problems as instructors and noted beneficial ways students are finding to use it. One student noted that, “I think ChatGPT definitely has the potential to be abused in an educational setting, but I think at its core it can be a very useful tool for students. For example, I’ve heard of one student giving ChatGPT a rubric for an assignment and asking it to grade their own essay based on the rubric in order to improve their writing on their own.”

Theoretical contributions and practical implications

Our findings underscore the fact that AI chatbots have the potential to produce confident-sounding responses that are misleading (Chen et al. 2023 ; Goodwins 2022 ; Salvi et al. 2024 ). Interestingly, the underconfidence reported by instructors and students stands in contrast to some findings that people often expressed overconfidence in their abilities to detect AI (e.g., deepfake videos, Köbis et al. 2021 ). Although general confidence before the task did not predict performance, specific confidence on each item of the task did predict performance. Taken together, our findings are consistent with other work suggesting confidence effects are context-dependent and can differ depending on whether they are assessed at the item level or more generally (Gigerenzer et al. 1991 ).

The fact that college instructors have substantial difficulty differentiating between ChatGPT-generated writing and the writing of college students provides evidence that ChatGPT poses a significant threat to academic integrity. Ignoring this threat is also likely to undermine central aspects of the mission of higher education in ways that undermine the value of assessments and disincentivize the kinds of cognitive engagement that promote deep learning (Chi and Wylie 2014 ). We are skeptical of answers that point to the use of AI detection tools to address this issue given that they will always be imperfect and false accusations have potential to cause serious harm (Dalalah and Dalalah 2023 ; Fowler 2023 ; Svrluga, 2023 ). Rather, we think that the solution will have to involve developing and disseminating best practices regarding creating assessments and incentivizing cognitive engagement in ways that help students learn to use AI as problem-solving tools.

Limitations and future directions

Why instructors perform better than students at detecting AI-generated text is unclear. Although we did not find any effect of content-relevant expertise, it still may be the case that experience with evaluating student writing matters, and instructors presumably have more such experience. For example, one non-psychology instructor who got 100% of the pairs correct said, “Experience with grading lower division undergraduate papers indicates that students do not always fully answer the prompt, if the example text did not appear to meet all of the requirements of the prompt or did not provide sufficient information, I tended to assume an actual student wrote it.” To address this possibility, it will be important to compare adults who do have teaching experience with those who do not.

It is somewhat surprising that experience with ChatGPT did not affect the performance of instructors or students on the AI Identification Test. One contributing factor may be that people pick up on some false heuristics from reading the text it generates (see Jakesch et al. 2023 ). It is possible that giving people practice at distinguishing the different forms of writing with feedback could lead to better performance.

Why confidence was predictive of accuracy at the item level is still not clear. One possibility is that there are some specific and valid cues many people were using. One likely cue is grammar. We revised grammar errors in student essays that were picked up by a standard spell checker in which the corrections were obvious. However, we left ungrammatical writing that didn’t have obvious corrections (e.g., “That is being said, to be able to understand the concepts and materials being learned, and be able to produce comprehension.“). Many instructors noted that they used grammatical errors as cues that writing was generated by students. As one instructor remarked, “Undergraduates often have slight errors in grammar and tense or plurality agreement, and I have heard the chat bot works very well as an editor.” Similarly, another noted, “I looked for more complete, grammatical sentences. In my experience, Chat-GPT doesn’t use fragment sentences and is grammatically correct. Students are more likely to use incomplete sentences or have grammatical errors.” This raises methodological questions about what is the best comparison between AI and human writing. For example, it is unclear which grammatical mistakes should be corrected in student writing. Also of interest will be to examine the detectability of writing that is generated by AI and later edited by students, since many students will undoubtedly use AI in this way to complete their course assignments.

We also found that student-written essays that earned higher grades (based on the scoring rubric for their class exam) were harder for instructors to differentiate from ChatGPT writing. This does not appear to be a simple effect of writing quality given that a separate measure of writing quality that did not account for content accuracy was not predictive. According to the class instructor, the higher-scoring essays tended to include more specific details, and this might have been what made them less distinguishable. Relatedly, it may be that the higher-scoring essays were harder to distinguish because they appeared to be generated by more competent-sounding writers, and it was clear from instructor comments that they generally viewed ChatGPT as highly competent.

The results of the present research validate concerns that have been raised about college instructors having difficulty distinguishing writing generated by ChatGPT from the writing of their students, and document that this is also true when students try to detect writing generated by ChatGPT. The results indicate that this issue is particularly pronounced when instructors evaluate high-scoring student essays. The results also indicate that ChatGPT itself performs no better than instructors at detecting ChatGPT-generated writing even though ChatGPT-reported confidence is much higher. These findings highlight the importance of examining current teaching and assessment practices and the potential challenges AI chatbots pose for academic integrity and ethics in education (Cotton et al. 2023 ; Eke 2023 ; Susnjak 2022 ). Further, the results show that both instructors and students have a mixture of apprehension and optimism about the use of AI in education, and that many are looking for guidance about how to ethically use it in ways that promote learning. Taken together, our findings underscore some of the challenges that need to be carefully navigated in order to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of AI in education.

Data availability

Supplementary materials, including data, analysis, and survey items, are available on the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/2c54a/ .

Abbreviations

Artificial Intelligence

Confidence Interval

Generalized Linear Mixed Model

Generative Pre-trained Transformer

Standard Deviation

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Acknowledgements

We thank Daniel Chen and Riley L. Cox for assistance with study design, stimulus preparation, and pilot testing. We also thank Emma C. Miller for grading the essays and Brian J. Compton for comments on the manuscript.

This work was partly supported by a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for T. Waltzer (NSF SPRF-FR# 2104610).

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Waltzer, T., Pilegard, C. & Heyman, G.D. Can you spot the bot? Identifying AI-generated writing in college essays. Int J Educ Integr 20 , 11 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-024-00158-3

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Published on November 6, 2020 by Raimo Streefkerk . Revised on January 17, 2024.

The 7th edition of the APA Publication Manual provides guidelines for clear communication , citing sources , and formatting documents. This article focuses on paper formatting.

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References are ordered alphabetically by the first author’s last name. If the author is unknown, order the reference entry by the first meaningful word of the title (ignoring articles: “the”, “a”, or “an”).

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In an APA Style paper, every page has a page header. For student papers, the page header usually consists of just a page number in the page’s top-right corner. For professional papers intended for publication, it also includes a running head .

A running head is simply the paper’s title in all capital letters. It is left-aligned and can be up to 50 characters in length. Longer titles are abbreviated .

APA headings have five possible levels. Heading level 1 is used for main sections such as “ Methods ” or “ Results ”. Heading levels 2 to 5 are used for subheadings. Each heading level is formatted differently.

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The title page is the first page of an APA Style paper. There are different guidelines for student and professional papers.

Both versions include the paper title and author’s name and affiliation. The student version includes the course number and name, instructor name, and due date of the assignment. The professional version includes an author note and running head .

For more information on writing a striking title, crediting multiple authors (with different affiliations), and writing the author note, check out our in-depth article on the APA title page .

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The abstract is a 150–250 word summary of your paper. An abstract is usually required in professional papers, but it’s rare to include one in student papers (except for longer texts like theses and dissertations).

The abstract is placed on a separate page after the title page . At the top of the page, write the section label “Abstract” (bold and centered). The contents of the abstract appear directly under the label. Unlike regular paragraphs, the first line is not indented. Abstracts are usually written as a single paragraph without headings or blank lines.

Directly below the abstract, you may list three to five relevant keywords . On a new line, write the label “Keywords:” (italicized and indented), followed by the keywords in lowercase letters, separated by commas.

APA Style does not provide guidelines for formatting the table of contents . It’s also not a required paper element in either professional or student papers. If your instructor wants you to include a table of contents, it’s best to follow the general guidelines.

Place the table of contents on a separate page between the abstract and introduction. Write the section label “Contents” at the top (bold and centered), press “Enter” once, and list the important headings with corresponding page numbers.

The APA reference page is placed after the main body of your paper but before any appendices . Here you list all sources that you’ve cited in your paper (through APA in-text citations ). APA provides guidelines for formatting the references as well as the page itself.

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Write the section label “References” at the top of a new page (bold and centered). Place the reference entries directly under the label in alphabetical order.

Finally, apply a hanging indent , meaning the first line of each reference is left-aligned, and all subsequent lines are indented 0.5 inches.

Tables and figures are presented in a similar format. They’re preceded by a number and title and followed by explanatory notes (if necessary).

Use bold styling for the word “Table” or “Figure” and the number, and place the title on a separate line directly below it (in italics and title case). Try to keep tables clean; don’t use any vertical lines, use as few horizontal lines as possible, and keep row and column labels concise.

Keep the design of figures as simple as possible. Include labels and a legend if needed, and only use color when necessary (not to make it look more appealing).

Check out our in-depth article about table and figure notes to learn when to use notes and how to format them.

The easiest way to set up APA format in Word is to download Scribbr’s free APA format template for student papers or professional papers.

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APA Style papers should be written in a font that is legible and widely accessible. For example:

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Georgia (11pt.)

The same font and font size is used throughout the document, including the running head , page numbers, headings , and the reference page . Text in footnotes and figure images may be smaller and use single line spacing.

You need an APA in-text citation and reference entry . Each source type has its own format; for example, a webpage citation is different from a book citation .

Use Scribbr’s free APA Citation Generator to generate flawless citations in seconds or take a look at our APA citation examples .

Yes, page numbers are included on all pages, including the title page , table of contents , and reference page . Page numbers should be right-aligned in the page header.

To insert page numbers in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, click ‘Insert’ and then ‘Page number’.

APA format is widely used by professionals, researchers, and students in the social and behavioral sciences, including fields like education, psychology, and business.

Be sure to check the guidelines of your university or the journal you want to be published in to double-check which style you should be using.

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Choose a Good Topic

Start Research as Soon as Possible

Pick out Specific, Compelling Resources

Create an Outline

Write a Draft

Ask for a Peer Review of Your Academic Paper

Final Draft

What Is Essay Format?

How to Write an Essay in APA Format

What Is APA Format?

Frequently Asked Questions

Steps to a Successful APA Format Essay

Choose a Topic

Research Your Topic

Write Your Rough Draft

Review and Revise

Essay Papers Writing Online

The Complete Essay Format Guide

1. Introduction

2. Body Paragraphs

3. Conclusion

4. Formatting

Understanding Essay Structure Basics

Types of Essay Formats

Exploring Common Essay Styles

Comparing Argumentative and Narrative Essays

Elements of a Well-Formatted Essay

Key Components for a Strong Essay

Choosing the Right Format for Your Essay

Considerations for Selecting Essay Styles

Related Post

Essay Format - An Easy Guide & Examples

What is an Essay Format?

Types of Essay Formats

How to Write an Essay in MLA Format?

MLA vs. APA

How to Write an Essay in APA Format?

Chicago Essay Format

Basic Parts of an Essay Format

Formatting an Essay

Essay Format Examples

Keep reading

Paper Format

Essay Format: A Basic Guide With Examples

What is an Essay Format?

How To Format Essay in MLA Style

MLA Essay Format Template

Sample MLA Essay

How to Format Essay in APA

APA Essay Format Template

Sample APA Essay

How to Format Essay in Chicago Style

Chicago Essay Format Template

Sample Chicago Essay

Formatting In-Text Citations: APA, MLA, and Chicago Styles

Essay Format PDF Examples

How to Determine What Format to Follow

Factor 1- Subject and Discipline

Factor 2- Professor's Instructions