How To Write A Persuasive College Essay
Persuasive essays are one of the most common types of assigned work whether before, during, or after your college life. Persuasive college writing is required by most colleges and is usually taken during admission examinations for your university applications. A persuasive essay for college students is also highly required in many of the courses that you would take (or would be taking) because it provides an overview of how well you present your facts, and arguments, support your point, and finally, “persuade” the reader of your point of view.
Generally, however, the main point and purpose of persuasive essays are to provide one’s point of view and provide the facts and opinions you have about it, in a way that would convince the reader.
Following this, we could easily see how important a persuasive essay is, in admissions and college life. Thus, in order to help you, here are some persuasive college essay help and tips to get started.
Topic choice
To start writing a persuasive essay, the first thing to do is to find an interesting topic that you have a keen understanding of. It is very important for you to already have proficient knowledge about it, since the better you know about the topic the easier it is for you to depend on your point of view. However, looking for a good persuasive college essay topic is not easy due to the fact that meeting these two criteria is not easy to satisfy.
Thus, here are some tips and creative ‘hooks’ that you can choose from.
Tips for choosing a topic
- Find a topic that suits your interests;
- Find a topic which has many sources available;
- Choose those which have useful applications in your daily life;
- Always note what the instructions are saying, this includes the range of topics which you can choose from;
- Do not choose cliché or overused topics.
Top 20 list of topics
- Should liquor be banned on all college campuses?
- Are kids today too dependent on social media?
- Are college students today getting the right education that they need?
- Is the minimum wage enough?
- Should all male children be required to attend a “military training” course during the course of their school life?
- Should juveniles be sanctioned as false adults?
- Should US approaches to development be less ethnocentric?
- Should riding a motorcycle with a helmet be mandated by law?
- Is the US army fighting a war which can they can win (against terrorism)?
- Is the media today biased towards discussing socio-political issues?
- Is hockey dangerous even for professional players?
- Should a casual day uniform be allowed in public offices?
- Is the clean and green initiative in your state effective in achieving its goals?
- Should we already accept the training and rearing of exotic pets in one’s own backyard?
- Are CCTVs worth using despite the invasion of privacy that it entails?
- Do team sports in elementary bolster a kid’s team-working skills?
- Should school hours be longer or shorter?
- Should vaccination be mandatory for everyone?
- Is your local government effective at enforcing its own laws?
- Is society too overwhelmed with technology and its applications?
The ones presented above are just some good topics in writing persuasive college essays that you can write for your first piece. Remember these are just examples of topics for persuasive college essays and that there are still a lot more to choose from.
College Essay Structure
As compared to other types of literature out there, a persuasive college structure is characterized by its effectiveness and focus on convincing the readers of one’s point of view. However, to be able to do this, a persuasive essay outline is usually prepared in order to make sure that your arguments will get where they are intended.
Here is an example of an outline for a persuasive college essay
Should weapons be permitted on a School Campus?
- Introduction
- Definitions
- Benefits of carrying weapons (e.g. self-defense)
- Thesis statement
- Review of related literature
- Past use of weapons that did something good
- Methodology
- How would you get your data
- What is the scope of the study
- Data analysis
- Conclusion
- Summary of your paper
- What makes your point/argument valid/invalid?
- Discussions
- References
How to write instructions
The next step after writing an outline for your persuasive essay is writing a persuasive college essay introduction. This is the part where you discuss your point with the reader and give them an overview of what to expect next.
Here are some tips for writing your introduction:
- As a general rule of a thumb, always make sure your introduction covers every main point that you will be making throughout your paper
- Make it interesting
- Write in brief sentences
The next step after the introduction of a persuasive college essay is the thesis. Technically, the thesis statement is a part of your introduction, but because of its crucial importance in the essay itself.
Thus, here are some tips for writing your thesis:
- Your thesis should stand out and summarize the min point that you are trying to get across.
- Your thesis should be answered in the conclusion
One good example of a thesis statement regarding the topic of “should gun be banned on schools” is “I believe guns should be banned from schools because its potential (negative) repercussions greatly outweigh its beneficial ones”.
Lastly, the conclusion of a persuasive college essay should be the part where you further convince the reader of what your point is since your body and its supporting arguments should already have done that even before your persuasive college essay conclusion.
- Your conclusion should cover all of the points in your main body
- Your conclusion should be concise
Finalizing essay
After finishing with the conclusion of your persuasive college essay, you might think that everything’s done and good to go. However, in many cases, this is not the case. Persuasive college essays need a lot of proofreading and revising because even a simple mistake could affect how people would view your own argument and its credibility. Thus, it is of prime importance that you have a technique to easily review your essay and review (if needed). One of the best ways to do that is to use proofreaders which are simply available everywhere.
