essay

How to Write “Intellectual Vitality” Into an Essay

High school students often have a lot of confusion as to what exactly “intellectual vitality” means when they are preparing to write their all-important college application essay. What on earth are they looking for, and how can you show you’ve got it?

Relax! Intellectual vitality is your curiosity about the world and your approach to discovering the answers to questions you have. It doesn’t mean having a genius IQ. As far as your selection board is concerned, it’s not so much a matter of what you’ve got, but how you use it! The key is to show them that you not only have a brain, but you also know how to utilize it. Here are some ways that indicate you have intellectual vitality:

New Ideas Fascinate You

When you come across an interesting new idea, you can’t leave it alone until you know absolutely EVERYTHING there is to know about it. Who dreamed up the idea? How, when, and why did they come up with it? How can it be used, and how well will it work? How does it impact other things?
You’re always thinking about things, analyzing them, looking for links, similarities, differences, and relationships.
You turn things over in your mind and look at them from every angle. No piece of information you process isn’t put through a process of analysis, and you never accept information without first questioning it.

You Always Want to Know The “Why” of Things

After finding out the why, you don’t stop asking questions and seeking new information. If something interests you, you don’t stop until you know a whole lot more, or even everything there is to know about it.
You know why you believe what you believe and do what you do.
You don’t just follow the crowd. You form your own opinions through rational thought, and you look at things from every possible angle. Once you’ve thought things through, you make up your mind and take action.
You don’t mind having your ideas challenged, in fact, you relish it.
You’re not someone who spends listening time thinking about what you’re going to say next. In a debate, you can argue any angle, even if you don’t actually agree with it. You’re always interested in other people’s reasoning, and you’re not afraid to change your mind in the face of evidence.

How Do Your Write All That Into an Essay?

Your college application essay is a chance to talk about yourself. The best way to do that is to tell little stories or anecdotes about yourself to illustrate the kind of person you are, By doing this, you have the opportunity to show this quality in your stories.

It’s important to remember that whatever you decide to write about, be honest. Talk about real-life events and show your intellectual vitality by showing how you applied it. Don’t try to make something up — it will almost always come across as unauthentic.

Here’s an Excerpt That Fits Me

“My grandmother always impressed me by knowing the names of plants. Aged 14, I decided I wanted to know everything there was to know about plants. I soon found it was impossible! Was I deterred? No! It was just what I always wanted, a topic that you could study for years, decades, even lifetimes, and still not know everything. That’s when I decided to study natural sciences.”

“To narrow my field a little, I decided to learn about edible plants, especially edible native plants. I used to horrify friends and family by eating strange berries (after I verified a positive ID, of course) because I wanted to know what they tasted like, how they could be used, and whether there was a reason why they weren’t grown commercially. Often, it was because they either weren’t very nice, or didn’t stay fresh for long.”

Gosh, I’m starting to enjoy this! I could go on…

What About You?

Maybe you used to love taking things apart to see how they worked. Maybe you were even able to put them together again! Perhaps you took on an intellectual challenge (even a fairly simple one) and worked tirelessly till you could be the best at it. Perhaps you identified a common problem and found a novel solution. Maybe you were your school’s debating champion and could argue any side of any debate effectively. Only you will know what events and achievements demonstrate your intellectual vitality.

There are many ways to demonstrate intellectual vitality and include it in your essay. Just remember, the selection board doesn’t want to know how clever you are as much as they want to know how you think.

Show this by identifying times in your life when you solved a problem, discovered something, or became passionate about a field of learning, even if it doesn’t relate to your coursework. It’ll only be difficult to write about if you try to invent something. It’s always easier to tell the truth!

Good luck with your college admission essay. Have fun writing it, and show them what you’re made of by being yourself.

How Many Paragraphs in an Essay?

There is no firm rule that says an essay needs to have a set number of paragraphs, but an essay must be a minimum of three paragraphs. There are a lot of people who say an essay should be five paragraphs, but it’s an extremely limiting rule, and unless you’ve been instructed to write a five paragraph essay, there’s no reason to stick to it.

As a rule, you’ll write your essay in three main parts. First, you’ll introduce your topic to your reader. Next, you will have body text in which you discuss the topic in more detail, and finally, you’ll have a conclusion that tells your reader what you were able to see after looking into the facts or thinking through the topic.

In its simplest form, an essay can consist of three paragraphs with one paragraph being devoted to each section. Proponents of the five paragraph essay say that the body text should consist of three paragraphs, but in reality, it’s fine to write more or fewer paragraphs in this section.

Guessing How Many Paragraphs Before You Begin

This is a rule of thumb, which means it won’t always work quite that way, but it’s handy all the same. In academic work, your paragraphs are likely to be a bit longer than most of the ones you see in this blog post. On average, there are usually 100 to 200 words in a paragraph. So if you’d like a guesstimate, you can assume that a 1,000-word essay will have between five and ten paragraphs.

What Points Do You Have to Cover?

Another, less limiting and more accurate way to work out how many paragraphs you need to cover your topic is to look at the main points you have to cover in the body text. A paragraph contains all the ideas that support or explain a single concept.

When you are planning your essay, you will think of or research the main elements that are needed in the body text. It would be safe to assume you need at least one paragraph for each of these. Of course, if there is a lot of information to cover in order to explore each area, you may need more.

For example, if you are writing an essay on childhood development and exposure to technology, you will want to look into the physical, psychological and cognitive developmental effects of tech on kids. When you research this topic, you will find that there are contrasting points of view and researchers have identified several physical, developmental, and psychological effects of technology use in children.

Assuming five psychological effects have been identified, you can assume you’ll need to write five paragraphs if you are going to write a relatively in-depth essay. But if both those who say technology is bad for kids and those who say it can be good have done a great deal of work on the sub-topic, you might want to make that ten paragraphs so that you can cover both sides of the argument and look into how earlier authors reached their conclusions.

Of course, if you have been set a relatively short word limit, you may not be able to go in-depth at all, in which case a paragraph for each of the main sub-topics (psychology, physical development, and cognitive development) will likely be adequate.

Essay Content Is More Important Than the Number of Paragraphs

Ultimately, your essay will be evaluated on the information you present, not on the number of paragraphs in the essay. Early in your academic life, teachers and lecturers may give you both a structure for your essay and a guideline on how long each part of the essay should be. I have seen essay instructions say how many marks are allocated for each section, and my trick is to take the total word count and allocate a percentage of words to each section based on the percentage of marks you can get for it. After all, if the teacher is allocating 80 marks for content in total and you can see 50% of the mark relates to a certain part of the essay, then 50% of your essay’s words should be devoted to that section.

Sometimes, you’ll just be given a topic and told to air your opinion. This gives you more freedom, but it’s a tad more difficult. The research will show you how many angles you should look at, and it’ll help you to find information that both supports and contradicts your point of view. To make a strong argument, you need to look at both supporting and contradictory information.

To avoid getting tangled up in one aspect of the discussion, you’ll have to decide how long it should be. If it’s the most important aspect informing your conclusion, you can spend a little more time (and words) on that particular point. It could run into several paragraphs rather than just one or two.

Always Remember the Purpose of Paragraphs

Paragraphs structure information into sub-topics, and they make your work easier to read and understand thanks to the structure they provide. With careful advance planning, you’ll be able to work out more or less how many paragraphs you need to complete your essay.

How many paragraphs is…

For those looking for a general rule-of-thumb, below are some estimates on the number of paragraphs there would be in an essay of different lengths based on an average length of 150 words per paragraph. Of course, the number of paragraphs for your essay will depend on many different factors. You can use the following information for a general reference, but don’t take these numbers as literal..

Basic Essay Word to Paragraphs Conversions

A 100 word essay is 3 paragraph. (minimum for an essay)
A 200 word essay is 3 paragraphs. (minimum for an essay)
A 250 word essay is 3 paragraphs. (minimum for an essay)
A 300 word essay is 3 paragraphs. (minimum for an essay)
A 400 word essay is 3 paragraphs. (minimum for an essay)
A 500 word essay is 3 to 4 paragraphs.
A 600 word essay is 4 paragraphs.
A 700 word essay is 4 to 5 paragraphs.
A 750 word essay is 5 paragraphs.
A 800 word essay is 5 to 6 paragraphs.
A 900 word essay is 6 paragraphs.
A 1,000 word essay is 6 to 7 paragraphs.
A 1,250 word essay is 8 to 9 paragraphs.
A 1,500 word essay is 10 paragraphs.
A 1,750 word essay is 11 to 12 paragraphs.
A 2,000 word essay is 13 to 14 paragraphs.
A 2,500 word essay is 16 to 17 paragraphs.
A 3,000 word essay is 20 paragraphs.
A 4,000 word essay is 26 to 27 paragraphs.
A 5,000 word essay is 33 to 34 paragraphs.
A 6,000 word essay is 40 paragraphs.
A 7,000 word essay is 46 to 37 paragraphs.
A 7,500 word essay is 50 paragraphs.
A 8,000 word essay is 53 to 54 paragraphs.
A 9,000 word essay is 60 paragraphs.
A 10,000 word essay is 66 to 67 paragraphs.

How to Write a Great Anecdote

Before we start talking about how to write an anecdote, you may be wondering, “What is an anecdote?” Basically, it’s a short story about something that happened to you, someone you know, or know of. If you and your friends are chatting about a person, and you remember something they did, then tell the story as part of the conversation, you have used an anecdote.

Why Use Anecdotes?

Anecdotes are used to give a personal perspective, illustrate a point, make people think about something, or make them laugh. One of the places where you might find anecdote writing useful is when writing a college application essay. Perhaps something that happened in your life inspired you to study in a certain direction, and you’d like to share the story to show why you are highly motivated to do well.

Non-fiction, informal essays can also be livened up with anecdotes that show how the information you’re sharing works in practice, and why people need to know about or think about the topic. For example, when I write about gender discrimination in the workplace, I always remember to point out that women can also be guilty of this.

A female boss I worked under years ago didn’t like hiring young women, “They’re just going to get married and move away or have babies, and then we have to give them maternity leave,” she would say. This illustrates that women are sometimes also guilty of gender discrimination.

You can also use anecdotes to amuse or entertain. Not all anecdotes are serious! If something really funny happens to you today, you’ll tell your friends, won’t you? That’s an anecdote! Here’s one of my favorites:

My brother used to have an absolute obsession with answering the phone in time. He would get quite agitated if it stopped ringing before anyone picked up. One day, the phone started ringing while he was in the bathroom. He called out in a panicky voice, “Ring the phone! It’s answering!” The phone didn’t get answered. I was laughing much too hard for that!

How to Write an Anecdote

First, be sure the anecdote you have in mind is relevant to the context. If you are writing about dogs, for example, an anecdote about a cat is irrelevant. Ask yourself, “Why do I want to use this anecdote? What point does it illustrate?”

Next, consider these questions:

Who was involved in the story?
What happened?
When did it happen? Is this relevant?
Where did it happen? Is this relevant?

Because an anecdote is a mini-story, you structure it in the same way that you would structure a longer piece. You introduce the story, you say what happened, and you either draw a conclusion or ask a question so your reader can reach his or her own conclusion.

The main point you’re trying to get across is your “punchline” (whether it’s funny or serious), so save it for last. The first thing to mention is the person or group of people directly involved in the story. In my anecdote about a sexist female boss, I introduce her, but not the other people on the recruitment panel. They are not relevant to the story itself, so we leave them out.

We also don’t bother to mention the weather, the color of the boardroom furniture, and so on. These facts don’t contribute to the story. If they did, we could add them. Always remember you’re illustrating a point, and anything that doesn’t form part of that point will be a distraction.

Once you have introduced your players and have provided any necessary context to set the stage, you can move on to explaining what happened. Begin at the beginning and write the events chronologically. It’s possible to tell your anecdote differently, but this is the easiest way to keep it coherent and easy to understand. Lastly, state your conclusion, or ask your readers to draw their own conclusion.

The Differences Between Anecdotes and Stories

Anecdotes are short. At most, they will consist of a paragraph, or maybe two paragraphs. Stories are longer. When we write stories, we can include a lot more detail, and we will spend more effort on drawing the reader into the scene so that they feel part of it.

Can an Anecdote Be a Single Sentence? Yes, It Can

“My cat always cuddles me in the morning.”
“George is so polite, he always shakes hands instead of just greeting me.”
“When I was a student, I worked in a bookshop after classes.”

Admittedly, these aren’t great anecdotes, but they are anecdotes nonetheless.

How to Write a Great Anecdote

Choose a relevant event that happened to you or someone else (even a famous figure).
Is your story interesting, amusing, inspiring or thought-provoking? Try to aim for at least one of these.
Structure your ideas.
Tell your story briefly.
Draw a conclusion.

Does anyone out there have an anecdote about anecdotes? Do tell!

How Long Does It Take to Write a 1000 Word Essay?

How long does it take to write an essay?

Oh wow! That’s a tough question. It depends on a whole lot of things. At the same time, you shouldn’t be intimidated. 1,000 words is actually a relatively short piece. A dissertation would usually be in the region of 12,000 words, and university assignments can stretch to essays of 5,000 words. No matter what your assigned word count may be, some of the things that will influence the time it takes to write the essay include:

How long does it take to research an essay?

If you’re writing an opinion piece on something you already have some knowledge about, you may not have to do any research at all. It may just be a matter of organizing your existing thoughts into a coherent essay. If you need to find out about a topic before you begin to write, you can easily get information on certain topics, whilst others will be more obscure and therefore more difficult to research. Clearly, the easier it is to find information, the faster you can write.

How good are your reading comprehension skills?

Some of us can just skim a piece and pick up all the salient points. Others will have to read with more attention, and even re-read a piece several times to extract the information we need. Having good reading and comprehension skills makes writing much faster since you’re able to “get” the facts faster and organize them better. Now you know why you had to do so many reading comprehension tests at school.

How well did you plan?

Throwing yourself headlong at a 1,000-word essay and writing till you reach the word count may seem like the easy option, but it isn’t. Planning your essay so that it begins with an introduction, highlights the most important points you want to make and then wraps everything up into a conclusion actually saves you time. Sometimes, essay instructions will tell you how to structure the piece, so read them carefully and extract any information you can use to guide your essay’s structure.

How fast do you type?

Have you ever gotten lost halfway through a sentence? You know what you wanted to say, but halfway through, the thought slips away from you. The faster you can type, the more easily you can capture thoughts before your mind moves onto the next thing and you forget what you were trying to say. Typing skills are essential in the modern world. Consider using typing games to improve your speed.

How long does it take me to write a 1,000-word essay?

Faster isn’t always better. The more in-depth your report is meant to be, the longer you should spend on it. I can usually research and write a fairly technical magazine article of 1,000 words in three hours, but do remember that I’m a professional writer. I’m fast because I write all day, every day.

The longest I’ve ever spent on a 1,000-word article was 12 hours. It was absolutely brutal! The information I needed to gather was very technical, hard to find, and even more difficult to understand, and you can’t write something until you really understand the subject matter. I also had to contact experts for their opinions, but I couldn’t even ask about their opinions until I could target them with the right questions. As a result, I actually had to write most of the article before slotting in the expert comment.

The quickest I’ve ever written a 1,000-word article is one hour. In this case, I already knew the subject matter well and didn’t have to back up every fact in the essay with references.

Reviewing your work also matters

If you’re writing for grades and want a good one, you need a really good essay. Don’t start writing it the day before you have to hand it in. Try and get your first draft down at least a day or two before you have to submit your work. Then return to it and do your editing. Read your essay aloud to yourself, since this will help you pick up any careless errors you wouldn’t otherwise spot. Check to see if your information flows logically from one point to the next and make sure that you’ve presented your information clearly.

Remember, teachers get tired. They have to read the same kind of essay over and over again when they grade. If they struggle to understand what you’re saying, you might not get as good a grade as you would if you stuck to using short sentences and relatively simple language.

Your reviewing process shouldn’t take all that long. If you don’t have to make a lot of changes, you should be able to do your final edit in under half an hour.

Take your time. Whatever you do, don’t rush. You might want your essay to be written quickly, but if it’s an important essay, taking your time will give you a better finished product. Budget your time conservatively. It’s better to find that you’ve still got time left over than to run out of time and end up dashing things off with a looming deadline.

Below are some basic guidelines if you need a rough estimate on how long it will take to write an essay. It’s important to remember that there are a plethora of mitigating factors that can increase or decrease the time it takes to write. The below numbers are using an estimate that it takes about 3 hours 20 minutes to write a 1000 word essay:

How long does it take to write a 100 word essay?
It takes about 20 minutes to write a 100 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 200 word essay?
It takes about 40 minutes to write a 200 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 250 word essay?
It takes about 50 minutes to write a 250 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 300 word essay?
It takes about 1 hour to write a 300 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 400 word essay?
It takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes to write a 400 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 500 word essay?
It takes about 1 hour and 40 minutes to write a 500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 600 word essay?
It takes about 2 hours to write a 600 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 700 word essay?
It takes about 2 hours and 20 minutes to write a 700 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 800 word essay?
It takes about 2 hours and 40 minutes to write a 800 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 900 word essay?
It takes about 3 hours to write a 900 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,000 word essay?
It takes about 3 hours and 20 minutes to write a 1,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,250 word essay?
It takes about 4 hours and 10 minutes to write a 1,250 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,500 word essay?
It takes about 5 hours to write a 1,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,750 word essay?
It takes about 5 hours and 50 minutes to write a 1,750 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 2,000 word essay?
It takes about 6 hours and 40 minutes to write a 2,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 2,500 word essay?
It takes about 8 hours and 20 minutes to write a 2,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 3,000 word essay?
It takes about 10 hours to write a 3,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 3,500 word essay?
It takes about 11 hours and 40 minutes to write a 3,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 4,000 word essay?
It takes about 13 hours and 20 minutes to write a 4,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 4,500 word essay?
It takes about 15 hours to write a 4,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 5,000 word essay?
It takes about 16 hours and 40 minutes to write a 5,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 6,000 word essay?
It takes about 20 hours to write a 6,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 7,000 word essay?
It takes about 23 hours and 20 minutes to write a 7,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 7,500 word essay?
It takes about 25 hours to write a 7,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write an 8,000 word essay?
It takes about 26 hours and 40 minutes to write an 8,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 9,000 word essay?
It takes about 30 hours to write a 9,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 10,000 word essay?
It takes about 33 hours and 20 minutes to write a 10,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 12,500 word essay?
It takes about 41 hours and 40 minutes to write a 12,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 15,000 word essay?
It takes about 50 hours to write a 15,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 20,000 word essay?
It takes about 66 hours and 40 minutes to write a 20,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 25,000 word essay?
It takes about 83 hours and 20 minutes to write a 25,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 50,000 word essay?
It takes about 166 hours and 40 minutes to write a 50,000 word essay.

(Image courtesy of Miguel)

How to Increase Your Essay Word Count

When you have an essay assignment with a minimum word count, one of the worst feelings is when you believe you have finished only to find that you’re still well below the minimum you have to reach (as opposed to having too many words). Many students try to solve this problem by rewriting the essay’s sentences to make them wordier or splitting contractions. While these do increase word count, they usually make the essay weaker in the process. It doesn’t have to be that way. If you ever find yourself in a position where you need to increase the number of words for an essay, below are some simple techniques which can help you add to your writing while improving it instead of writing unneeded filler.

Add Examples

Skim through your essay looking for any place you have used an example to make a point. In most cases, you should be able to provide additional examples which will make your essay stronger by showing your understanding of the topic while also increasing the word count. You can also go through the essay and look for statements made where inserting an example would be appropriate to help support the statement.

Address Different Viewpoints

An effective way of increasing word count and improving your essay at the same time is to address different viewpoints to your own. You have the opportunity to discuss how these alternative viewpoints differ from the conclusions you have made, and it gives you an opportunity to explain why you believe your conclusions are superior. This shows you have considered a range of different opinions while coming to your conclusions, and in doing so make your essay stronger while adding more words.

Clarify Statements

When you find the statements in your writing, if inserting an example doesn’t make sense, then clarifying the statement may be appropriate. This can be achieved by inserting one or more specific statements to clarify the original one. A common way to do this is to follow the statement with, “In other words…” It’s important not to over-clarify statements or use this for every statement you write as it will begin to look like filler, but using it sporadically throughout your essay can increase the word count and show you perfectly understand the points you’re trying to make.

Find Additional Sources

Another way to improve your essay and increase word count is to find additional sources you haven’t previously mentioned which support the statements and conclusions you have made. The more sources you have, the stronger the essay will be in most cases. Spending some time searching for additional sources to add to the essay can be a great way to add quality content to it.

Use Quotations

Chances are you already have appropriate quotations in your essay, and if that’s the case, skip over this suggestion. Adding more will likely not add to your essay. If you haven’t used any, however, finding appropriate quotations from experts in the field that support your statements can be an excellent way to add words to your essay while improving it at the same time.

Rework Introduction and Conclusion

If all of the above haven’t enabled you to reach your word count minimum and you need some filler, look to put it in your introduction and conclusion rather than the body of the essay. Most teachers give more leeway with the introduction and conclusion to be wordy than the guts of the essay. This is something you should try to avoid if at all possible (it’s never good to be wordier than you have to be), but if you tried everything else, it’s better to do it in these two places than in the heart of the essay.

Page Count

If you’re writing an essay which has a minimum page count instead of a minimum word count, the above suggestions will work, but you have a bit more wiggle room as well. You can make slight adjustments to the font and font size you use through a Words per Page Counter. As long as you don’t go overboard, this can be a relatively easy way to increase page count while not taking away from the essay.

(Photo courtesy of Caleb Roenigk)