the purpose of the essay question:
When creating Essay questions, you can use the math and equation editor. To learn more, see .
Your answers for both essay questions combined may not exceed 1,150 words ( Each of you has your own story to tell, so please allocate these words between the essays in the way that is most effective for you. Below is a suggested word count, based on what we typically see.
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Some essay questions don’t seem directly related to your education or life experience, but committees use them to test your creativity and get a better sense of your personality.
Read the questions thoroughly. Take a few minutes before writing your essay to read the question carefully in order to determine exactly what you are being asked to do. Most essay exam questions, or “prompts,” are carefully worded and contain specific instructions about WHAT you are to write about as well as HOW you should organize your answer. The prompt may use one or more of the following terms. If you see one of these terms, try to organize your essay to respond to the question or questions indicated.The chart below outlines 4 main types of essay questions, the verbs/cues that indicate the type of essay question and its purpose, and the strategy to be used to answer it. What follows is a an example of an answer to atypical essay questionthe sort of question you would expect on a compositionmidterm, but also much like essay questions in any discipline. The question andanswer address E. B. White's essay, "Once More to the Lake," an essaycommonly included in composition anthologies. I wrote this answer undertypical test conditions: I gave myself a 40-minute time limit (assuming thatthis would be one of three questions on a test scheduled for two hours), andbegan with the sort of informal prewriting/outline that improves control andcompleteness. I did the whole thing on the computer, and you will see the notesand essay exactly as I wrote them (though the comments on the side were addedlater for your use). The computer allowed me to move things around onscreen, butI used the same method I use on papersetting up general categories withspaces between them, then filling in.
This was designed as an open-book question, so I had E.B. White's essay in front of me as I worked, but of course I had already studiedthe essay and had firm opinions. Good technique really helps you to writeeffective essay answers, but you also need to have studied, to have madeyourself familiar with the content on which you will be tested.The essay question type gives the respondent room to compose a longer essay in response to a question (that may include an image). These must be scored manually by an instructor.Essay questions are often multi-dimensional and can include a range of elements: they can contain a statement of fact to orientate the student to the topic, a question (or several questions), instructions to the student, and guidelines as to the scope of the essay (Webb 1991). For example: Effective answers need not be long; indeed, long answers are often bad answers. A common flaw in essay answers is the writer's inability to communicate the crucial point or, stated differently, separate the facts from their significance. Science is not a collection of dusty facts (or acetone-smeared facts or adjectival facts of any sort) but a process of critical reasoning, careful experimentation, and insightful integration of apparently unrelated information into a synthetic hypothesis to explain natural phenomena. The essay questions require you to perform the first and third of these elements on this small scale.
