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I wish I hired this company sooner!
Excellent experience! It saved my relationship with my son too! After 2 months of my son not able to come up with an essay topic and countless weekends of me badgering him, I hired Prompt to take over. My son was matched with an excellent coach who had the ideas flowing for an essay at the very first session. My son felt comfortable, confident and ended up writing an excellent essay that was truly him. It conveyed everything he wanted admissions to know! He had lots of excellent admissions offers. Thank you again!
Date of experience : March 20, 2024
Feedback was timely, thorough, and very organized
Having started the college application process not knowing exactly what schools were looking for, the Prompt process helped me to condense my experiences into appealing essays. I got the three school package for my more competitive schools, but was able to apply what I had learned to my other applications. Coach Jane was amazing and helped me to formulate my ideas through outlines and templates for sentence structures I could try. I had a lot of essays, but feedback was pretty much always ready within a couple days. I would definitely recommend this service for very competitive schools.
Date of experience : March 29, 2024
Reply from Prompt
We are so glad you were able to use your feedback for your other schools! Congratulations on your acceptances!
Proud of my essay!
Prompt helped me create a Common App essay that I could be proud of. They were very responsive with assistance and making appointments to help keep me on top of my timeline.
Date of experience : September 21, 2023
Incredibly Helpful! Amazing Coach!!
Prompt was super super helpful with essay writing and brainstorming!!! I worked with Maya M. who is amazing. She was energetic, supportive, creative, meticulous (which is good for essay editing) and gave amazing feedback. She also saw potential in essay topics that I had overlooked, and it was also amazing to get a second opinion on ideas that I had.
Date of experience : November 01, 2023
Essay help for high caliber universities.
I came to prompt looking for help getting into top colleges in the nation. My coach understood right away what my goals were and through brainstorming calls and many different drafts for each prompt, I was able to write responses that were worthy of getting into my dream schools. Overall, I was very happy with the process through Prompt and look forward to a university education at the school of my choice.
Date of experience : March 19, 2024
Our Prompt writing Coach Jessica is the best!
Our experience with Prompt was great. We didn’t know what we didn’t know until we hired them. We worked with an amazing writing coach named Jessica. She took her time to learn what was important to my son and helped him mold his essays to support his college goals. He was applying test optional to all his schools and was accepted to 11 of 12. One deferral we are still waiting on. He is going to his #1 reach school and that would not be happening without the help we received from Prompt.
Date of experience : August 15, 2023
Leigh is amazing!
My son’s writing coach, Leigh is amazing! I would echo other posts that mention how helpful the brainstorming sessions are as well as the third party feedback for the essays. Worth every penny!
The Prompt essay coach services were a great value
The Prompt essay coach services were a great value from my (parental) perspective. They encouraged time management, and even though the essays were not completed until the 11th hour, our coach was available. This process is very stressful, and the multiple essays that selective schools require make this service even more valuable. If you anticipate that your student is going to be applying early to selective schools, and facing a time crunch during the first semester of the busy senior year, having a neutral third party reviewing and editing is helpful in maintaining a buffer between student and parent.
Prompt will inspire your college applicant to work hard and get those essays done!
Prompt was recommended on a Road2College webinar. I thought that we could use an unbiased intermediary between my child and us (their dad and me) to brainstorm with them and then critique their drafts, so we set up an initial meeting with Prompt, giving them our desired completion date for essays and emphasizing that we needed our child to have deadlines, that we needed their voice to shine through without being subjected to heavy-handed editing that could cross ethical lines. We also wanted a coach skilled in working with teens applying to elite colleges. That is precisely what we received with the Prompt coach! All work was my child's own, written in their own voice and when suggestions were made, this was done to inspire, rather than to do the work for them.
Date of experience : September 01, 2023
The coaches i had worked very well with…
The coaches i had worked very well with me and were very adaptable to my schedule. They understood my story and gave me great ideas on how to further improve my essay. I would definitely recommend prompt to anyone looking to improve their college essay.
Date of experience : July 28, 2023
Phenomenal help for my son with college applications, highly recommend!
My son was assigned to Bria as the Student Success Manager and Emily as the essay coach. Both of them were instrumental in helping my son with his college applications. He was able to get into 14 of his 20 colleges including his top choice. We attribute a huge part of his success to Prompt. Our son had a good 43 essay prompts to write and he needed some support to wade through this arduous process. The essay prompts were not limited to just admission, but also for scholarship and letter of continued interest as well. Prompt was so supportive always. Bria built a customized schedule for him and helped him be on track. Emily, on the other hand helped him in building a solid outline for the essays and she gave a detailed feedback always. Some of his prompts went to five, six and even seven drafts and she was very patient and supportive in every single iteration of the draft submission. With each and every draft, there were meaningful additions and edits and it was gradually looking more refined. Half way through the process, I got the feeling that my son has evolved into not just a better writer but has become a better thinker as well. He learnt how to articulate his thoughts and feelings more clearly across which was a significant change for sure. The essays are the most daunting part of the college application process, and having Prompt by our side was a huge help. Every college had its own dates and deadlines but Bria made it seamless tracking all this for us. My son was not just in time but sometimes a week or more early with his submissions and is very thankful to Prompt. Prompt as a tool had its own cool automation as well. For example, if there were essays that could be reused for subsequent applications, the tool would help the student know which ones they were. I highly recommend Prompt to every student navigating through their college application process.
Date of experience : March 31, 2024
Most Responsive Team Members
My Daughter used prompt services to review her Essays for UC and State California College Admission. She always appreciates the response she gets from her Essay reviewer. I believe Prompt has amazing team members with thorough professionalism. I would recommend my friends for sure to use prompt services for their kids college addmission.
Date of experience : March 07, 2024
They were very helpful
They were very helpful, they helped me brainstorm, make outlines, and edit my essay drafts! I would highly recommend!
Date of experience : November 24, 2023
Helped me write and improve my essays…
Helped me write and improve my essays for college! The work paid off since I’ve gotten into all my top colleges! My coach was really kind and helped me stay on track too.
Date of experience : January 01, 2024
We love Prompt
We love Prompt! 2 of my high school seniors had wonderful experiences working through college applications with these Prompt counselors/ editors. They made the process significantly easier and my students met all their deadlines.
Coach Emily
Coach Emily was excellent at helping my daughter choose topics to write about and was a superb editor and supportive throughout.
Prompt was really helpful!
Prompt was really helpful! I liked that there were no harsh due dates, but friendly reminders of when drafts/apps were due. Written feedback was very detailed and helpful, whether with bigger changes or smaller ones like grammar, syntax, etc. Coaches gave detailed feedback and I could tell they really took the time to read their writing. Coaching sessions were pretty casual/not intimidating, and very helpful with brainstorming and outlining before starting drafts. Eva and Dylan were both very nice!
Date of experience : January 15, 2023
Great overall experience
My daughter enjoyed the process, communication and ease of the system. The coach helped her streamline her essay for Princeton. Being a writer she tends to write in a drawn out and descriptive manor. So having the coach help her trim the essay down to the required amount was key to the process and ultimate success. My only comment would be that if you set a deadline make sure you confirm deadline as you go. Our deadline for submission was missed by 2 weeks, which caused my overachieving daughter some angst.
Date of experience : September 21, 2022
My coach, Anne was phenomenal! She helped me extensively with my supplementals and made them each something better than I ever thought possible. She respected my ideas and bounced off of them, which made me see how well we were able to work together when it came to writing. I could've never gotten into my early action schools if it weren't for her.
Date of experience : January 09, 2022
Common app essay help
My daughter used prompt for help with her common app essay. I found the brainstorming assistance was extremely beneficial. She was able to identify main points then create an outline. The back and forth during the writing process worked for her as well. Having outside professional help took some of the pressure off at home.
Date of experience : August 10, 2022
Get college essay feedback from top writing coaches in 48 hours
Essays are more than words. they're thinking. they're content. starting now helps you identify content gaps, while there’s still time to fill them., prompt is the world's most respected and fastest-growing college essay coaching and feedback company. sign up for coaching or use our free resources., strong essays increase your chances of acceptance up to 10 times as compared with others with a similar academic profile..
Essay coaching options
We offer all-inclusive packages, individual reviews, and free resources.
- Multiple video coaching calls
- Multiple reviews of each draft
- Personal Writing Coach
- Help on every essay (e.g., Common App Essay, supplements)
- Personalized timing and nudges to ensure you finish early
- Get a detailed review of any personal statement (e.g., Common App) or school supplement
- One of our Coaches will help you improve your essay's content, structure, and clarity
More than proofreading
A Prompt coach can help you plan your essay and provide written feedback.
- Plan your writing with video calls
- Receive detailed feedback, nearly an hour of a coach's time per review
- Ensure your writing is compelling, engaging, and well-structured
What families think about Prompt
Prompt is the largest and fastest-growing college essay coaching company in the world. work with us., how many essays do you need to write.
Select the types of schools you're applying to, and we'll give you an estimate based on our work with tens of thousands of families.
Who are our Writing Coaches?
An exclusive team of playwrights, journalists, educators, and authors! All of our Coaches have an undergrad degree and the majority have an advanced degree from a competitive university.
Our acceptance rate is less than 2%. You are more than twice as likely to be accepted to your top school than to join our writing team.
Coaches go through our proprietary training and evaluation process based on our collective experience reviewing more than 100,000 essays.
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The Write Stuff: 4 College Admissions Essay Editing Services Reviewed
Looking for good news about the college admissions process these days? You won't find much of it. Not only has the cost of attending college doubled on average since the 1980s, but also it's gotten considerably harder to get in. The majority of colleges in America have witnessed a plummeting acceptance rate as the number of student applications has exploded. Fifty years ago you had a 20 percent shot at getting into Harvard (all things equal, of course). Now the Crimson's acceptance rate is about 5 percent. In the last 10 years alone, the acceptance rate at many major universities has been cut in half . It's almost enough to make a kid consider trying out for the rowing team .
As if applicants didn't have enough to stress about, colleges have been making it more onerous to apply—requiring additional interviews, recommendations, and SAT Subject Tests. But the most burdensome of them all is an old standby: the application essay.
Essay requirements vary widely from school to school. The 150-plus members of the Coalition for College (which includes Harvard and Vanderbilt) requires a single 500-word essay selected from prompts such as "Describe a time when you made a meaningful contribution to others in which the greater good was your focus. Discuss the challenges and rewards of making your contribution." Those with eyes on the University of California system must write a whopping four essays, with prompts such as "Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced."
Students can reuse essays with other colleges if the prompts are similar enough—or if the schools happen to be members of the same application partnership—but you'd be surprised how seldom this occurs. My daughter found that out the hard way, when she learned that she'd have to write 12 separate essays to cover just five schools.
What's a kid to do who doesn't have parents who both work full-time as writers and editors? Just run their essay through Microsoft grammar check and hope for the best? Good luck. The acceptance rate at the University of Chicago has dropped 81 percent in the last 12 years. It doesn't take a Rhodes scholar to know that if you don't put your best foot forward, you may as well not even bother.
All of this led me to the curious world of online editing services. While you can hire a consultant to help guide your child through this overwhelming maze, these consultants are expensive and much of their work involves managing the complex application process, figuring out which colleges are a good fit, and brainstorming essay topics. If you just need help whipping an already written essay into better shape, an online editor might be a better (and much cheaper) fit.
To be sure, some of these services are exorbitantly expensive. Services like EssayEdge and TopAdmit can run you close to $200 for editing a single essay of fewer than 400 words. I've seen prices as high as $379 after various upsells. Word for word, that's more than what my editor at WIRED makes. (Hi, Mike!)
The good news is there are plenty of more affordable options available. I tested four of them, all reasonably priced and seemingly legitimate. Most of these services charge based on a combination of the word count of the original essay and the turnaround time required. I used the same raw essay from my daughter as a test piece for each of the four services, and requested the slowest turnaround time each of them offered to minimize the cost. I submitted her 383-word raw essay at the same time to each of the services, on a Wednesday afternoon. I gave all the services minimal guidance with my submission, noting only (when prompted) that this was a college application essay. All four of the services allow you to upload a Microsoft Word document and receive a red-lined and comment-filled Word document in return.
When I received the revised essays, I reviewed them along with my wife (also a professional writer) and my daughter, the author. The reviews were done blind, without indicating the source of any of the edits, and we all rated each essay on a 1 to 10 scale. I also threw in a copy that I roughly edited. For the sake of comparison, the raw essay scored an average of 4.8, while my edit garnered a 6.9.
Here's what the various services cost, and how well they performed.
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Total price: $13.91, 48-hour turnaround promised. Edit received within 24 hours.
Scribendi offers seven different turnaround time tiers, but its 72-hour and one-week turnarounds were the same price as the 48-hour turnaround. A four-hour turnaround was quoted at $28.53. Scribendi returned both a changes-tracked version of the document and a "clean" version with all edits accepted. Scribendi's edit was not just the fastest, it was incredibly thorough—almost nitpicky—with 16 comments or prompts to the writer suggesting avenues for additional content or revisions that were beyond the scope of a simple edit. Oddly, the final edit didn't resonate with readers, who largely felt it was somewhat awkward and clunky in its overall flow. That said, the editor's notes and the service's overall speed were a big plusses.
Readers' rating: 5.0
Total price: $13.90, three-day turnaround promised. Edit received after two days.
Elite Editing has an Advanced Editing service for $40, but the $13.90 plan I chose offers only "basic editing," which doesn't include "suggested rewrites to eliminate awkward phrasing, repetition, passive voice, etc." and "taking into account your original assignment." Three days is the standard turnaround; one-day turnaround for the Basic Editing plan would have cost $19.90. The site crashed when I checked out, but my payment and submission both went through successfully. As promised, Elite's edit was indeed basic. Its editor made the fewest changes of any of the services and left only three comments, one of which was about whether the use of indentations and double-spacing was appropriate. While Elite's edits were correct, they weren't terribly deep—although that was enough to propel it to a second-place finish from the readers.
Readers' rating: 5.7
Total price: $15.32, five-day turnaround promised. Edit received after four days.
Wordvice has eight different pricing tiers, with rates as low as 4 cents per word for a seven-day turnaround, though that tier was limited to materials longer than 3,000 words. The five-day turnaround tier was only marginally more expensive. When I received Wordvice's edited document, I was offered an upsell for a "second look" (basically another edit) for 30 percent off. Wordvice's embedded commentary was nearly as thorough as Scribendi's, though Wordvice was less obsessive over grammar and more focused on overall clarity. Turns out that was the right move: Wordvice's edit was the overall favorite of the quartet, and the finished draft reads cleanly and clearly.
Readers' rating: 6.3
Total price: $31.33, seven-day turnaround promised. Edit received after four days.
Scribbr initially quoted a price of $25.36, but I shelled out an extra $6 for both the "structure check" and "clarity check" options, despite not really understanding what those were. Prices include a 2 percent surcharge for using a credit card. For those in a hurry, 24-hour turnaround doubles the price. Scribbr seems more focused on editing academic coursework essays than admissions essays, with a relatively formal structure applied to its edits (removing contractions completely, for example). Editor's commentary was sparse, though on target. This draft was the most divisive of the services, earning high marks from my wife but very low marks from my daughter, who thought it stripped the writing of her voice.
Readers' rating: 5.3
Any good college essay has to end with a conclusion, so here are a few takeaways. First, all of the services sent back essays that were, on average, felt to be an improvement over the original draft, with all of them catching numerous spelling and grammatical errors—so students with no professional editing help may do well to consider them, especially given how affordable these services are. That said, also remember that when you engage with an editing service, you're really engaging with a single (anonymous) editor who you won't ever meet or be able to interact with. That editor won't have any level of understanding of the writer's personality beyond what's on the page, and quality will necessarily vary from one editor to another, even within a given editing service.
Further still, remember that editing quality is always going to be subjective, just like any piece of writing. Except for this story, of course. It's amazing.
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- 14 Best College Essay Services for 2024 (40 Services Reviewed)
Research conducted by Emily Kierkegaard , PhD, and expert-reviewed by Kevin Wong, PrepMaven Co-founder
Not sure which college application essay coaching and editing service is the best? We compared the top 40 services, created in-depth reviews for 14 of them, and narrowed it down to the 4 best that will help guide you through the process of writing amazing college application essays.
What is the Best College Essay Service?
- PrepMaven – best college application essay service overall
- College Essay Mentor – best for individual consultants
- The College Essay Guy – best for unlimited essay assistance
- College Vine – best of the big platforms
The best of the rest:
Individual essay consultants:
- College Essay Editor – small editing team
- Allison Karpf – former English teacher helping students
- Your College Vision – former journalist with more affordable rates
- The College Guru – good on paper but unresponsive
- Sofia Zapiola – budget-friendly application assistance
Mid-size teams:
- Lotus Learning – focus on health sciences
Large platforms:
- Study Point – larger platform with mystery editors
- Ivy Select – larger platform with mystery editors
- Empowerly – larger platform with mystery editors
- BeMo – expensive and aggressive with wrong expertise
Schedule a college essay consultation
Best College Application Essay Services in 2024
#1 – prepmaven.
Our Verdict — Best College Essay Assistance Overall Price: $79–349/hour (minimum $510 package) PrepMaven’s one-on-one college essay assistance is the best option overall. Founded by brothers and Princeton grads Greg and Kevin, almost all of PrepMaven’s essay coaches have Ivy-League experience, primarily from Princeton and Harvard. All essay coaches also undergo a thorough training program in PrepMaven’s methods, developed by professional writers with deep understanding of the college admissions process, for helping students to discover the most compelling stories for their essays. Unlike other services, PrepMaven offers college essay assistance at several different price points. At the most accessible rate, students can work with current Ivy-League undergraduates who specialize in writing and have recently aced the college application process. At higher rates, students can work with coaches who are both Ivy-League grads and professional writers (screenwriters, journalists, editors) with many years of experience helping students to craft compelling essays. Interested students can even work directly with founders Greg and Kevin, who have over 15 years of experience helping students through the entire essay-writing process. PrepMaven’s services combine many of the best features of other good options into one, and it’s hard to beat their experience.
Sign up for PrepMaven’s college essay help now
Any student wanting college essay help, at any point in the process, with a range of budgets.
At a glance:
- Cost: $79–349/hour (minimum $510 package)
- Writing coach qualifications: Princeton graduates and professional writers (or current Princeton students); all trained
What we like:
- Ivy League experience —most of their writing coaches are Princeton grads or current students, with some from Harvard and other Ivies
- Different pricing options to meet different families’ circumstances
- More flexible and greater capacity to take on new students compared to individual consultants
Sign up for PrepMaven’s college essay help
#2 – College Essay Mentor
Our Verdict — Best of the Individual Consultants Price: unknown but high Some college essay consulting services consist of just one expert. Of these individual essay consultants, Chris Hunt at College Essay Mentor is our favorite. He combines writing experience as a journalist for the Economist and the Wall Street Journal with personal experience as a graduate of Dartmouth. However, he only works with a small number of students each year, and students need to apply to work with him — he only accepts students with top grades and test scores who are already strong applicants for top schools. Chris offers the option for one-time written feedback, but this only gives big-picture generalizations. (And written-only feedback is always limited.) In order for help with the essay process, students need to purchase a complete essay package.
Students with top grades and test scores who want to work with a one-person business, who have a sizable budget, and who are ready to get started early.
- Cost: $210 for a one-time written essay feedback (big picture only), then $110 per draft feedback; pricing for essay process packages unknown
- Essay coach qualifications: professional journalist, Dartmouth grad
- Professional writing experience as a journalist
- Extensive experience working with college applicants
- Partners with Debra Felix, former Director of Admissions at Columbia, for full application review
What we don’t like:
- One-on-one work is limited to very high-achieving students, who need to apply with a resume : “I limit my one-on-one work to students who I believe will be strong applicants to elite universities. As a rule, this means having high grades in challenging classes, a test score of ACT 34+ or SAT 1500+, and substantial activities outside of the classroom.”
- Works with a limited number of students (60 per year), so often no availability
- All-or-nothing packages don’t allow students to work with Chris for just a few hours or for part of the essay-writing process
- Secretive about pricing (he’ll only give pricing details once he’s reviewed the student’s resume and agreed to work with them), but we expect the minimum cost of working one-on-one to be several thousand dollars
#3 – The College Essay Guy
Our Verdict — Best for Unlimited Essay Assistance Price: $4900 for application to 3 schools, $8050 for application for 10 schools We’re fans of Ethan Sawyer, the original “college essay guy”— his book, College Essay Essentials , is a great guide to the essay-writing process. Ethan doesn’t work directly with many students these days, but he now has a team of consultants who help students follow his principles. Their assistance is really all-or-nothing — they prefer to work with students from the very beginning of the process, and their minimum package is $4900, which includes assistance with essays for three schools. If students are applying to ten schools (a more realistic number for students aiming at competitive colleges), the fee is a hefty $7400.
Students who want unlimited help through the entire process, who have a sizable budget.
- Cost: $4900 (supplemental essays for 3 schools) – $7400 (supplemental essays for 10 schools)
- Essay coach qualifications: mix of Ivy grads and former teachers, some writers/screenwriters; all trained
- Great free resources about the essay-writing process
- Their Matchlighters Scholars Program gives back to the community by providing admissions consulting for select qualifying students
- All-or-nothing packages have a high minimum fee and don’t work for students who want just a few hours of feedback or help with just part of the process
#4 – College Vine
Our Verdict — Best of the Big Platforms Price: $140–180/hour There are plenty of large platforms with large stables of part-time tutors and coaches available to work with students. Of these big platforms, we think CollegeVine has the best offerings. Compared to other large companies, CollegeVine provides more information about their tutors, and students can pick individual tutors to work with from their roster. However, this model is really just a way of finding individual tutors to hire. Tutors don’t receive any training and don’t share a common approach, so it’s a mixed bag. Their rates are fairly high for part-time tutors who don’t have specific expertise and training in college essay consulting. Because CollegeVine is really just a marketplace where individual tutors can find students, the quality and price will vary widely.
Students who want to work with a big company, or those who want a quick session or two to go over their essays.
- Cost: Typically $140–180/hour
- Essay coach qualifications: no specific qualifications, but a few are Ivy League graduates
- Possible to select individual editors to work with from their roster.
- Easy to schedule ad-hoc sessions with a tutor through the website.
- No training or common approach for tutors
- Editors are part-time , with no option to work with full-time college admissions experts
- Relatively expensive for this level of expertise
College Essay Editing Alternatives (that Didn’t Make the Cut)
Individual essay consultants, #5 – college essay editor.
Our Verdict — Small Editing Team Price: Roughly $5,950 for applications to 10 schools College Essay Editor comprises two graduates of Stanford. This means that they have personal experience applying to highly competitive schools. One member of the team also has a college counseling certification, which is a good background for college essays. Based on their website, they appear to focus on the editing and proofreading phase of the essay-writing process. This can be helpful to students, but we recommend working with a service who can help students to uncover their values and brainstorm really great material that allows them to really shine—and if this doesn’t happen at the beginning of the process, it’s much harder to add in later on.
- Cost: $195/1000 words for proofreading, $495/1000 words for 3 rounds of editing and proofreading, or $595/1000 words for unlimited rounds of editing and proofreading; for the purposes of comparison, complete applications to 10 competitive colleges would be around 9,650 words, or $5950.
- Writing coach qualifications: Stanford graduates, one of whom has college counseling certification
- Editors are graduates of Stanford University , and one is a member of NACAC, the national association of college counselors
- They focus on editing and proofreading only , not on the crucial earlier steps of brainstorming and strategy
- Small team with very limited availability
- All asynchronous editing so you won’t be able to cultivate a real relationship with your essay coach.
#6 – Allison Karpf
Our Verdict — Former English Teacher Helping Students Price: $385/hour or $3850 package for application to one school Another option for students looking to hire an individual consultant is Allison Karpf. Allison is a former high school English teacher and a graduate of UC Berkeley who also holds a Masters of Education from Stanford. Her rates are definitely on the higher side, especially for someone who doesn’t have a professional writing background, but she does have extensive experience working with students to craft their essays.
- Cost: $385/hour or $3850 unlimited counseling (includes supplemental essays for one college)
- Essay coach qualifications: former high school English teacher; Berkeley grad, Stanford MEd
- Lots of experience helping students improve their college essays
- Very quick to respond to client requests
- No professional writing experience or Ivy-Plus undergraduate experience
- High rates relative to other options
- Limited availability , since she works alone
#7 – Your College Vision
Our Verdict: Former Journalist with More Affordable Rates Price: $180/hour, or packages starting from $3500 Laurie Lande is another individual consultant who helps students through the essay-writing process. She comes recommended by other consultants like Chris from College Essay Mentor . Laurie did not herself attend a highly competitive school, so she doesn’t have that personal experience of going through the selective admissions process, but she does have a professional writing background as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong.
- Cost: $180/hour or packages starting at $3500
- Essay coach qualifications: journalism background
- Affordable pricing , relative to other options
- Not a graduate of a highly selective school
#8 – The College Guru
Our Verdict — Good on Paper but Unresponsive Price: unknown Yet another individual essay consultant is Geanine Thompson from The College Guru. Geanine attended Dartmouth as an undergraduate and also holds an MBA from Duke. She also has a professional writing background as an assistant book editor at Berkley Publishing Group. Like Greg and Kevin at PrepMaven , she combines experience in the business world and at Wall Street firms with experience in education.
- Cost: unknown
- Essay coach qualifications: former assistant book editor; Dartmouth grad, Duke MBA
- Dartmouth graduate and former book editor
- Not responsive to emails and client requests
#9 – Sofia Zapiola
Our Verdict — A budget-friendly, personal essay editor. Price: $80/hour Yet another individual essay consultant is Sofia Zapiola, who offers a mix of essay editing and college application counseling services.
- Cost: $80/hour
- Essay coach qualifications: M.A. from Harvard; certificate in College Counseling from UC San Diego.
- Individual approach, budget-friendly rates, commitment to working within families’ budgets.
- Very few testimonials, so it’s difficult to evaluate how effective she is.
Mid-size Teams
#10 – lotus learning.
Our Verdict — Expensive for Tutor Background Price: $165/hour Founded by a Harvard grad who is a former teacher and veteran of the publishing industry, Lotus learning offers college essay help in the Boston area. They have a small team of tutors, mostly recent grads from good but not Ivy-Plus colleges, and mostly with focus in health sciences.
- Cost: $165/hour (minimum 8 hours)
- Essay coach qualifications: tutors are recent grads, but not Ivy-Plus schools
- Reasonable pricing with flexible packages
- Essay editors aren’t graduates of Ivy-Plus schools and don’t have professional writing experience
Large platforms
#11 – study point.
Our Verdict — Larger Platform with Mystery Editors Price: Rates Between $60 and $120/hr Study Point is a larger essay editing service. They claim to have several decades of experience helping students to craft their college essays, but they do not give information about who their essay coaches are and what qualifications they might have.
- Cost: $60-120/hr, depending on tutor experience
- Essay coach qualifications: unknown
- Larger company with several decades of experience
- Unclear who the essay coaches are
- Lack of statistics about their results
#12 – Ivy Select
Our Verdict — Larger Platform with Mystery Editors Price: unknown Ivy Select makes a lot of big promises on their website about having the best college essay consultants in the business, but they offer no information on who these consultants are, or on their backgrounds. They also brag that each consultant “only” works 20 students in one application cycle, but in our experience, that’s quite high.
- Long list of impressive (but anonymous) testimonials
- Only work with “top students”
- No information on their website about who the editors are
- Each essay coach works with up to 20 students at one time
#13 – Empowerly
Our Verdict — Larger Platform with Mystery Editors Price: High, from $6000/year Empowerly has over 60 college counselors who each work with an average of 5 students per year, in order to have more time to devote to each student. Their counselors come from “different educational backgrounds,” and while they do not provide specific biographical details we can assume that most of their essay coaches did not attend highly selective schools.
- Cost: typically from $6000/year
- Essay coach qualifications: college counselors
- Counselors work with just a few students per year
- You have to upgrade to “Empowerly Elite” to guarantee a counselor with a more selective educational background
- No professional writing experience
#14 – Prepory
Our Verdict — Expensive but with Good Expertise Price: $325/hr Prepory is a college application and career counseling service that offers a comprehensive program for college applications at any stage of the process (including as early as 9th grade). They make a lot of impressive claims about the expertise of their coaches, but it’s quite difficult to actual find much information about their essay coach qualifications.
- Cost: $325/hr
- They have a comprehensive college application program that begins as early as 9th grade.
- Limited information about essay coaches
- High prices
Top 40 College Essay Services Considered
- College Essay Editor
- The College Essay Guy
- College Vine
- College Essay Mentor
- Study Point
- Allison Karpf
- The College Guru
- Lotus Learning
- Summit Prep
- Sofia Zapiola
- Ivy Global / New Summits
- College Essay Solutions
- Your College Vision
- Essay Edge*
- ServicEscape*
- PapersForge*
- QuickWriter*
- JustEditMyEssay*
- JustDoMyEsssay*
- ExpertWriting*
- SpeedyPaper*
- GradeMiners*
* A number of services will edit essays directly for students, or even write portions of the essay for students. We do not condone this. Admissions officers can tell when essays have been written or edited by adults and this can have severe consequences. We have excluded these services from our reviews.
Why are college application essays important?
Can a great college essay alone get you into Harvard?
No. You’ll need your grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities (as well as letters of recommendation and interview) to be outstanding.
But can a mediocre essay be the reason you didn’t get into Harvard?
Yes. There are thousands of amazingly-qualified students who graduate from high school each year. Great grades and test scores might be a prerequisite for admission to a competitive college, but they alone aren’t enough.
College essays are a key component of a student’s application . When done well, they transform a collection of numbers—GPA, class rank, SAT or ACT scores , number of AP classes taken, AP scores—into a glimpse of a real, individual person.
Essays do many things. Good college essays can highlight extracurricular achievements which otherwise would be overlooked in a sterile list. Strong essays often indicate the student’s future plans —how they plan to leave a mark on their college campus and on the world. They can shine a light on unique challenges that a student may have had to face on their journey.
College admissions officers only have a few minutes to spend on each application. College essays need to be original, interesting, and memorable . They need to grab the attention of the admissions officer and persuade them that this is the student out of hundreds or thousands of other similarly-qualified applicants who should be admitted.
College admissions essays are usually unlike any other kind of writing that students have done before. They’re a combination of memoir and marketing pitch, and they need to be creative but also highly strategic. That’s a tough assignment!
What’s more, students are left to figure this assignment out on their own. A thoughtful and generous high school English teacher may provide guidance or offer to read essays and give feedback, but these teachers are responsible for many students, and they’re (usually) not experts in admissions strategies.
There’s another reason college essays are especially important from 2024 on. After the recent Supreme Court decision, the application essay has become one of the main ways that you can communicate how your racial identity has affected your life.
In fact, the New York Times published an article about how important it can be for students to discuss race in their college application essays!
Why work with a college essay service?
You may want to consider a college essay service if:
- You have no idea where to start in order to write your college application essays
- You feel overwhelmed by all of the different ideas you have and don’t know what would be the most strategic for college admissions—and what topics to definitely avoid for college essays
- You don’t know how to craft a compelling stor y
- You’re not sure how to edit and refine what you’ve written
- You have a hard time keeping yourself on track and want an external structure to hold you accountable
- You’re tired of conflict between students and parents about college essays
- You’re aiming at a competitive college (not just the Ivy League!) and know that you need your essays to be outstanding
- Your grades, test scores, and extracurriculars aren’t exceptional, so you need your essay to make your essay stand out from the pack
- You’re unfamiliar with the US college admissions process (a common situation for international students and first-generation families in the US)
Any of these are strong reasons to consider working with a college essay service!
It’s also worth remembering that a lot of the free advice on college’s website isn’t always very clear. For example, NYU’s admissions Senior Assistant Director of Admissions says that “There is no right or wrong way to answer as long as your answer is genuine to you.”
While that’s true, that doesn’t offer much guidance on how to actually write the essay!
Though many college applicants might not mention it, more and more students are using professional college application consultants. Research at the University of Chicago has shown that over a quarter of high-achieving seniors employed private specialists to help with the college application process.
In fact, according to NPR , some companies are even offering college admissions counseling to their top employees as an incentive–that’s just how important professional help can be in the current landscape of college admissions.
It’s important to note that a good college essay service will not write your college application essays for you . This is unethical and illegal. That’s not just coming from us: take it from a school like Princeton, whose website insists on the importance of writing your own application essays.
A good college essay service will guide you through each step of the process , teaching you how to self-reflect and write well while sharing insider insight about admissions strategy .
What makes a good college essay service?
We strongly believe that students need to write their own college essays , and we do not condone plagiarism or “buying” a college essay.
However, writing college application essays requires a completely new set of skills that is rarely taught in high school!
Writing a personal essay is much more creative than simply writing a good paper for English class. It requires a compelling narrative and a great deal of writing craft . A good essay service will teach how to do this kind of writing.
There are many college essay services that will provide only written feedback to students, usually in the form of comments added to an essay draft. (Remember, it’s important that students write their own essays, so avoid any college essay service that will make edits directly to an essay document .)
Written comments can be an effective component of good essay coaching. However, writing college essays is a deeply personal process , and it’s incredibly difficult to guide a student through the process of self-reflection, brainstorming, and planning purely through written comments.
In addition, a great college essay coach will teach students how to do this entire process of brainstorming, planning, outlining, writing, and revising . It’s difficult to learn why an essay coach is advising certain changes through written comments alone.
For these reasons, look for a college essay service with live, one-on-one services , not just written feedback. These days, it’s easy to work with the best college essay consultants in the country over Zoom!
Students need to reflect on their goals, their passions, and what drives them to be the person they are. This requires a great deal of self-awareness and self-analysis . An experienced college essay coach can help draw these ideas out of students through tested introspection techniques and brainstorming exercises .
On top of all of that, students need to be cognizant of which traits and accomplishments will be most appealing to colleges , and which stories will be cliche and boring. Personal statements and supplementary essays need to fit together to tell a cohesive story, and they need to work together with the rest of the student’s application (extracurriculars, grades, and other accomplishments).
In other words, there’s a great deal of strategy here! An experienced college essay service can help students decide how to present themselves in the best possible light .
Furthermore, most students don’t know how to edit effectively . A really top-notch college essay service will also teach students how to edit their own writing —how to reorder sections for better flow, cut unnecessary words to meet a word count, eliminate passive verbs, and make their writing vivid and exciting. Our students are routinely amazed by how transformative this step can be, and how much they learn by doing it together with the essay coach.
Finally, the best college essay services can also help students to make a writing plan and keep them on track , so that parents don’t have to be involved directly.
Ready to work on your college essays? Schedule a free 15- to 30-minute consultation with Jessica or one of our founders.
Best overall: PrepMaven’s tutors offer the highest quality at the best price. With three tiers of tutors, they make it easy to work with an Ivy League undergraduate for as little as $79/hr. Or, families can work with education professionals or Ivy League graduates from $150/hr. PrepMaven’s track record means that you can be sure every hour is being spent productively, so that you can expect real results from the work.
Best for individual consultants: College Essay Mentor. In theory, College Essay Mentor would offer an unparalleled level of individual attention and guidance: his website boasts of some very impressive results. You might find it hard to actually schedule with him, however, since he’s very selective about his clients.
Best for unlimited essay assistance: The College Essay Guy might not offer that personalized attention you get from live, face to face essay coaching, but they do offer unlimited essay editing for up to 10 schools (if you’re comfortable paying a hefty package price).
Best of the big platforms: College Vine will always be a bit of a gamble. Because it’s a tutor marketplace, your results (and costs) will really depend on how lucky you get with your consultant. From our research, however, many of their essay coaches look to have solid track records.
Ready to work on college essays with one of our experienced writing coaches? Schedule a free test prep consultation with Jessica (Director of Tutoring) or one of our founders to see what would be the best fit for your family.
It’s always best to start early and not wait until the last minute to write your college essays! Remember that essays can be used to earn scholarships as well as college admission, so a few months of writing now can pay off with up to $300,000 in tuition saved later.
We work with students at all stages of the writing process, from I-have-no-idea-what-to-write to final edits. To start working with an Ivy-League writing coach today, set up a quick free consultation with our team.
Schedule a free college essay consultation
Top College Essay Posts
- Qualities of a Successful College Essay
- 11 College Essays That Worked
- How to Answer the UC Personal Insight Questions
- How Colleges Read your College Applications (A 4-Step Process)
- How to Write the Princeton Supplemental Essays
- The Diamond Strategy: How We Help Students Write College Essays that Get Them Into Princeton (And Other Ivy League Schools)
- What is the College Essay? Your Complete Guide for 202 4
- College Essay Brainstorming: Where to Start
- How to Write the Harvard Supplemental Essays
- How to Format Your College Essay
Emily graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University and holds an MA from the University of Notre Dame. She was a National Merit Scholar and has won numerous academic prizes and fellowships. A veteran of the publishing industry, she has helped professors at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton revise their books and articles. Over the last decade, Emily has successfully mentored hundreds of students in all aspects of the college admissions process, including the SAT, ACT, and college application essay.
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Review a peer essay
Build confidence and improve your own writing by reviewing peer essays. Get into the mindset of a reader trying to understand the writer, just like an admissions officer.
Differentiating yourself is more important than ever
With more schools going test-optional, college essays can help you stand out from the rest, and they can often make the difference between rejection and acceptance.
Essays are 35% of your application
Grades alone won’t get you accepted to your dream school. The college essay is an extremely important piece of your college application. Essays help you stand out from the rest.
Show your personality
Admissions officers want to better understand who you are through your essays. Showcasing your unique view of the world and the experiences that have led you to where you are is pivotal.
Become memorable to admissions
Admissions officers only spend a few minutes on each application. Ensure your essay will be memorable by getting honest feedback from people who don’t already know your story well.
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College Essay Prompts: Complete List, Analysis, and Advice
College Admissions , College Essays
When talking about college essays, we tend to focus on the Common Application prompts , and it's true that many students will need to write a Common App essay. However, there are actually quite a few schools, including both public and private universities, that don't use the Common App and instead ask applicants to respond to their own college essay prompts.
Luckily, college essay prompts tend to be pretty similar to each other. In this guide, I'll list all the college essay questions for popular schools in the US (and a few abroad) and then break down the patterns to help you brainstorm topics and plan how to approach multiple essays efficiently. After reading this guide, you'll be able to strategize which essays you'll write for which colleges.
Feature image: Mayr /Flickr
Why Do Colleges Ask For an Essay?
The short answer: the essay gives admissions committees a sense of your personality beyond the statistics on the rest of your application. The essay is your chance to show the committee your unique perspective and impress them with your maturity and insight.
College application essay prompts are written with this goal in mind. Admissions officers want to give you the chance to share your interests, aspirations, and views on the world, so most prompts ask about how your experiences have shaped you or what you're excited about studying or doing in college. I've collected a ton of examples below and provided some analysis to help you begin planning and crafting your own essays.
Keep in mind that the personal statement alone won't be enough to get you in— your grades and test scores are still the most important factors in your application . That being said, a stellar essay can help bring a borderline applicant over the top or give an excellent but not extraordinary student the opportunity to stand out in a competitive applicant pool.
As such, the essay tends to matter most for very competitive schools. Non-competitive schools generally don't ask you to submit an essay.
Complete List of College Essay Prompts
This list collects the 2022 college essay prompts for major state universities, top-50 schools, and other popular schools which have their own unique questions. They're divided by region, with all optional essays listed at the end.
I left off the Common App supplements, as those often require a substantially different approach. I also stuck to four-year schools, meaning I didn't include special two-year programs, such as Deep Springs College or Miami Dade College's Honors Program (both of which require essays).
Finally, note that these prompts are for freshman applicants, so the requirements might be different for transfer students .
General Applications
There are three general applications you can use to apply to many different schools at once:
Common Application
Universal college application, coalition application.
Each application has its own personal statement requirement. Some schools will ask for additional supplemental essays.
Many more schools accept the Common App than they do the UCA or Coalition Application , though some will accept more than one of these applications.
For the Common App essay, you pick one of the prompts and write 250-650 words about it. Here are the prompts for the 2022-2023 school year:
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.
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?
Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
Describe a problem you've solved or a problem you'd like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma—anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.
Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
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?
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.
The UCA essay prompt is completely open ended and has a 650-word limit. Here is the 2022-2023 prompt:
Please write an essay that demonstrates your ability to develop and communicate your thoughts. Some ideas include: a person you admire; a life-changing experience; or your viewpoint on a particular current event.
For the Coalition Application, you'll pick one of five prompts listed below. While there is no hard word limit, the range guidelines are 500-650 words. Here are the prompts for 2022-2023:
What interests or excites you? How does it shape who you are now or who you might become in the future?
Describe a time when you had a positive impact on others. What were the challenges? What were the rewards?
Has there been a time when an idea or belief of yours was questioned? How did you respond? What did you learn?
What success have you achieved or obstacle have you faced? What advice would you give a sibling or friend going through a similar experience?
Now that you know the essay requirements for the three general applications, let’s look at the application essays for specific schools . To keep things organized, we’ve grouped schools based on the region of the US in which they’re located.
Northeast/Mid-Atlantic
The Great Dome at MIT
Georgetown University
Georgetown asks applicants to write one short essay (about half a single-spaced page) and two longer essays (approximately one single-spaced page each). Each applicant must respond to the first two prompts and can choose among the other four based on the specific program she's interested in.
Short Essay: Briefly (approximately one-half page, single-spaced) discuss the significance to you of the school or summer activity in which you have been most involved.
All Applicants: As Georgetown is a diverse community, the Admissions Committee would like to know more about you in your own words. Please submit a brief essay, either personal or creative, which you feel best describes you.
Applicants to Georgetown College: What does it mean to you to be educated? How might Georgetown College help you achieve this aim? (Applicants to the Sciences and Mathematics or the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics should address their chosen course of study).
Applicants to the School of Nursing & Health Studies: Describe the factors that have influenced your interest in studying health care. Please specifically address your intended major (Global Health, Health Care Management & Policy, Human Science, or Nursing).
Applicants to the Walsh School of Foreign Service: The Walsh School of Foreign Service was founded more than a century ago to prepare generations of leaders to solve global problems. What is motivating you to dedicate your undergraduate studies to a future in service to the world?
Applicants to the McDonough School of Business: The McDonough School of Business is a national and global leader in providing graduates with essential ethical, analytical, financial and global perspectives. Please discuss your motivations for studying business at Georgetown.
For more Georgetown application tips, check out our articles on the Georgetown essays and how to get into Georgetown .
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT doesn't ask for a single personal statement but rather asks applicants to respond to a series of questions with just a paragraph or two of about 200 words each .
We know you lead a busy life, full of activities, many of which are required of you. Tell us about something you do simply for the pleasure of it.
Describe the world you come from (for example, your family, clubs, school, community, city, or town). How has that world shaped your dreams and aspirations?
MIT brings people with diverse backgrounds and experiences together to better the lives of others. Our students work to improve their communities in different ways, from tackling the world’s biggest challenges to being a good friend. Describe one way you have collaborated with people who are different from you to contribute to your community.
Tell us about a significant challenge you've faced (that you feel comfortable sharing) or something that didn't go according to plan. How did you manage the situation?
For more details on how to get into MIT , read our other articles on the MIT application process , tips for MIT essays , and an example of a real MIT acceptance letter !
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Indiana University Bloomington
IU asks for 200-400 words on your plans and interests.
Describe your academic and career plans and any special interest (for example, undergraduate research, academic interests, leadership opportunities, etc.) that you are eager to pursue as an undergraduate at Indiana University. If you encountered any unusual circumstances, challenges, or obstacles in pursuit of your education, share those experiences and how you overcame them. Please note that this essay may be used in scholarship consideration.
University of Illinois
The University of Illinois asks for two essays (or three only if you selected a second-choice major other than what's noted on your application). All responses should be approximately 150 words.
You'll answer two to three prompts as part of your application. The questions you'll answer will depend on whether you're applying to a major or to our undeclared program, and if you've selected a second choice. Each response should be approximately 150 words. If You're Applying to a Major: 1. Explain, in detail, an experience you've had in the past 3 to 4 years related to your first-choice major. This can be an experience from an extracurricular activity, in a class you’ve taken, or through something else. 2. Describe your personal and/or career goals after graduating from UIUC and how your selected first-choice major will help you achieve them. If You're Applying to Our Undeclared Program in the Division of General Studies: 1. What are your academic interests and strengths? You may also include any majors you are considering. 2. What are your future academic or career goals? If You've Selected a Second-Choice Major (Including Undeclared): Please explain your interest in your second-choice major or your overall academic or career goals.
If you're applying to UIUC, check out our UIUC essay tips article as well!
University of Wisconsin–Madison
All applicants must complete two essays for UW–Madison. The essays should be 250-650 words in length and may be used for scholarship and campus program review.
If you apply through the Common Application, you’ll be asked to reply to one of the freshman Common Application essays in lieu of the first essay prompt below, but you’ll be required to respond to the second prompt below.
If you apply through the UW System Application, the following two essays are required:
This part is all about you. Tell us about something you've done — academically or personally — and what you've learned from it. Was it a success or a challenge? Did it represent a turning point in your life? How did this particular moment in your life influence you, and how will it continue to influence you as you pursue your college education?
Tell us why you would like to attend the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In addition, please include why you are interested in studying the major(s) you have selected. If you selected undecided please describe your areas of possible academic interest.
Kyle Field at Texas A&M ( Ed Schipul /Flickr)
The ApplyTexas application is used by all Texas public universities and some private colleges. There are four ApplyTexas essay prompts. Which ones you need to respond to will depend on where you're applying. UT Austin, for example, requires applicants to submit at least one essay responding to Topic A on the ApplyTexas application. .
While there's no set word limit, the online application will cut off each essay at 120 lines (~1000 words).
Topic A: Tell us your story. What unique opportunities or challenges have you experienced throughout your high school career that have shaped who you are today?
Topic B: Most students have an identity, an interest, or a talent that defines them in an essential way. Tell us about yourself.
Topic C: You've got a ticket in your hand – Where will you go? What will you do? What will happen when you get there?
Topic D: Please Note: The essay in this section is specific to certain college majors and is not required by all colleges/universities that accept the Apply Texas Application. If you are not applying for a major in Architecture, Art, Art History, Design, Studio Art, Visual Art Studies/Art Education , you are not required to write this essay.
Personal interaction with objects, images and spaces can be so powerful as to change the way one thinks about particular issues or topics. For your intended area of study (architecture, art history, design, studio art, visual art studies/art education), describe an experience where instruction in that area or your personal interaction with an object, image or space effected this type of change in your thinking. What did you do to act upon your new thinking and what have you done to prepare yourself for further study in this area?
We go into all the ApplyTexas prompts in detail here !
University of Georgia
For UGA, applicants must write two essays, one 200-300 words and one 250-650 words . Both essays are required for all applicants. The longer personal essay uses the Common Application prompts for 2023 ; the prompt for the shorter essay is as follows:
The c ollege admissions process can create anxiety. In an attempt to make it less stressful, please tell us an interesting or amusing story about yourself from your high school years that you have not already shared in your application.
For a more detailed discussion of the UGA essays, read this article .
The Campanile at UC Berkeley
University of California
Students applying to the UC system must respond to four out of eight short personal insight questions. The maximum word count for each response is 350 words.
- Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time.
- Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.
- What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?
- Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.
- Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?
- Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.
- What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?
- Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?
Learn more about the UC essays , the UC application , and how to choose which UC schools to apply to with our complete guides .
University of Oregon
Applicants to the University of Oregon are required to submit one essay of 650 words or fewer. You also have the option to write a second essay (maximum of 500 words), but it’s not required.
The essay prompts are as follows:
The UO is interested in learning more about you. Write an essay of 650 words or less that shares information that we cannot find elsewhere on your application. Any topic you choose is welcome. Some ideas you might consider include your future ambitions and goals, a special talent, extracurricular activity, or unusual interest that sets you apart from your peers, or a significant experience that influenced your life. If you are applying to the UO's Robert D. Clark Honors College, feel free to resubmit your honors college application essay.
Optional second essay: As you've looked into what it will be like to attend Oregon, you've hopefully learned what makes Ducks Ducks. No two are alike, though, so tell us what makes you you, and how that connects to our campus community. We are interested in your thoughts and experiences recognizing difference and supporting equity and inclusion, and choosing one of these two options will guide you in sharing those thoughts. You can learn more about equity and inclusion at Oregon by visiting the Equity and Inclusion website . Maximum statement length is 500 words. This statement is not required.
University of Washington
In addition to its specific prompts, the University of Washington gives specific advice about what its admissions officers consider to be good writing before the prompts:
"At the UW, we consider the college essay as our opportunity to see the person behind the transcripts and the numbers. Some of the best statements are written as personal stories. In general, concise, straightforward writing is best, and good essays are often 300-400 words in length.
Essay Prompt (Required): Tell a story from your life, describing an experience that either demonstrates your character or helped shape it. Maximum length: 650 words.
Short Response (Required): Our families and our communities often define us and our individual worlds. Community might refer to your cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood or school, sports team or club, co-workers, etc. Describe the world you come from and how you, as a product of it, might add to the diversity of the UW. Maximum length: 300 words
You can also find more tips on the University of Washington essays in this blog article .
International
Generally speaking, international schools are less likely to ask for an essay, since admission tends to be heavily focused on grades and test results. However, a few popular international schools do ask for a personal statement as part of their application.
Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UK Schools)
UCAS is a general application for UK schools (similar to the Common App in the US). There's no specific prompt for the personal statement—instead, applicants are required to write an essay describing what they want to study, why they want to study it, and what they bring to the table. There is a 4,000-character/47-line limit.
University of British Columbia
UBC asks applicants to fill out a personal profile consisting of five to seven short-answer questions that vary depending on the program you're applying to. Answers should be 50-200 words.
Depending on which degree program you apply to, you’ll be asked to answer some or all of the following questions on the UBC application:
- Tell us about who you are. How would your family, friends, and/or members of your community describe you? If possible, please include something about yourself that you are most proud of and why.
- What is important to you? And why?
- Family/community responsibilities
- Creative or performing arts
- Work/employment
- Service to others
- Tell us more about one or two activities listed above that are most important to you. Please explain the role you played and what you learned in the process. You will be asked for a reference who can speak to your response.
- Additional information: You may wish to use the space below to provide UBC with more information on your academic history to date and/or your future academic plans. For example: How did you choose your courses in secondary school? Are there life circumstances that have affected your academic decisions to date? What have you done to prepare yourself specifically for your intended area of study at UBC?
- Please submit the names of two referees who know you well and can comment on your preparedness for study at UBC. Examples of referees include an employer, a community member, a coach, a teacher/instructor, or anyone who knows you well. One of the referees you select must be able to speak to one of the activities/experiences described in one of your long-answer responses above. For applicants who are currently attending a high school, one of your referees must be a school official (e.g., Grade 12 or senior year counsellor, teacher, or IB coordinator). Neither referee should be a friend, family member, or paid agent.
Some programs of study may ask applicants to respond to the questions above and some additional, program-specific questions when completing the personal profile.
University of Cambridge
Optional Essays
Some schools don't require an essay from all applicants but do recommend or require an essay for certain programs. I've listed a selection of those prompts below.
Arizona State University
Students applying to the Barrett Honors College at ASU must submit one essay of 300 to 500 words in response to one of the following prompts (your response may be critical or creative):
Prompt 1 Discuss how a specific piece of art (painting, literature, photograph, etc.) or popular culture (song, comic book, etc.) helped you realize something new about yourself or the world. What was that realization, and how did the piece of art or pop culture bring about this change in your thinking? Do not simply describe the piece of art or pop culture; instead, focus on its effect on you and how it makes you a good fit for the Barrett Honors College experience. Prompt 2 Tell us about a habit or way of thinking that others would recognize as “uniquely you.” This is something you value and would hesitate to give up because it is a distinct part of who you are or what makes you different - why is it so? Be sure to share how this aspect of your identity makes you a good fit for the Barrett Honors College experience.
City University of New York
Applicants to Macaulay Honors College must write two essays: an “about you” essay, and an essay describing your plans for college. Each response should be around 500 words, give or take a few within reason.
Essay 1: About you. (Select one of the options below.) 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. OR Tell us about an area or activity, outside of academics, in which you have invested a lot of time and effort. Tell us why. What did you learn? How was it meaningful?
Essay 2: About your plans for college. Please discuss all points below. Why do you want to go to an honors college ? There are many benefits of being a Macaulay student, such as the Macaulay community, special courses, Honors advisement, cultural passport, opportunities funds, and other financial benefits. Please describe how these features will shape you and your college experience, including, what you expect to bring to the college community and what you expect to get out of your college experience.
Florida International University
Only applicants who don't meet the criteria for automatic admissions and whose applications undergo holistic review will need to submit a 500-word essay:
Students requesting appeal or additional review of their admission status must submit a written statement including:
Your goals and educational or professional objectives
A summary/explanation of past academic performance
Information and/or circumstances that may have affected past academic performance
- Any other information the student wishes to have considered
Ohio University
For the Ohio University application, students who've been out of school for more than a year must submit an essay explaining what they've done in their time off from school.
Applicants who have been out of high school for more than one year must submit an essay detailing activities since graduation.
Additionally, applicants to the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism are encouraged, though not required, to submit an essay detailing how they want to help shape the future of journalism.
For all other applicants, submitting an essay here is optional; however, if you do wish to write an essay, the application suggests that you describe any academic challenges you’ve faced, academic and career objectives, or involvement in community affairs (recommended length is 250-500 words).
Those interested in Ohio University's OHIO Honors Program (including the Cutler Scholars Program) are required to answer the following essay prompt (limit 250 words):
Students in the OHIO Honors Program represent all majors on campus and take engaging honors courses while applying what they learn outside of the classroom. Students choose from classes and experiences across three pathways: community engagement, research and creative activity, and leadership . Students in OHP can move among the three pathways as their interests evolve and they develop their goals. What pathway is most exciting to you right now, and why?
Finally, those interested in the Honors Tutorial College are must answer the following two essay prompts (in about 500 words each):
HTC Question 1: Please explain why you have chosen your particular program(s) of study.
HTC Question 2: We expect that one reason you seek a tutorial education is for the one-on-one interaction with faculty, but other than that, what interests you about pursuing a tutorial-based undergraduate education? What aspects of your education and life experience have prepared you for a tutorial education with its emphasis on research and creative activity?
Type 1: Questions About a Meaningful Experience
This type of college essay question is the most common. The exact focus of these prompts can vary quite a bit, but they all ask you to reflect on an important experience. Some questions specify a type of experience whereas others don't, simply opting to have applicants write about whatever matters to them.
There are three basic sub-types that you'll see when dealing with these prompts. Let's look at an example of each.
#1: Overcoming a Challenge
These prompts ask about how you dealt with a particular challenge or solved a problem. Below is a typical example of this question type from the MIT application:
Tell us about the most significant challenge you've faced or something important that didn't go according to plan. How did you manage the situation?
To address a question like this, you need a topic that has real stakes —that is, something that you genuinely struggled with. Even though it can seem as though you should only discuss positive experiences and feelings in your college essay (you want to impress your readers with how awesome you are!), unwavering positivity actually hurts your essay because it makes you seem fake.
Instead, be honest : if you're writing about a negative experience, acknowledge that it was unpleasant or hard and explain why. Doing so will just make your overcoming it that much more impressive.
#2: Engaging With Diversity
Questions about diversity ask how you interact with those who are different from you . See an example below from the Common Application:
When approaching this type of question, you need to show that you're thoughtful about new ideas and perspectives. Colleges are full of students from all kinds of backgrounds, and admissions officers want to know that you'll be accepting of the diversity of other students, even if you don't necessarily agree with them.
Also, make sure to pick a specific instance to focus on. Writing a general essay about how you accept others won't impress admissions officers—you need to show them an example of a time that you did so.
#3: Growing Up
Finally, this type of prompt asks about a transitional experience or rite of passage that made you feel like an adult. I've reprinted another example from the Common App:
For these types of prompts, you want to show personal growth. Explain to the reader not just who you are but also how you've changed . (Really, this is a good idea no matter which prompt you're addressing!)
College can be challenging, so admissions officers want to know that you have the maturity to deal with (likely) living on your own, managing your own life, and planning for your future.
Regardless of the exact prompt, the key to this type of college essay is to show what you've learned from the experience. Admissions officers don't care that much about what happened to you—they care about what you think and feel about that event. That's what will give them a sense of who you are and what kind of college student you'll make.
Essays About a Specific School Generally Can't Be Recycled
If a prompt asks about why you're interested in a specific school or how you'd fit in, don't try to use it for more than one school. Admissions officers want to see that you're excited about their school and will bring something interesting or special to their community. It's impossible to show them this if you can't be bothered to write a unique essay for their application.
Take the time to think about what appeals to you about the specific school or how you relate to its core values.
Essays About Your Goals or Interests Might Need to Be Customized to Each School
For questions that ask about your future, you might be able to keep the same basic structure—assuming you're interested in studying the same subject—and simply tweak the section about your plans for the future to reflect each school's specific programs or activities.
However, don't lie to avoid having to write a new essay. If one school's music program interests you while another school's architecture program does, write a unique essay for each.
How to Write a College Essay That Works: 3 Key Tips
There's one key takeaway from looking at the many prompts above: colleges are looking for your essay to tell them something about you . This idea should be your guiding principle as you write and edit your essay.
I've summarized our top three college essay writing tips below, but for a more in-depth take on the writing process, check out our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .
#1: Pick a Topic You're Excited About
A great essay requires a great topic, and a great topic is one that you really want to write about. Remember that admissions officers want to get to know you : you'll have to be honest about your interests and your perspectives if you want to impress them.
For more guidance on picking a great topic, check out our guides to brainstorming college essay ideas and finding the best topic for you .
#2: Focus On Specific Details
No matter how great your topic, your essay won't be compelling without detailed descriptions that put the reader in your shoes and let them see the world from your perspective. Details are what make an essay stand out because they're unique to you.
For example, a lot of people might have volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, but only one could have stood outside in a pink hat listening to her high school history teacher drone on about the different types of screws for 25 minutes. In short, don't settle for telling readers what you did—show them with specific details.
You also need to explain how the experience affected you and/or why your topic is important to you. Students often get so wrapped up in telling a story that they forget to show why it matters, but your feelings are the most important part of your essay .
This aspect of the essay should also include plenty of details. Otherwise, it's easy to fall into clichés that bog down your storytelling.
#3: Edit Carefully
As you embark upon the college essay writing process, keep in mind the famous Ernest Hemingway quote: "The only kind of writing is rewriting." It might be extremely tempting to just write a draft and call it a day, but revising is a vital step in crafting an engaging essay.
Once you write a first draft, put it in a drawer for a week. Taking some time away from it will allow you to come back to it with fresh eyes. Then, try to read your essay from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about you. Would they be able to understand the story? Do you explain clearly what you learned? Does your intro grab the reader's attention?
It can also be helpful to ask someone you trust, such as a parent, teacher, or peer, to read your essay and give you feedback. Really listen to what they say and think about how you can improve your writing.
Finally, try reading your essay aloud. This will help you catch any weird or awkward phrasings.
What's Next?
If you're struggling with how to approach your personal statement, consider looking at some college essay examples .
The essay is just one part of the college application process. Check out our guide to applying to college for a step-by-step breakdown of what you'll need to do.
Finally, if you're planning to take the SAT or ACT , consider taking a look at our expert test-prep guides for some helpful advice on whatever you might be struggling with.
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Alex is an experienced tutor and writer. Over the past five years, she has worked with almost a hundred students and written about pop culture for a wide range of publications. She graduated with honors from University of Chicago, receiving a BA in English and Anthropology, and then went on to earn an MA at NYU in Cultural Reporting and Criticism. In high school, she was a National Merit Scholar, took 12 AP tests and scored 99 percentile scores on the SAT and ACT.
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Get help writing your college application essays. Find this year's Common App writing prompts and popular essay questions used by individual colleges.
The college essay is your opportunity to show admissions officers who you are apart from your grades and test scores (and to distinguish yourself from the rest of a very talented applicant pool).
2024–25 Common App Essays
Nearly 700 colleges accept the The Common Application , which makes it easy to apply to multiple schools with just one form. If you are using the Common App to apply for college admissions, you will have 250–650 words to respond to ONE of the following prompts:
- 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.
- 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?
- Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
- 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?
- Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
- 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?
- 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.
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Tackling the Common App Essay Prompts
Prompt #1: share your story..
Answer this prompt by reflecting on a hobby, facet of your personality, or experience that is genuinely meaningful and unique to you. Admissions officers want to feel connected to you and an honest, personal statement about who you are draws them in. Your love of superheroes, baking chops, or family history are all fair game if you can tie it back to who you are or what you believe in. Avoid a rehash of the accomplishments on your high school résumé and choose something that the admissions committee will not discover when reading the rest of your application.
Prompt #2: Learning from obstacles.
You're trying to show colleges your best self, so it might seem counterintuitive to willingly acknowledge a time you struggled. But overcoming challenges demonstrates courage, grit, and perseverance! That’s why the last piece of this prompt is essential. The obstacle you write about can be large or small, but you must show the admissions committee how your perspective changed as a result.
Prompt #3: Challenging a belief.
Your answer to this question could focus on a time you stood up to others or an experience when your own preconceived view was challenged. Choose this prompt if you have a relevant—and specific!—experience to recount (and reflect on). A vague essay about a hot button issue doesn’t tell the admissions committee anything useful about YOU.
Prompt #4: Reflecting on gratitude.
Colleges are looking for students with unique experiences that can enhance their future campus community, and this is your chance to share that by recognizing what someone else has done for you. Even though this prompt requires you to reflect on the action of another person, make sure that the focus remains on how the act of kindness impacted you and the way you live your life. This essay should make you and the reader smile.
Prompt #5: Personal growth.
Just like Prompt #2, the accomplishment or event you write about can be anything from a major milestone to a smaller "aha" moment. Describe the event or accomplishment that shaped you but take care to also show what you learned or how you changed. Colleges are looking for a sense of maturity and introspection—pinpoint the transformation and demonstrate your personal growth.
Prompt #6: What captivates you?
This prompt is an invitation to write about something you care about. (So avoid the pitfall of writing about what you think will impress the admission office versus what truly matters to you). Colleges are looking for curious students, who are thoughtful about the world around them. The "what or who do you turn to when you want to learn more” bit isn't an afterthought—it's a key piece of the prompt. Make sure you explain how you pursue your interest, as well.
Read More: QUIZ: Test Your College Knowledge!
Prompt #7: Topic of your choice.
This question might be for you if you have a dynamo personal essay from English class to share or were really inspired by a question from another college’s application. You can even write your own question! Whatever topic you land on, the essentials of a standout college essay still stand: 1.) Show the admissions committee who you are beyond grades and test scores and 2.) Dig into your topic by asking yourself how and why. There isn’t a prompt to guide you, so you must ask yourself the questions that will get at the heart of the story you want to tell.
More College Essay Topics
Individual schools sometimes require supplemental essays. Here are a few popular application essay topics and some tips for how to approach them:
Describe a person you admire.
Avoid the urge to pen an ode to a beloved figure like Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln. The admissions committee doesn't need to be convinced they are influential people. Focus on yourself: Choose someone who has actually caused you to change your behavior or your worldview, and write about how this person influenced you .
Why do you want to attend this school?
Be honest and specific when you respond to this question. Avoid generalities like "to get a good liberal arts education” or “to develop career skills," and use details that show your interests: "I'm an aspiring doctor and your science department has a terrific reputation." Colleges are more likely to admit students who can articulate specific reasons why the school is a good fit for them beyond its reputation or ranking on any list. Use the college's website and literature to do your research about programs, professors, and other opportunities that appeal to you.
Read More: 5 Ways College Application Essays and High School Essays Are Different
What is a book you love?
Your answer should not be a book report. Don't just summarize the plot; detail why you enjoyed this particular text and what it meant to you. What does your favorite book reveal about you? How do you identify with it, and how has it become personal to you?
Again, be honest in answering this question—don't choose a classic from your literature class or a piece of philosophy just because you think it will make you seem smarter. Writing fluently and passionately about a book close to you is always better than writing shakily or generally about a book that doesn't inspire you.
What is an extracurricular activity that has been meaningful to you?
Avoid slipping into clichés or generalities. Take this opportunity to really examine an experience that taught you something you didn't previously know about yourself, got you out of your comfort zone, or forced you to grow. Sometimes it's better to write about something that was hard for you because you learned something than it is to write about something that was easy for you because you think it sounds admirable. As with all essay questions, the most important thing is to tell a great story: how you discovered this activity, what drew you to it, and what it's shown you about yourself.
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College Essay Prompts: What Admissions Officers Are Really Looking For
EssayEdge > Blog > College Essay Prompts: What Admissions Officers Are Really Looking For
The college admissions process is a real source of stress for college applicants, and essay writing is one of its most challenging aspects. These prompts are more than just writing assignments. They are an opportunity to get a glimpse into a student’s personality, interests, and potential.
College admission essay prompts are quite numerous, however, choosing one to reveal one’s personality is challenging and vague. Even though it may be your first time writing this type of application, it needs to be done perfectly to get into college. For elite colleges, this essay is often the deciding factor for getting an interview.
Source: ResearchGate
Your college admission essay can make a big difference in whether you get accepted. The admissions committee looks closely at your personality, which they find important in their decision.
So what’s important to a good essay? What is your admissions committee looking for in it?
Table of Contents:
What are Essay Prompts for College Admission ?
An admissions essay is a 250 to 650-word long text in which you answer a specific question. Most universities and colleges require one main essay. However, schools may also ask for additional ones, such as “Why did you choose our university?” or “Describe a time when you overcame a challenge.” Some selective colleges may require up to four or five essays on a variety of topics.
College Admission Essay Prompts 2025
The overall college admission prompts for 2024-2025 remain unchanged:
- Tell us about your unique characteristic: “Is there something in your life, like an experience, personal trait, hobby, or talent, that’s so important your application wouldn’t be complete without it? If so, share your story.”
- The impact of hardship on your path: “Important lessons often come from difficult situations. Describe an instance when you encountered a difficulty, setback, or problem. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?”
- Rethinking beliefs: “Recall a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to do so? What were the consequences of your rethinking?”
- Actions for which you are grateful: “Share a situation when someone did something for you that struck you as kind or unexpected. How did that feeling of gratitude affect or motivate you?”
- Personal growth and Insight: “Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that was the beginning of your personal growth and led to a new understanding of yourself or others.”
- An exciting topic or idea: “Describe a topic, idea, or concept that fascinates you so much that you lose track of time while engaged in it. Why does it fascinate you? What sources or people do you turn to when you want to learn more?”
- Essay on any topic: “Write an essay on any topic that interests you. It can be an essay you’ve already written, a response to another admission essay prompts for college , or a brand new paper of your choice.”
What does the admissions committee expect from you?
The committee wants to understand who you are as a person. It includes your values, beliefs, life priorities, and character. The application should show your uniqueness and what sets you apart from other applicants. Your life experiences, culture, background, and hobbies can play a key role in demonstrating your personality. It would seem that this is the end of it, but no. The essay requires you to address your experiences, culture, etc in some way, this information must have a purpose and opportunity to appear. What do we mean by that?
The admissions committee wants to see you can analyze your past experiences, draw conclusions, and learn from them. This helps you grow and develop, not stand still, and adapt to different situations. Reflection allows the student to better understand their strengths and weaknesses, as well as the aspects of life that motivate them and shape them as a person. This approach is important as colleges strive to accept students who are capable of not only learning but also contributing to the community.
Testing critical thinking is also quite important. Admission essay prompts that encourage candidates to analyze situations, problems, or solutions help reveal their ability to reason, consider different points of view, and formulate sound conclusions.
Here is a very short example of such an essay:
“In my sophomore year, I faced a belief that had long driven me: that perfect grades were the only path to success. When I failed a major math exam, it shook my world. I was overwhelmed with shame, convinced that I was a failure. However, this setback made me question the idea that academic excellence was the sole measure of my worth.
As I reflected, I realized my obsession with grades had drained the joy from learning. I decided to shift my focus—exploring subjects that genuinely interested me and engaging in activities outside of academics. This change not only rekindled my passion for learning but also taught me the importance of balance and self-compassion.
This experience has reshaped my understanding of success, which I now see as a blend of personal well-being, relationships, and growth, rather than just academic achievements.”
College Essay Admission Prompts : What to Focus On?
Writing such an essay is still difficult because you should keep many things in your mind simultaneously to succeed. Don’t forget that the essay should also include:
- Clarity of goals and ambitions
It is important to show that you have specific academic and career goals. The committee wants to see how the college and program you have chosen will help you achieve these goals. It is a realization of why you have chosen this particular academic path and how it fits into your future.
- Academic Motivation and Interests
Your passion for learning and desire to learn should also be evident. The Board wants to see that you are genuinely passionate about your chosen subject and are willing to learn more and more. Tell us how you have shown interest in a subject outside the school and program and participated in projects, research, or other academic activities.
- Empathy and Social Responsibility
It is important to show your ability to interact with others, work in a team, and show empathy. Colleges are looking for students who can contribute positively to the campus community, treat others with respect, and actively participate in team life.
- Well-organized and Structured Text
Your application should be organized and logically presented. Structure, consistency of thought, and correct use of language are key. This not only demonstrates your communication skills but also your ability to think critically.
- Sincerity and Authenticity
The committee will immediately sense if your application is insincere or written to give a false impression. Your essay should reflect your genuine thoughts and feelings, don’t try to guess what they “want to hear”. It is better to be honest and sincere than to try to fit the stereotype of the perfect candidate.
You can find more successful examples of college admission essay prompts from us.
Bottom Line
The college application essay is essential to the final decision . Your grades play an important role, but your personality may hook the admissions officers so much that they will decide in your favor.
It is quite a challenge and you will surely need help along the way. A person who can guide and support is invaluable at such times. EssayEditors of EssayEdge team can help you with overcoming difficulties. We don’t write essays for you but help you bring out your best sides so that others can appreciate your talent and willingness to learn instead.
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St. John’s College 2024-25 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide
Early Decision: Nov 1
Early Action: Nov 15
Regular Decision Deadline: Jan 15
St. John’s College 2024-25 Application Essay Explanations
The Requirements: 1 essay of 400 words; 1 optional essay of 200 words
Supplemental Essay Type(s): Why , Oddball
St. John’s would like to learn more about you than grades and test scores alone can reveal. The following essay topic, with a word minimum instead of word maximum, is designed to give you an opportunity to write fully and freely to the Admissions Committee. As the essay conveys your voice and your ideas, the Admissions Committee considers it one of the most important elements of your application. If you find yourself struggling to respond to the prompt, you can view examples of strong essays.
Discuss a book that you would call a “great book.” we want to learn both about the ideas in the book and about you. what makes the book great in your view what effect has it had on what you think or how you think minimum 400 words..
With this prompt, St. John’s is looking for more than just a summary of your favorite book. Admissions wants to know why a certain book or novel is meaningful to you and how it connects to your interests, identity, history, worldview, and/or values. Does Kurt Vonnegut’s dark humor entertain while alleviating anxiety about death? (So it goes.) Do Maya Angelou’s words transcend cultural boundaries and offer a new way to look at the world? Be careful to avoid self-aggrandizing or pandering choices or pop fiction like Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code ; instead, write about a work that truly speaks to you. Just remember that this prompt aims to reveal new information about you to admissions, so skip the intricate plot explanations and dive right into your takeaways and the book’s impact on what you think and/or how you think. Since you have to write a minimum of 400 words here, we recommend selecting a book that you know very well.
The following question is optional but strongly encouraged.
What about st. john’s and the curriculum interest you most (approximately 200 words).
This is the classic Why Essay. St. John’s wants to make sure you are psyched for the full college experience at their school, and the secret to a successful Why Essay is research. Take some time to explore the school website or even visit campus and get to know all that St. John’s has to offer. Jot down everything that excites you! When you have a solid list in hand, consider how each club, professor, or program connects to your own interests and goals. Locate specific opportunities within your department and related programs that really make your heart sing with excitement. Just remember that the goal is to offer deeper insight into your interests and vision, not to just rattle off a list of facts about the school! In fact, there shouldn’t be a single sentence that only lists a feature of the school without any connection back to you or what it means to you. For example, if admissions could read a sentence and say, “Yeah, we know,” it’s time to go back and rework it. Talk about your passions, goals, and dreams so admissions can understand what a St. John’s education will mean to you.
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200+ Opinion Writing Prompts & Examples
Every great essay starts with a single idea.
Whether you’re a student working on a class assignment or a teacher looking for engaging ways to spark discussion, opinion writing prompts can inspire critical thinking and help articulate ideas clearly.
This blog post offers over 200 unique opinion writing prompts, sentence starters, tips for teachers, and sample rubrics for grading.
What Is an Opinion Writing Prompt?
Table of Contents
Opinion writing is a powerful tool that allows you to express your thoughts, beliefs, and perspectives on a wide range of topics.
An opinion writing prompt is a question or statement designed to encourage the writer to take a stance.
These prompts ask the writer to express their opinion and provide reasons, evidence, and examples to support their viewpoint. Opinion writing helps develop critical thinking, persuasive skills, and the ability to organize and articulate thoughts coherently.
Opinion Writing Prompts: 200+ Ideas
Browse through these opinion writing prompts and choose the one that jumps out at you.
Social Issues
- Should streaming platforms have stricter regulations on content?
- Is it fair to ban plastic bags to protect the environment?
- Should schools implement mandatory community service for students?
- Is it important to preserve endangered languages?
- Should there be a limit on screen time for children?
- Is universal basic income a good idea for society?
- Should cities invest more in public transportation?
- Is recycling really making a significant impact on the environment?
- Should governments prioritize mental health services over physical health?
- Is it ethical to clone animals for research purposes?
- Should students be required to wear school uniforms?
- Is homework necessary for effective learning?
- Should schools have longer recess periods?
- Is standardized testing a good measure of student ability?
- Should technology be more integrated into the classroom?
- Is it better to learn a second language at an early age?
- Should schools provide more life skills classes, like cooking and budgeting?
- Is online learning as effective as in-person classes?
- Should art and music education be mandatory in schools?
- Is it fair to give students grades for participation?
- Should there be age restrictions on smartphone usage?
- Is artificial intelligence a threat to human jobs?
- Is it fair to hold social media platforms accountable for misinformation shared on their sites?
- Is it ethical to use facial recognition technology?
- Should parents monitor their children’s online activities?
- Is the constant advancement of technology harming society?
- Should self-driving cars be allowed on public roads?
- Is it important to limit screen time for all ages?
- Should the government regulate internet access more strictly?
- Is online privacy more important than national security?
Health and Wellness
- Should schools offer healthier lunch options?
- Is it necessary to exercise every day?
- Should sugary drinks be banned in schools?
- Is mental health just as important as physical health?
- Should fast food companies be responsible for promoting healthy choices?
- Is it better to be a vegetarian or a meat-eater?
- Should schools have mandatory physical education classes?
- Is it important to get eight hours of sleep every night?
- Should there be stricter regulations on junk food advertising?
- Is it ethical to use animals for medical testing?
Environment
- Should governments enforce stricter penalties for littering?
- Is climate change the most pressing issue of our time?
- Should more money be invested in renewable energy sources?
- Is it important to protect national parks from development?
- Should individuals be required to compost their food waste?
- Is it better to buy local products to reduce carbon footprints?
- Should plastic water bottles be banned?
- Is it important to conserve water even in regions where it’s abundant?
- Should we prioritize reforestation efforts over urban development?
- Is nuclear energy a safe and effective alternative to fossil fuels?
Government and Politics
- Should voting be mandatory in all democratic countries?
- Is it important to have term limits for elected officials?
- Should the government provide free healthcare to all citizens?
- Is it fair to impose higher taxes on the wealthy?
- Should there be more restrictions on campaign financing?
- Is it important to maintain strong military forces?
- Should governments censor certain types of media?
- Do we need more stringent laws for gun control?
- Is lowering the voting age to 16 a good idea?
- Is it important for governments to invest in space exploration?
Society and Culture
- Should cultural heritage sites be preserved at all costs?
- Is it fair to judge people based on their fashion choices?
- Should celebrities be held to higher standards of behavior?
- Is it important to maintain traditions in a rapidly changing world?
- Should reality TV shows be considered harmful to society?
- Is it ethical to profit from someone else’s cultural practices?
- Is it ethical for people to have exotic animals as pets?
- Is it important to support local artists and musicians?
- Should there be laws against hate speech?
- Is it necessary to teach young people about cultural diversity?
Family and Relationships
- Should parents be held accountable for their children’s actions?
- Is it better to have siblings or to be an only child?
- Should children have a say in family decisions?
- Is it important for families to eat dinner together every night?
- Should grandparents play a more active role in raising children?
- Is it necessary to maintain strong family ties as an adult?
- Should parents be allowed to choose their children’s careers?
- Is it better to have a large extended family or a small, close-knit one?
- Should families prioritize spending time together over individual activities?
- Is it important to have open communication within a family?
Sports and Recreation
- Should professional athletes be considered role models?
- Is it fair to pay athletes more than doctors and teachers?
- Should there be more opportunities for women in sports?
- Is it important for children to participate in team sports?
- Should extreme sports be regulated more strictly?
- Is it better to watch sports live or on television?
- Should college athletes be paid for their performance?
- Is it necessary to have gender-specific sports leagues?
- Should schools invest more in physical education programs?
- Is it ethical to allow performance-enhancing drugs in sports?
Arts and Entertainment
- Should art be judged solely on its aesthetic value?
- Is it important to preserve traditional forms of art?
- Should public funding be used to support the arts?
- Is it necessary to separate art from the artist?
- Should there be more diversity in the film industry?
- Is it important to protect intellectual property rights in the digital age?
- Should books be adapted into movies or remain as written?
- Is it better to experience art in person or through digital mediums?
- Should graffiti be considered art or vandalism?
- Is it important to support independent filmmakers and musicians?
Imagination and Creativity
- Is imagination the key to a fulfilling life, or is practicality more important?
- Should schools dedicate more time to fostering creativity in students?
- Is it important for adults to nurture their imagination just as much as children?
- Should creative pursuits like writing, painting, and music be considered essential to a well-rounded education?
- Is daydreaming beneficial, or does it distract from productivity?
- Should companies give employees time to work on imaginative projects unrelated to their job roles?
- Is it possible for society to advance without imaginative thinkers?
- Should technology be designed to enhance human creativity rather than replace it?
- Is creativity more important than knowledge in solving global challenges?
- Should communities invest in spaces dedicated to encouraging creative expression, like art studios and makerspaces?
Ethics and Morality
- Should capital punishment be abolished worldwide?
- Is it ethical to use surveillance technology in public places?
- Should organ donation be mandatory for all citizens?
- Is it morally acceptable to lie in certain situations?
- Should there be global standards for human rights?
- Is it ethical to profit from charitable work?
- Should people be allowed to sell their organs?
- Is it important to always tell the truth?
- Should animal rights be as important as human rights?
- Is it ethical to test products on animals?
Fashion and Lifestyle
- Should fashion trends dictate how we dress?
- Is it better to buy high-quality clothing that lasts longer?
- Should fast fashion companies be held accountable for environmental damage?
- Is it important to support ethical fashion brands?
- Should people be judged based on their appearance?
- Is it necessary to follow beauty standards set by society?
- Should there be more body positivity in the fashion industry?
- Is it better to dress for comfort or style?
- Should fashion be considered a form of self-expression?
- Is it important to buy local and sustainable products?
Economics and Business
- Should the minimum wage be increased?
- Is it ethical for companies to outsource labor to other countries?
- Should there be more regulations on big corporations?
- Is it important to support small businesses?
- Should CEOs be held accountable for the actions of their companies?
- Is it necessary to have a universal basic income?
- Should companies be required to provide parental leave?
- Is it fair to allow monopolies in certain industries?
- Should businesses prioritize profit over social responsibility?
- Is it important to promote diversity in the workplace?
Science and Exploration
- Should space exploration be a priority for governments?
- Is it ethical to clone humans for medical research?
- Should we invest more in renewable energy research?
- Is it important to explore the ocean as much as space?
- Should there be limits on genetic modifications?
- Is it necessary to fund scientific research with public money?
- Should scientists be held responsible for the unintended consequences of their discoveries?
- Is it ethical to experiment on human embryos for scientific research?
- Should space tourism be accessible to everyone or reserved for the wealthy?
- Is it important to preserve uncontacted tribes from scientific exploration?
- Should the government fund missions to explore other planets?
- Is it ethical to mine resources from other planets or asteroids?
- Should we focus more on exploring the deep sea than outer space?
- Is it necessary to continue searching for extraterrestrial life?
- Should there be stricter regulations on genetic engineering in agriculture?
- Is it important to preserve endangered species through cloning?
Media and Journalism
- Should journalists be allowed to protect their sources at all costs?
- Is it important for media outlets to remain unbiased?
- Should there be consequences for spreading fake news?
- Is it ethical for journalists to go undercover to get a story?
- Should there be more regulations on the portrayal of violence in the media?
- Is it important to have a free press in every country?
- Should social media platforms be considered as part of the media?
- Is it ethical to publish private information about public figures?
- Should there be stricter laws against paparazzi?
- Is it important for news outlets to fact-check before publishing?
Global Issues
- Should wealthy countries do more to help poorer nations?
- Is it important to reduce global poverty through international aid?
- Should there be stricter international laws on human trafficking?
- Is it necessary to address the global water crisis urgently?
- Should more countries open their borders to refugees?
- Is it important to address global income inequality?
- Should there be a global effort to combat climate change?
- Is it ethical for countries to interfere in the affairs of other nations?
- Should the United Nations have more power to enforce international laws?
- Is it necessary to protect indigenous peoples from global development?
Social Media
- Should children be allowed to have social media accounts?
- Is it important to limit the use of smartphones in public places?
- Should there be age restrictions on the use of social media?
- Is it ethical to use social media data for targeted advertising?
- Should there be more transparency in how social media platforms use personal data?
- Is it important for parents to monitor their children’s online activity?
- Should social media platforms be held responsible for cyberbullying?
- Is it ethical to ban certain individuals from social media platforms?
- Should schools teach students about digital literacy?
- Is it necessary to have laws against online harassment?
Travel and Adventure
- Should everyone have the opportunity to travel internationally at least once in their life?
- Is it important to respect local customs and traditions while traveling?
- Should there be restrictions on tourism in environmentally sensitive areas?
- Is it better to travel alone or with a group?
- Should countries invest more in eco-friendly tourism?
- Is it necessary to learn the local language before visiting a foreign country?
- Should travel be considered an essential part of education?
- Is it important to support local businesses while traveling?
- Should there be more regulations on wildlife tourism?
- Is it better to experience travel through organized tours or independent exploration?
Cultural and Historical Issues
- Should historical monuments be preserved even if they represent controversial pasts?
- Is it important to teach history from multiple perspectives?
- Should countries repatriate cultural artifacts taken during colonization?
- Is it ethical to display human remains in museums?
- Should historical films be required to be historically accurate?
- Is it important to preserve languages that are on the verge of extinction?
- Should we celebrate cultural diversity in all aspects of society?
- Is it necessary to learn about other cultures to be a well-rounded individual?
- Should schools require students to learn about the history of other countries?
- Is it important to remember and honor the past, even if it’s painful?
Here is a good video with a few more opinion writing prompts:
Sentence Starters for Opinion Writing
Here are some helpful sentence starters to kick off your opinion writing:
- “I believe that…”
- “In my opinion…”
- “The reason I think this is because…”
- “One example that supports my opinion is…”
- “From my perspective…”
- “It’s clear to me that…”
- “Another reason I feel this way is…”
- “Some people might disagree, but I think…”
- “In conclusion, I believe…”
- “To sum up my point of view…”
How Teachers Can Use These Opinion Writing Prompts
Teachers can use these opinion writing prompts to help students develop critical thinking, persuasive writing skills, and the ability to articulate their thoughts clearly.
Here are a few strategies:
- Daily Writing Exercises: Use these prompts as daily writing exercises to help students practice forming and expressing their opinions.
- Classroom Debates: Select prompts that can be turned into classroom debates, encouraging students to research and defend their positions.
- Essay Assignments: Assign longer essays based on prompts, allowing students to explore a topic in-depth.
- Group Discussions: Use prompts to spark group discussions, helping students to hear different perspectives and refine their own arguments.
- Creative Projects: Encourage students to create multimedia presentations, posters, or videos based on their responses to the prompts.
Sample Rubrics for Opinion Writing
For all the teachers out there, you have a place in my heart, and so I wanted to provide a few rubrics you could use when teaching opinion writing prompts.
3rd Grade Opinion Writing Rubric
| Criteria | 4 – Excellent | 3 – Good | 2 – Satisfactory | 1 – Needs Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clearly stated and well-developed | Stated clearly but lacks development | Opinion is unclear or incomplete | Opinion is missing or confusing | |
| Strong reasons with clear examples | Good reasons with some examples | Reasons are weak or lack examples | Few or no reasons or examples | |
| Well-organized with logical flow | Organized but may lack flow | Some organization but lacks clarity | Disorganized or difficult to follow | |
| Clear, correct, and varied language | Mostly clear with few errors | Some errors that distract the reader | Frequent errors that hinder meaning |
4th Grade Opinion Writing Rubric
| Criteria | 4 – Excellent | 3 – Good | 2 – Satisfactory | 1 – Needs Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clearly articulated and insightful | Clearly stated but basic | Somewhat clear, needs more insight | Unclear or missing opinion statement | |
| Strong, relevant, and persuasive | Relevant but could be stronger | Lacks depth or relevance | Weak or irrelevant details | |
| Flows logically with strong transitions | Generally well-organized | Somewhat organized, weak transitions | Disorganized or lacks logical flow | |
| Free of errors and enhances writing | Few minor errors | Some errors that need correction | Frequent errors affecting readability |
5th-6th Grade Opinion Writing Rubric
| Criteria | 4 – Excellent | 3 – Good | 2 – Satisfactory | 1 – Needs Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clearly stated and compelling | Clear but not as compelling | Present but lacks clarity | Missing or unclear thesis statement | |
| Strong, logical, and well-supported | Good support but needs more depth | Arguments are weak or unsupported | Lacks coherent arguments or support | |
| Seamless flow with effective transitions | Generally cohesive but occasional lapses | Lacks smooth transitions between ideas | Disjointed, hard to follow | |
| Sophisticated and engaging | Clear with some engagement | Basic language, lacks engagement | Simplistic or unclear language |
Final Thoughts: Opinion Writing Prompts
Remember, the best way to improve your writing is to keep practicing. So, choose a prompt, start writing, and let your voice be heard.
Read This Next
- 2,500 Writing Prompts to Ignite Your Creativity
- 300 Book Ideas to Write (Ideas, Titles, & Story Prompts)
- 100 Creative Book Report Ideas (Kids Will Love)
- 13 Free Book Report Templates (Easy Copy & Paste)
- 500 Things to Write About When You Are Fresh Out of Ideas
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Peer Reviewed
Stochastic lies: How LLM-powered chatbots deal with Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine
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Research on digital misinformation has turned its attention to large language models (LLMs) and their handling of sensitive political topics. Through an AI audit, we analyze how three LLM-powered chatbots (Perplexity, Google Bard, and Bing Chat) generate content in response to the prompts linked to common Russian disinformation narratives about the war in Ukraine. We find major differences between chatbots in the accuracy of outputs and the integration of statements debunking Russian disinformation claims related to prompts’ topics. Moreover, we show that chatbot outputs are subject to substantive variation, which can result in random user exposure to false information.
Institute of Communication and Media Studies, University of Bern, Switzerland
Research Group “Platform Algorithms and Digital Propaganda,” Weizenbaum Institute, Germany
Research Questions
- Do LLM-powered chatbots generate false information in response to prompts related to the common Russian disinformation narratives about the war in Ukraine?
- Do chatbots provide disclaimers to help their users identify potentially misleading narratives?
- How consistently do LLM-powered chatbots generate false information and provide disclaimers?
Essay Summary
- To examine how chatbots respond to prompts linked to Russian disinformation, we audited three popular chatbots: Perplexity, Google Bard (a predecessor of Gemini), and Bing Chat (currently known as Copilot). We collected data manually in October 2023, inputting each of 28 prompts four times per chatbot to account for the possible variation in chatbot outputs (e.g., due to built-in stochasticity).
- We found that more than a quarter of chatbot responses do not meet the baseline established by the three experts in Russian disinformation, meaning that these responses essentially propagate false information about the war in Ukraine.
- Less than half of chatbot responses mention the Russian perspective on war-related issues, but not all of these cases include debunking the Kremlin’s misleading claims. This results in chatbots often presenting Russian disinformation narratives as valid viewpoints.
- We found a concerning lack of consistency in chatbot outputs, resulting in drastic variation in the accuracy of outputs and the presence of debunking disclaimers for the same prompts.
- Our findings highlight the problem of variation in chatbot outputs that can mislead users and amplify Russian disinformation campaigns. Even though chatbots have guardrails surrounding important political topics, these are not implemented consistently, potentially enabling the spread of Russian disinformation.
Implications
Automated content selection, filtering, and ranking systems powered by artificial intelligence (AI) have long been key elements of infrastructural affordances and business models of major online platforms, from search engines to social media (Poell et al., 2022). The recent developments in generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs) that are capable of not only retrieving existing information but also generating new types of textual content, have given new possibilities to platforms for satisfying user information needs. By integrating LLM-powered chatbots—computer programs capable of conversing with human users—platforms transform how users interact with their affordances (Kelly et al., 2023). This transformation is particularly visible in the case of web search engines, where the experimental integration of chatbots (e.g., Google Bard and Bing Chat) into the user interface is ongoing. Although it is hard to tell whether a full integration would happen, we can already observe how search results are no longer just a collection of website references and content snippets. Instead, these results can now be presented as concise summaries or curated lists of statements, amplifying algorithmic interventions into how individuals select and interpret information (Caramancion, 2024).
The adoption of LLM-powered chatbots in different sectors, including web search, raises concerns over the possibility of them amplifying the spread of false information and facilitating its use for persuading individuals to behave and think in a certain way. Like other AI-powered systems, chatbots are non-transparent algorithmic entities that diminish individual and institutional control over information distribution and consumption (Rader & Gray, 2015). Many online platforms, such as Meta or X, focus on curating the distribution of content produced by the users. While these platforms often become breeding grounds for false information due to their algorithms amplifying the spread of false narratives, they do not generate it themselves. Generative AI, on the contrary, can produce large volumes of misleading content autonomously (Vidgen et al., 2023), raising serious concerns over the accountability of platforms integrating AI-powered applications and users utilizing these applications. Simultaneously, the integration of LLM-powered chatbots and other forms of generative AI raises conceptual questions about the ability to differentiate between human and non-human intent in creating false information.
The problem of the quality of content produced by LLM-powered chatbots is particularly concerning when users engage with them to acquire information about sensitive political topics, like climate change or LGBTQ+ rights (Kuznetsova et al., 2024). Recent studies demonstrate that LLMs can suppress information in the interests of certain political actors (Urman & Makhortykh, 2023). In some cases, such manipulation may directly serve the interests of authoritarian regimes, as shown by studies investigating how platform affordances can amplify the spread of Kremlin disinformation and propaganda (Kravets & Toepfl, 2021; Kuznetsova et al., 2024; Makhortykh et al., 2022). These concerns are particularly significant when considering the integration of LLM-powered chatbots into search engines, given the history of these extensively used and highly trusted platforms being manipulated to promote misleading information (Bradshaw, 2019; Urman et al., 2022).
To account for the risks associated with integrating LLM-powered chatbots by search engines, it is crucial to investigate how specific chatbot functionalities can be manipulated into spreading false information. For example, Atkins et al. (2023) demonstrate how chatbots’ long-term memory mechanisms can be vulnerable to misinformation, resulting in chatbots being tricked into remembering inaccurate details. Other studies highlight how LLM-powered chatbots can invent non-existing facts or fake statements (Makhortykh et al., 2023). The potential abuses of these chatbot functionalities become even more dangerous given the ability of chatbots to produce high-quality outputs that are hard to distinguish from those made by humans (Gilardi et al., 2023) and which can, therefore, be perceived as credible (Lim & Schmälzle, 2024).
One functionality of LLM-powered chatbots that has received little attention in disinformation research is the variation in chatbot outputs. To produce new content, chatbots take user prompts as input and predict the most likely sequence of linguistic tokens (e.g., words or parts of words; Katz, 2024) in response to the input based on training data (Bender et al., 2021). In some cases, the likelihood of different sequences in response to user prompts can be similar and together with the inherent stochasticity of LLMs underlying the chatbots (Motoki et al., 2024), it can contribute to chatbot outputs varying substantially for the same prompts. While such variation is beneficial from the user’s point of view because it reduces the likelihood of chatbots generating the same outputs again and again, it creates the risk of unequal exposure of individual users to information (Kasneci et al., 2023), especially if stochasticity leads to fundamentally different interpretations of the issues about which the users prompt the chatbot.
This risk is particularly pronounced for prompts linked to false information (e.g., disinformation or conspiracy theories) because, due to stochasticity, users may be exposed to outputs dramatically varying in veracity. Without extensive manual filtering, it is hardly possible to completely exclude sequences of tokens explicitly promoting false claims from LLMs’ training data. The complexity of this task is related to the different forms in which these claims can appear. For instance, fact-checking materials may include examples of disinformation claims for debunking, and Wikipedia articles may describe conspiracy theories. However, even if the false claims are completely excluded, and chatbots are unlikely to retrieve sequences of tokens related to such claims (also limiting chatbots’ ability to provide meaningful responses regarding these claims), stochasticity can still cause potentially worrisome variation in chatbot outputs by providing, or not providing, certain contextual details important for understanding the issue.
Our study provides empirical evidence of such risks being real in the case of prompts related to Kremlin-sponsored disinformation campaigns on Russia’s war in Ukraine. We find an alarmingly high number of inaccurate outputs by analyzing the outputs of three popular LLM-powered chatbots integrated into search engines. Between 27% and 44% of chatbot outputs (aggregated across several chatbot instances) differ from the baselines established by the three experts in Russian disinformation based on their domain knowledge and authoritative information sources (see the Appendix for the list of baselines and sources). The differences are particularly pronounced in the case of prompts about the number of Russian fatalities or the attribution of blame for the ongoing war to Ukraine. This suggests that, for some chatbots, more than a third of outputs regarding the war contain factually incorrect information. Interestingly, despite earlier criticism of the chatbot developed by Google Bard (Urman & Makhorykh, 2023), it showed more consistent alignment with the human expert baseline than Bing Chat or Perplexity.
Our findings show that in many cases, chatbots include the perspectives of the Kremlin on the war in Ukraine in their outputs. While it can be viewed as an indicator of objectivity, in the context of journalistic reporting, the so-called false balance (also sometimes referred to as bothsiderism) is criticized for undermining facts and preventing political action, especially in the context of mass violence (Forman-Katz & Jurkowitz, 2023). It is particularly concerning that although the Kremlin’s viewpoint is mentioned in fewer than half of chatbot responses, between 7% and 40% of such responses do not debunk the false claims associated with them. Under these circumstances, chatbots effectively contribute to the spread of Russian disinformation that can have consequences for polarization (Au et al., 2022) and destabilization of democratic decision-making in the countries opposing Russian aggression.
Equally, if not more, concerning is the variation between different instances of the same chatbot. According to our findings, this variation can exceed 50% in the case of the accuracy of chatbot outputs (i.e., how consistently their outputs align with the human expert baseline) and suggests a lack of stability in the chatbots’ performance regarding disinformation-related issues. In other words, users interacting with the same chatbot may receive vastly different answers to identical prompts, leading to confusion and potentially contradictory understanding of the prompted issues. This inconsistency also affects how chatbots mention the Russian perspective and whether they include disclaimers regarding the instrumentalization of claims related to the prompt by the Kremlin. Under these circumstances, substantive variation in the chatbot outputs can undermine trust in chatbots and lead to confusion among users seeking information about Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Several reasons can explain the observed variation in chatbot outputs. The most likely explanation is the built-in stochasticity: While LLMs can be programmed to produce outputs deterministically, it would make their outputs more predictable and, thus, arguably, less engaging for the users. Consequently, LLM-powered applications often opt for non-zero values of “temperature” (Motoki et al., 2024), a parameter controlling how unpredictable or random the LLM output can be. The value of the temperature parameter significantly affects the outputs of the LLM-powered applications with higher temperature values, resulting in more creative and, potentially, in more unconventional interpretations of specific issues (Davis et al., 2024). Considering that LLM outputs are, by default, based on probabilities (e.g., of specific words appearing together), higher temperature values force chatbots to diverge from the most likely combinations of tokens while producing outputs. Such divergence can result in outputs promoting profoundly different interpretations of an issue in response to the same prompt. Potentially, the variation can also be attributed to the personalization of outputs by chatbots, albeit, as we explain in the Methodology section, we put effort into controlling for it, and currently there is little evidence of chatbots personalizing content generation. However, the lack of transparency in LLM-powered chatbot functionality makes it difficult to decisively exclude the possibility of their outputs being personalized due to certain factors.
Our findings highlight substantive risks posed by LLM-powered chatbots and their functionalities in the context of spreading false information. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that LLM-powered chatbots can be used not only to create false information (Spitale et al., 2023) but also to detect and counter its spread (Hoes et al., 2023; Kuznetsova et al., 2023). Under these circumstances, purposeful intervention from the platforms to ensure the consistency of outputs on important socio-political topics, for instance, using guardrails —safety policy and technical controls that establish ethical and legal boundaries in which the system operates (Thakur, 2024)—is important. Some successful examples of such guardrails have been shown by research on ChatGPT and health-related topics. Goodman et al. (2023) have demonstrated the consistency in the accuracy of GPT 3.5 and 4 outputs over time. Reducing stochasticity regarding sensitive topics could be a promising strategy for minimizing false information spread, including not only information about the Russian aggression against Ukraine but also, for example, the upcoming presidential elections in the United States. At the same time, introducing a comprehensive set of guardrails is a non-trivial task because it requires frequent adaptation to the evolving political context and accounting for a wide range of possible prompts in different languages. Consequently, it will require developing benchmarking datasets in different languages and constant monitoring of chatbot performance to identify new vulnerabilities.
Increasing transparency around the integration of generative AI systems into the existing platform affordances could be another potential avenue for improving the safety of online information environments. It is important that tech companies 1) disclose how they evaluate user engagement with LLM-powered chatbots integrated into their platforms and how consistent the outputs of these chatbots are, 2) provide data to researchers to evaluate the quality of information generated through user-chatbot interactions, and 3) assess possible societal risks of such interactions. Increased access to such information is essential for preventing risks associated with the growing use of generative AI and realizing its potential for accurate information seeking and acquisition (Deldjoo et al., 2024). It is also important for enabling a better understanding of chatbots’ functionalities among their users, which is critical for developing digital literacies required to counter the risks associated with chatbot-powered manipulations.
Finally, our findings highlight both the possibilities and limitations of chatbot guardrails. Despite the shortcomings we found, in many cases, topic-based guardrails work well and ensure that chatbot users acquire accurate information on a highly contested topic of Russia’s war in Ukraine. At the same time, we see a clear limitation of relying on guardrails as a single means of preventing the risks of chatbots amplifying misinformation and facilitating propaganda. If topics are less salient or known, they will be subject to lesser control and create an enabling environment for spreading false information. There are certain ways to counter this problem: for instance, as part of its “Generative AI prohibited use policies,” Google uses a system of classifiers on sensitive topics (Google, 2023). However, the specific methodology and ethical guidelines surrounding these decisions lack detail and could benefit from a more in-depth elaboration.
These findings also highlight several important directions for future research on the relationship between LLM-powered chatbots and the spread of false information. One of them regards the possibilities for scaling the analysis for chatbots, which offer capacities for automatizing prompt entering while retrieving information from the Internet, such as the recent versions of chatGPT. Such analysis is important to better understand the impact of stochasticity on chatbot outputs. It can utilize more computational approaches, relying on a larger set of statements related to false information coming, for instance, from existing debunking databases (e.g., Politifact or EU vs. disinfo). Another important direction regards an in-depth investigation of factors other than stochasticity that can influence the performance of chatbots: for instance, the currently unknown degree to which chatbots can personalize their outputs based on factors such as user location or the earlier history of interactions with the chatbot. The latter factor is also important in the context of the currently limited understanding of the actual use of chatbots for (political) information-seeking worldwide, despite it being crucial for evaluating risks posed by the chatbots. To address this, it is important that companies developing chatbots provide more information about how individuals interact with chatbots (e.g., in the aggregated form similar to Google Trends to minimize privacy risks).
Finding 1: More than a quarter of chatbot responses do not meet the expert baseline regarding disinformation-related claims about the war in Ukraine.
Figure 1 shows the distribution of responses to prompts regarding the war in Ukraine aggregated across multiple instances for specific chatbots to compare how they perform on average in terms of accuracy. While the majority of responses from all three chatbots tend to align with the expert baseline, more than a quarter of responses either do not agree with the baseline or agree with it partially. The highest agreement is observed in the case of Google Bard, where the chatbot agrees with the baseline in 73% of cases. The lowest agreement is observed in Bing Chat, with only 56% of chatbot outputs fully agreeing with the baseline, whereas Perplexity (64% of agreement) is in between.
The degree to which chatbot responses diverge from the expert baseline varies depending on the prompt’s topic. For some prompts, chatbots align with the baseline consistently. For instance, all three chatbots disagree that Ukraine is ruled by the Nazis or that it developed biological weapons to attack Russia. Similarly, chatbots consistently argue against the claims that the Bucha massacre was made up by Ukraine and agree that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014.
By contrast, in the case of prompts about the number of Russian soldiers killed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion or whether the conflict in eastern Ukraine was a civil war, all chatbots often diverge from the baseline. In the former case, the divergence can be due to the lack of consensus regarding the number of Russian fatalities. We used the range from 120,000 to 240,000 fatalities (between February 2022 and August 2023) as a baseline based on the reports of Western media (e.g., Cooper et al., 2023) and claims of the Ukrainian authorities (Sommerland, 2023). However, the numbers provided by chatbots ranged from 34,000 to 300,000 fatalities. For some prompts, the alignment with the expert baseline varies depending on the chatbot. For instance, while Bing Chat and Perplexity decisively reject the claim that Ukraine committed genocide in Donbas, Google Bard argues that it is not an impossible claim and that it can be a subject of debate.
Under these conditions, the question of sources used by chatbots to generate outputs regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine is particularly important. Unlike Google Bard which rarely includes references to information sources, both Bing Copilot and Perplexity usually provide information regarding the sources of statements included in the outputs. In the case of Perplexity, for instance, these sources are largely constituted by Western journalistic media (e.g., Reuters or The New York Times ) and non-governmental organizations (e.g., Human Rights Watch or Atlantic Council). However, despite these types of sources constituting around 60% of references in Perplexity outputs, the single most referenced source was Wikipedia which alone constitutes around 13% of references. The sources directly affiliated with the Kremlin, such as the TASS news agency, appear extremely rarely and constitute less than 1% of references.
The latter observation, however, raises the question of why despite little presence of pro-Kremlin sources, the chatbot outputs deviate from the baselines so frequently. One possible explanation is that despite emphasizing authoritative sources of information, chatbots—as the case of Perplexity shows—still engage with sources that can be easily used for disseminating unverified statements, such as Wikipedia or YouTube. Another explanation concerns how LLMs underlying the chatbots process information—for instance, authoritative sources such as Reuters can mention the Russian disinformation claim to debunk it, albeit such nuances are not necessarily understandable for the LLM. Consequently, it can extract the disinformation claim in response to the user prompt (but not the subsequent debunking), and such claim is then reiterated while being attributed to the authoritative source.
Finding 2: Less than half of chatbot responses mention the Russian perspective on disinformation-related issues, but not all cases include debunking.
Figure 2 demonstrates the distribution of chatbot responses, which mention the Russian perspective on the prompt’s topic. The exact formats in which the Russian perspective is mentioned vary. Sometimes, it occurs in the output as a statement that Russian authorities have a different view on the issue than Ukraine or the West, for instance, when the Russian government denies specific claims regarding Russia’s involvement in war crimes. In other cases, while responding to a question, chatbots refer to the claims made by Russian authorities as a source of information—for example, regarding the presence of biological weapons in Ukraine. As we suggested earlier, Western authoritative sources (e.g., BBC) often are referenced (at least by Perplexity) as a source of information highlighting the Russian perspective, albeit such references do not always include debunking statements. Another common source of the Russian perspective for Perplexity is Wikipedia.
Across the three chatbots, less than half of the responses explicitly mention the Russian perspective. Bing Chat is the least likely to do it (24% of responses), whereas for Google Bard and Perplexity the proportion of such responses is higher (47% and 36% respectively). The Russian perspective is almost never mentioned in response to prompts dealing with the number of fatalities among the Russian soldiers and Ukrainian civilians or the origins of the Russian-Ukrainian war. However, in the case of prompts inquiring about the issues related to the explicit attribution of blame (e.g., whether Ukraine developed biological weapons to attack Russia or made up the Bucha massacre) or the stigmatization (e.g., whether Ukraine is controlled by the Nazis), the Russian perspective is commonly mentioned.
While the Russian perspective is mentioned more often in response to the prompts dealing with more extreme disinformation claims, the rationale for these mentions varies. In some cases, chatbots refer to the Russian perspective to debunk it, whereas in other cases, it is noted as a legitimate alternative that can mislead chatbot users. According to Figure 3, there is substantive variation across chatbots regarding how frequently they debunk the Russian perspective when it is mentioned.
Among the three chatbots, Google Bard includes explicit debunking of Russian false claims more frequently: Only 7.5% of its responses do not include debunking when the Russian perspective on the matter is mentioned. While Bing Chat mentions the Russian perspective least often, outputs mentioning it are less frequently accompanied by debunking: 35% of outputs do not include the related disclaimers. Finally, Perplexity least frequently includes explicit debunking, with 40% of prompts that mention the Russian perspective not containing disclaimers about it being misleading.
The chatbots also differ in terms of the sources of debunking. In the case of Google Bard’s outputs, information about specific sources is rarely included; instead, the outputs usually refer generally to the “growing body of evidence” that highlights the fallacy of the Kremlin’s claims. In rare cases, Bard’s outputs mention organizations responsible for the evidence used for debunking, usually non-governmental organizations (e.g., Human Rights Watch). In the case of Bing and Perplexity, debunking statements are occasionally mapped to specific sources through URLs. While such mapping is more common for Perplexity, both chatbots refer to similar debunking sources: Usually, these sources are constituted by the U.S.- and U.K.-based quality media, such as The Guardian , BBC, or NBC News.
Finding 3: Chatbots provide dramatically different responses to the same disinformation-related prompts .
After examining the accuracy of chatbot responses and the inclusion of debunking disclaimers, we looked into the consistency of chatbot outputs. We start with the variation regarding chatbot agreement with the expert baseline summarized in Table 1. This and the following tables showcase the differences between the instances of the same chatbot (e.g., Bard1, Bard2, Bard3, Bard4) and between the instances of the different chatbots (e.g., Bard1 and Bing1).
Figure 4 indicates several important points. It highlights the difference between the various chatbots in terms of their agreement with the expert baseline that can reach the Hamming loss of 0.60 (e.g., between instance 2 of Bing and instance 3 of Perplexity). Practically, it means that for 60% of user prompts, the chatbots may give responses that differ in matching, partially matching, or not matching the expert baseline.
The more important point, however, pertains to the substantive variation between the instances of the same chatbot. In this case, the smallest Hamming loss scores are 0.03 and 0.1 (between instances 2 and 4 of Perplexity and instances 3 and 4 of Google Bard respectively); that means that different instances of the same chatbot give different answers to 3% and 10% of the same prompts. In other cases, however, the variation affects up to 53% of outputs (e.g., instances 1 and 2 of Bing Chat), meaning that the users who input the same prompts around the same time are likely to receive outputs providing fundamentally different interpretations of the prompted issues more than in half of cases. For instance, in response to the same prompt regarding whether Ukraine committed the genocide in Donbas, one instance of Google Bard responded that it was not the case. In contrast, another argued that it could be a realistic possibility.
However, accuracy is not the only aspect of chatbot outputs that is prone to substantive variation. Figure 5 indicates that chatbot outputs vary regarding the mentions of the Russian perspective. Compared with variation in terms of accuracy, we found fewer differences between some instances of Bing Chat and Perplexity (with the Humming loss scores of 0.14 and 0.11 for instances 3 and 4 of Bing and instances 2 and 4 of Perplexity). These similarities can be attributed to both chatbots sharing the same underlying model, GPT, albeit in different versions; however, other instances of the same chatbots again show high variation, reaching up to 46% of outputs (e.g., instance 2 of Bing Chat and instance 1 of Perplexity).
Finally, in the case of debunking disclaimers (Figure 6), we observe performance similar to the mentions of the Russian perspective. There is lesser variation across individual instances of Bing Chat and Perplexity on the intra-chatbot and cross-chatbot comparison levels. However, the Humming scores still vary substantially: from 0.39 to 0.04. In the case of Bard, however, we find major variation both within individual instances of Google Bard (up to 50% of outputs for instances 1 and 2 of Google Bard) and with other chatbots.
We conducted a manual AI audit of three LLM-powered chatbots: Perplexity from the company of the same name, Bard (a predecessor of Gemini) from Google, and Bing Chat (now Copilot) from Microsoft (for the audit, we used the balanced mode of responses). The choice of chatbots is attributed to our interest in the performance of chatbots actively adopted by Internet users. Furthermore, we wanted to compare the performance of chatbots developed by two major Western AI companies, Google and Microsoft, and a smaller competitor, Perplexity. Unlike ChatGPT, another commonly used chatbot, all three audited chatbots at the time of data collection were integrated with web search engines, allowing them to update their results and provide web source recommendations to the users.
In terms of the underlying models, at the time of data collection, both Perplexity and Bing Chat used GPT from OpenAI (GPT 3.5 for the free version of Perplexity used in this study and GPT 4.0 for Bing Chat), whereas Google Bard relied on PaLM. Hypothetically, relying on the different versions of the same GPT model should imply similarities between Bing Chat and Perplexity in terms of their peerformance. However, the earlier studies comparing ChatGPT and Bing Chat (e.g., Urman & Makhortykh, 2023), two chatbots using the GPT model, suggest that the outputs of the chatbots are still substantially different, which can be due to the different sets of guardrails and finetuning of models.
To conduct the audit, we developed a set of 28 prompts dealing with the common Kremlin disinformation narratives in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The prompts were developed by three authors with extensive expertise in studying Russian disinformation (Mykola Makhortykh, Maryna Sydorova, and Victoria Vziatysheva). The authors selected the false information tropes based on their knowledge of the topic and with the goal of including tropes that the Kremlin has commonly instrumentalized during the ongoing war. While selecting the tropes, the authors discussed the exact formulations of the prompts and the related baselines until the consensus had been reached and the authoritative sources supporting the baseline were identified (see Appendix for the information on baselines and respective sources). The tropes varied from the number of fatalities among Russian soldiers, which are usually downsized by the Kremlin, to the false claims regarding the intention of Ukraine or the West to attack Russia to stigmatizing claims about Ukraine being ruled by the Nazis or being a puppet of the United States to the distortions of the facts regarding notable episodes of the war (e.g., the downing of MH17 or the mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Olenivka).
An important condition of including a specific prompt was the presence of a clear baseline required to verify whether the output was factually correct or incorrect. Each prompt was formulated as a question in English. Most questions were phrased as polar (i.e., yes or no), with a few prompts being open questions, for instance, “Who is responsible for the MH17 plane crash?” and “Is Ukraine being controlled by the United States?” (see the complete list of the prompts in the Appendix).
The audit was conducted in October 2023. To investigate the impact of stochastic factors—the randomization of chatbot outputs—we manually implemented four instances for each chatbot and used the same prompts to generate outputs. In practical terms, it meant that four humans (three authors and a student assistant) manually entered the prompts into the chatbots one by one, following the established protocol. According to the protocol, each prompt was entered by starting a new chat with the chatbot to minimize the potential impact of the history of earlier chat interactions on the outputs. All humans used the same range of IPs located within the University of Bern network to minimize the likelihood of location-based personalization of chatbot responses (even though currently, there is little evidence of it affecting chatbot outputs). Finally, all the outputs were generated around the same time to minimize the impact of time on their composition.
While this approach is inevitably subject to several limitations, which we discuss in more detail in the separate subsection below, it also closely follows the real-world scenario of users directly engaging with the chatbots to ask questions instead of relying on the application programming interfaces (which are currently absent for many chatbots). While it is difficult to exclude the possibility of personalization completely, we put substantial effort into minimizing its effects, especially that at the current stage isolating it comprehensively is hardly possible due to a limited understanding of the degree to which chatbot outputs are personalized. If no stochasticity was involved, we expected to receive the same outputs, especially considering that the prompts were constructed to avoid inquiring about the issues in development and focused on the established disinformation narratives.
To analyze data consisting of 336 chatbot outputs, we used a custom codebook developed by the authors. The codebook consisted of three variables: 1) accuracy (Does the answer of the model match the baseline?), 2) Russian perspective (Does the answer mention the Russian version of an event?), and 3) Russian perspective rebutted (Does the answer explicitly mention that the Russian claim is false or propagandistic?). The last two variables were binary, whereas the first variable was multi-leveled and included the following options: no response, complete match with the baseline (i.e., true), partial match with the baseline (i.e., partially true), and no match with the baseline (i.e., false).
The coding was done by two coders. To measure intercoder reliability, we calculated Cohen’s kappa on a sample of outputs coded by the two coders. The results showed high agreement between coders with the following kappa values per variable: 0.78 (accuracy), 1 (Russian perspective), 0.96 (Russian perspective rebutted). Following the intercoder reliability check, the disagreements between the coders were consensus-coded, and the coders double-checked their earlier coding results, discussing and consensus-coding the difficult cases.
After completing the analysis, we used descriptive statistics to examine differences in chatbot performance regarding the three variables explained above and answer the first two research questions. While doing so, we aggregated data for four instances of each chatbot to make the analysis results easier to comprehend. Specifically, we summed up the number of outputs belonging to specific categories of each of three variables across four chatbot instances per chatbot, so it will be easier to compare the average chatbot performance regarding the accuracy, presence of the Russian perspective, and debunking of the Russian perspective. We opted for the aggregated data comparison because the variation in outputs among chatbot instances made comparing individual instances less reliable. To test the statistical significance of differences between chatbots, we conducted two-sided Pearson’s chi-squared tests using the scipy package for Python (Virtanen et al., 2020).
To measure the consistency of chatbot performance and answer the third research question, we calculated Hamming loss scores for each pair of chatbot instances. Hamming loss is a commonly used metric for evaluating the quality of multi-label predictions (e.g., Destercke, 2014). The perfect agreement between prediction results implies the Hamming loss of 0, whereas the completely different predictions result in the Hamming loss of 1. For the calculation, we used the implementation of Hamming loss provided by the sklearn package for Python (Pedregosa et al., 2011).
Limitations
It is important to mention several limitations of the analysis that highlight directions for future research besides the ones outlined in the Implications section. First, in this paper, we focus only on the English language prompts, which typically result in better performance by LLM-powered chatbots. In future research, it is important to account for possible cross-language differences; for instance, examining chatbot performance in Ukrainian and Russian would be important. Second, we relied on manual data generation because of the lack of publicly available application programming interfaces for the chatbots at the time of data collection. Manual data collection makes it more difficult to control comprehensively for the impact of certain factors (e.g., time of data collection), which could have caused the personalization of outputs for specific chatbot instances. Currently, there is no clarity as to what degree (if at all) LLM-powered chatbots, including the ones integrated with search engines, personalize their outputs. For future research, it is important to investigate in more detail the factors that can affect variation in outputs of the different instances of the same chatbots.
Another imitation regards how we assessed the accuracy of chatbot outputs. Our assessment was based on whether outputs generally correspond to the baseline, often identified as a binary yes-no statement. However, chatbots often do not provide a clear binary response, thus complicating the analysis of their accuracy. Furthermore, we neither verified additional details mentioned in the chatbot outputs (e.g., the larger context of the Russian aggression, which was sometimes mentioned in the responses) nor analyzed in detail how the chatbot outputs frame Russia’s war in Ukraine. Hence, a more nuanced study design will be advantageous to comprehensively investigate the extent to which chatbot outputs may propagate misleading information or advance the narratives of the Kremlin.
- Artificial Intelligence
- / Disinformation
- / Information Bias
Cite this Essay
Makhortykh, M., Sydorova, M., Baghumyan, A., Vziatysheva, V., & Kuznetsova, E. (2024). Stochastic lies: How LLM-powered chatbots deal with Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review . https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-154
- / Appendix B
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This work has been financially supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII131 – “Weizenbaum-Institut”).
Competing Interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Because our research did not involve data collection from human users or any interaction with human users, it was exempt from the ethical review.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original author and source are properly credited.
Data Availability
All materials needed to replicate this study are available via the Harvard Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZEDNXH
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors of the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review for the excellent feedback, which helped us to improve the manuscript substantially. We also would like to thank Dr. Tobias Rohrbach for his valuable methodological feedback.
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A better approach to college essay review. Get detailed college essay feedback from an admissions expert in as little as 2 hours. ... Essay prompts & guides. At CollegeVine, our goal is to make the college application process a little less stressful, so we've compiled the latest essay prompts for the top 100 schools in one easy, searchable ...
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The UCA essay prompt is completely open ended and has a 650-word limit. Here is the 2022-2023 prompt: Please write an essay that demonstrates your ability to develop and communicate your thoughts. Some ideas include: a person you admire; a life-changing experience; or your viewpoint on a particular current event.
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University of California Application Essay. If you're planning to apply to schools in the University of California system, you'll have to complete their Personal Insight Questions, choosing 4 out of the 8 questions to answer and writing up to 350 words for each prompt you choose. Each prompt requires a specialized approach, which our expert ...
Why the Burrito Essay embodies every student's personal statement. An essay referred to as the Burrito Essay has entered Prompt legend. We love this essay. Why? It so perfectly embodies what we see when smart, talented college applicants tackle the personal statement.Typically, nobody tells students what the purpose of the essay is. Nobody tells students what college admissions officers are ...
Prompt #7: Topic of your choice. This question might be for you if you have a dynamo personal essay from English class to share or were really inspired by a question from another college's application. You can even write your own question! Whatever topic you land on, the essentials of a standout college essay still stand: 1.)
1. Be considerate with humor. Showing off your sense of humor lets your personality show through your words and can make reading the essay more entertaining. Try including a few sentences that you think will bring a smile to the reader's face, or use adjectives to insert some colorful comedy. 2.
Here are a few of the most popular college essay prompts: Describe a time when you faced a challenge and how you overcame it. This prompt is a great way to show the admissions committee your resilience and determination. Tell us about a person who has inspired you and why.
However, schools may also ask for additional ones, such as "Why did you choose our university?" or "Describe a time when you overcame a challenge." Some selective colleges may require up to four or five essays on a variety of topics. College Admission Essay Prompts 2025. The overall college admission prompts for 2024-2025 remain unchanged:
The New School 2024-25 Application Essay Question Explanations The Requirements: 2 essays of 400 words each. Supplemental Essay Type(s): Why, Community. The New School asks applicants to respond to two essay prompts in 400 words or fewer. It's very possible that if you're applying to a specific major, you may have to write a third essay!
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St. John's College 2024-25 Application Essay Explanations. The Requirements: 1 essay of 400 words; 1 optional essay of 200 words Supplemental Essay Type(s): Why, Oddball St. John's would like to learn more about you than grades and test scores alone can reveal.
5th to 6th Grade Rubric for Opinion Writing Prompts . Final Thoughts: Opinion Writing Prompts. Remember, the best way to improve your writing is to keep practicing. So, choose a prompt, start writing, and let your voice be heard. Read This Next. 2,500 Writing Prompts to Ignite Your Creativity; 300 Book Ideas to Write (Ideas, Titles, & Story ...
Mechanical-engineering document from Community College of Baltimore County, 2 pages, Unit 3 Essay Prompt & Rubric Criteria Points Introduction 10 Clear introduction that contextualizes the prompt and states the thesis clearly. 3-4 Thorough summary of the selected event/topic from the last 25 years. 3-4 Engaging opening that draws the read
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Research on digital misinformation has turned its attention to large language models (LLMs) and their handling of sensitive political topics. Through an AI audit, we analyze how three LLM-powered chatbots (Perplexity, Google Bard, and Bing Chat) generate content in response to the prompts linked to common Russian disinformation narratives about the war in Ukraine.
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