College essays typically require more research than high school papers.
Simply understanding your topics and knowing a few relevant facts may have cut it in high school, but college papers require much more of even the most stellar students. In college, you'll be asked to write in a wider variety of styles than you were in high school; you may be asked to conduct in-depth research, perform close textual analysis and occasionally write creatively. Understanding the different types of college papers can help you prepare for what you'll be asked to write in college.
Research Papers
Research papers are perhaps the most dreaded form of college writing. For research papers, students are typically asked to compile multiple sources, compose biographies and even conduct interviews with people knowledgeable about the research topic. Research papers are often much longer than other kinds of papers; for papers that culminate the work of a course, you may be asked to write 20 pages or more.
Argumentative/Persuasive Essays
In argumentative essays, you'll be asked to convince readers of the correctness of your opinion on a given topic. In doing so, you'll provide examples that support your case, often culled from real-world situations. It may also be in your interest to present counterexamples, and then demonstrate why those example fail to disprove your argument.
Narrative Essays
Narrative or personal essays typically revolve around an experience or group of experiences in the writer's life. There is much more flexibility in the narrative essay in terms of form and message, but good narrative essays typically describe an experience while containing a subtext that relates to a further message in the piece. Narrative essays are often written in introductory composition or creative writing courses.
Literary Analysis
Literary analysis essays are the most common essays written for English or literature courses. In this type of essay, you want to make a point or express an idea about a book or author, drawing on the text itself, the author's other work and perhaps other works in the literary genre. Depending on the course, literary analysis can be very formal or more conversational.
Compare/Contrast
Compare and contrast essays are one of the most common essay forms used in high school, but they still appear from time to time in college. In the compare and contrast essay, you attempt to elucidate the difference between two topics, while at the same time revealing new facts about each. For compare and contrast essays, you'll typically be asked to cite sources and conduct research, while usually compiling a bibliography.
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