How to Write a Body Paragraph for a College Essay

 

The body of an essay, sometimes called the ‘argument’ or the ‘discussion’, is where you’ll write about your specific examples to support your thesis. A good body paragraph needs to  

A topic sentence that restates the thesis and adds a bit more information some supporting evidence (i.e., examples)

What does all this mean? Let’s make it even clearer with some specifics. Check out our example below of how we put together a hypothetical college application essay writing service about “growing up in rural Alaska”:

Topic Sentence: After spending my first two years of high school at a boarding school in Seattle, I came home for my junior year and realized that I was much farther from home than I imagined.

How does this restate the thesis (which we wanted to state very clearly in the introductory paragraph)? It makes a direct statement about how far from home she was, without using any distance figures. And now we’ve added more information: two years of boarding school and only one year at home during high school. This gives us a better sense of how far away from home she was during her formative years.

Body Paragraph 1: In Seattle I had been able to visit my family every weekend or so; however, when I moved back for my junior year it became clear that making regular trips back to Bethel wasn’t realistic. It’s hard to beat flying by bush plane for price, but even with the cheap airfare, the round trip ticket to Seattle cost over $400 each way. That was money that would be better spent on textbooks! The long distance between school and home also made it hard for me to stay in touch with friends from home because I relied so heavily on email and instant messaging to keep in touch. Whenever we Skyped, we’d miss part of the conversation because of the delay, or we’d get cut off before we could finish saying what we wanted (and then wouldn’t hear back until several hours later), also visit essay writer service for more guidelines.

Although Erika had been away at boarding school since she was in 9th grade, she hadn’t thought about what being so far away meant until her junior year—when she found herself unable to go home on a regular basis. Also, because she was at a boarding school that focused on AP classes, home (in the form of friends and family) felt even farther away than it might have for an average high schooler from Alaska. What is important about these two paragraphs? They illustrate limitations to her life—limitations that are directly related to something we know she cares about: going home. We also show how Erika reacted to those limitations—by having her feel frustrated and sad when she couldn’t communicate with the people back home in Bethel.

Body Paragraph 2: In addition, I hadn’t realized just how much my hometown had changed while I was gone until I returned for junior year. Sure there were new stores and some new restaurants, but even more surprising to me was how the general atmosphere of Bethel had changed. In my absence, social media had become popular and our small town now felt plugged-in and connected to the outside world at almost all times. My friends were posting pictures online of parties I didn’t get invited to or viral videos that made me feel like a stranger even though they were happening in town.

Our second example paragraph does something really important: it shows us where Erika is coming from—the way she sees her hometown (Bethel). This helps us understand where she’s getting these feelings about being far away and not feeling part of things. Even though we don’t have any distance numbers here, we get a better picture of what kind of town Erika is living in (small, isolated even before she left for Seattle). And we see how the social media explosion—and the changes that came with it—made her feel like a stranger to her hometown even though she was actually home from boarding school and looking at these things every day.

Body Paragraph 3: I had thought of Bethel as my hometown since birth; however, when I returned after two years away at boarding school I realized that this couldn’t be further from the truth. My hometown is where my family lives and where some of my friends still live. However, despite being just a few hours away by plane, it felt almost as distant and strange to me as Alaska does when you fly three days straight and then touch down on the icy tundra.

One of Erika’s big struggles at the start of her junior year was feeling like she didn’t belong to her hometown anyway—even before she went away for boarding school. And we see here that this probably had more to do with changes that happened there while she was gone than anything else. Maybe Erika left for Seattle and started visiting Bethel less so she wouldn’t notice all these changes, or maybe it was just unavoidable—but either way, when she returned home after being away for two full years (and not visiting very often) it would make sense if those changes felt even bigger to her, for more help check cheap essay writer.