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3 College Essay Examples that Need Improvement

What’s Covered:

Common college essay mistakes, how to strengthen your college essay.

• College Essay Examples and How They Could Be Improved

Where to Get Your Essay Edited for Free

If you’re preparing to apply to college, you already know how important your essay is as a part of your complete application. The college application essay demonstrates your strengths , and allows you the opportunity to explain to admissions committees why you are the perfect fit for a school. 

With the increasing popularity of test-optional and test-blind admissions, essays are becoming even more important. The last thing you want is to make simple mistakes that detract from your story. In this post, we’ll are three essay examples that didn’t quite make the mark and explain where they fell short and how they could be improved to make sure you don’t fall into the same traps.

Picking the Wrong Topic 

Admissions counselors are looking for topics that stand out. They seek originality when reviewing college applications, so it’s best to avoid any topics that could be considered cliche or overdone , like a sports injury or personal tragedy. Focus on what makes you stand out as a student, and as a person. Think about what makes you different from your peers, and center your topic around this. 

Writing About Too Much

Avoid repeating what you’ve said in other areas of your application. Write about one area of your life that’s interesting. The college essay isn’t a place for a chronological narrative of your life. You’ll want to focus on one moment, one anecdote that you can build on. The moment can be small, such as a bird you saw on a ledge when you woke up one morning. It can be as simple as a conversation with a friend in a car, or that time you went skydiving. In your college essay, think about how you will use a moment or metaphor as a vehicle for your story. 

Writing Too Formally

Write in your natural voice. Avoid academic jargon and use active voice rather than passive voice. You want to produce an essay that reads as natural as possible, so the meaning of your writing is clear to the admissions committee. Forget about impressing anyone with your top-tier vocabulary. Write how you speak, without any grammatical or spelling errors.

Not Showing Personality

The essay is an opportunity to show the admissions committee what makes you stand out. It’s a reflection of who you are. In the process of trying to build a complete application, don’t treat the essay as a formula to complete. This is your time to shine. Have fun with it, and show your readers what makes you unique. 

Telling Instead of Showing

Rather than giving a summary of your accomplishments, you’ll want to show the reader who you are by building a narrative. This means using sensory details to help your reader experience the story. When you move into telling moments, this pulls your reader away from the narrative. 

For example, if you want to describe a storm, instead of saying that you heard thunder and saw lightning in the sky (telling), say that there was a rumble in the ground and the sky lit up with a fluorescent haze (showing). 

So, now that you know what to avoid when it comes to writing your college essay, what should you do to strengthen your essay? 

1. Strong Topic 

Choosing a good topic is essential to a strong college essay. The topic you choose should allow you to answer the essay prompt, while also showcasing who you are.

Keep in mind that your topic should not be a list of your best qualities. Instead, think about an experience or series of experiences that can be expanded upon to provide insight into your character. Pick a memorable experience or exciting revelations, and then use literary devices, like metaphors, to create connections to your personality, identity, and values. The most seemingly simple topics, like walking your dog or participating in a summer program, can be exciting and insightful as long as you share your personality and reflections throughout your essay.

2. Personal Quotient 

Essays are the place to add your personal flair to your application. A great college essay should answer these questions:

• “Who Am I?”
• “Why Am I Here?”
• “What is Unique About Me?”
• “What Matters to Me?”

Essays are one of the only places on your application where admissions officers can actually hear your voice. While the rest of your application allows the admissions committee to understand you as a student through a collection of scores, grades, and activities, your essays can reveal who you are as a person. Make sure you write in your natural voice so that admissions officers can put a personality to the rest of your application data.

3. Quality Writing and Storytelling 

It’s important to show your writing skills in an essay, and keep your audience engaged. Don’t forget, the essay is different from other parts of your application: it’s a story . That means you need dialogue, action, sensory details, and a strong hook. 

Think about your favorite writers and how they tell a story in a captivating way. Rather than blatantly stating a character’s thoughts or feelings, authors often show these plot points using sensory descriptions or exciting action. You should do the same in your essays! This will allow admissions officers to feel more invested in your story and your application.

College Essay Examples and How They Could Be Improved 

Please note: Looking at examples of real essays students have submitted to colleges can be very beneficial to get inspiration for your essays. You should never copy or plagiarize from these examples when writing your own essays. Colleges can tell when an essay isn’t genuine and will not view students favorably if they plagiarized. 

Essay Example #1

Prompt: You may wish to include an additional essay if you feel that the college application forms do not provide sufficient opportunity to convey important information about yourself or your accomplishments. You may write on a topic of your choice, or you may choose from one of the following topics: 

Travel, living, or working experiences in your own or other communities.

It was a raw day of what seemed as autumn but suggested winter. The red in every thermometer started to fall alongside the first few snowflakes. The green of the streets started to hide as the frost took control of the landscape. The colors of nature were an odd sight, as though it could not decide what dress it should wear. A cutting, ominous wind blew across the land.

That raw day was my first encounter with real personal crisis. My mind was blank. My head burned intensely. I couldn’t decide if this was a nightmare or a real tragedy. My mom had urged me to do a video call. I didn’t imagine she was the herald of dismal news: my parents were going to split up. Bitterness and sorrow accompanied every tear that my mother shed. She ended the call and l burst into tears. The unexpected news rammed my heart and injured it severely.

My parent’s separation created turmoil inside of me. I wasn’t the first kid whose parents separated, but I felt distant and powerless. I was living abroad for a year. I was thousands of miles from my beloved family. After this event, the chasm between me and my family seemed gargantuan. I lived in a land where I could barely speak the language. The language barrier didn’t allow me to explain how I felt and tears weren’t enough to describe what I was suffering. Even though I was surrounded by my host family and new friends, I felt alone without the ability to communicate. I stopped attending chess school. I rejected offers from my basketball teammates to train. I declined my music teacher’s offer to learn to play a new instrument. I was slowly succumbing to the pain caused by a problem that I couldn’t solve.

My emotional imbalance forced me to ponder about my decisions. Ron wouldn’t have rejected an opportunity to try his new chess tactics. Ron wouldn’t have rejected an opportunity to better his basketball personal high score. Ron wouldn’t have rejected an opportunity to challenge his musical abilities by learning a new instrument. I was ceasing to be myself. I realized I stopped doing what I loved, and instead lamented about the unchanging state of my parent’s ruined marriage. I realized I was throwing away the opportunity of a lifetime by staying home crying for something I couldn’t repair. I suddenly opened my eyes to my reality. I was living in Russia. I was living in the land of ballet, the land of scientific discovery, the land of music. I made the resolute decision to take advantage of the place I lived in, and fight through my pain whilst doing it. I kept myself busy with activities, as to not leave time for my mind to wander. I spent my afternoons in chess practices, basketball training, and music rehearsals. I started to play in chess tournaments, basketball matches and even had my first musical recital. I had filled my heart with joy from nourishing activities and had forgotten my internal grief.

Social, emotional, physical or even religious crises may bring personal instability into one’s life. The fact that I lived far away from my loved ones brought a more severe emotional instability. Nonetheless, this instability gave me the opportunity to mature and grow both emotionally and intellectually. Commitment to my daily activities not only helped me grow as a musician, as a chess player, as a basketball player, and as a person, but it also helped me encounter myself after being lost in grief. By finding a safe haven in my activities, I discovered a way to soothe the pain I felt. Through this state of entropy, I discovered that “times of personal crisis and inner turmoil” is just a euphemism for “opportunities and chances to thrive”. 

Why This Essay Isn’t Strong

Although this essay has a nice story at its core, there are multiple weak points that ultimately overwhelm the essay and confuse the reader.

Creative language: While this student was hoping to convey a sophisticated writing style, the inundation of metaphors, lofty diction, and irrelevant imagery severely distracts from the story and gives the impression this student used a thesaurus for every other word. The entire introductory paragraph has nothing to do with the essay except to demonstrate this student can describe the weather. Phrases like “ herald of dismal news ” and “ rammed my heart and injured it severely ” feel overly dramatic and out of place in a 17 year old’s conversational vocabulary. Yes, you want to put your best foot forward in your writing, but it has to be your words and not a thesaurus.

Grammar:  Something as simple as grammar can make or break your essay. Unfortunately, this student had multiple grammar mistakes that are hard to ignore. “ It was a raw day of what seemed as autumn but suggested winter, ” “ I didn’t imagine she was the herald of dismal news, ” and “ My emotional imbalance forced me to ponder about my decisions, ” are just a few examples.

Too much  repetition: Repetition can be a great tool in writing to create flow or emphasize certain points, but in this essay the combination of repeating sentence structure and ideas makes the essay feel unvaried and a bit monotonous. This student starts sentence after sentence with “ I ” and repeats the phrases “ I lived ” and “ I realized. ” On top of that, the pattern of chess, basketball, and music is repeated—in that same order—four times throughout the essay. It’s okay to focus on these three interests, but bringing them up in the same order multiple times makes the essay predictable.

Assuming the reader knows too   much:  You don’t want your college essay to spell everything out for the reader, but at the same time you don’t want each new piece of information to come out of left field and shock them. This student casually brings up that they were abroad in the third paragraph without any explanation as to why. They also refer to themselves in the third person (“ Ron wouldn’t… “), but at first glance it might not be evident that they are talking about themselves and the reader might wonder who Ron is.

How It Could Be Improved

So, how could this essay address each of the pain points addressed above?

Trust in your voice:  Rather than feeling the need to inject creative language and sophisticated diction into every sentence, rely on your natural writing style to truly convey to admissions officers who you are. A good practice is to write your first draft completely in your own voice and then when your editing you can change a few words or phrases, but make sure the majority of your writing sounds more like a conversation you would have with a friend or teacher rather than a formal essay.

Proofread. Proofread. Proofread : The best way to catch grammar mistakes is to read over your essay multiple times. With each reread you will catch a sentence that sounds clunky or a typo that doesn’t belong. However, you shouldn’t be the only one proofreading your essay. Give it to a friend, parent, or teacher so a fresh pair of eyes can help you perfect your grammar. Or, you can get an expert at CollegeVine to look over your essay!

Vary sentence structure:  To combat the over-repetitiveness in this essay this student needs to employ more creative sentences that play with the subject and predicate. These sentences, “ I stopped attending chess school. I rejected offers from my basketball teammates to train. I declined my music teacher’s offer to learn to play a new instrument”  could become: “ From ditching chess practice to skipping training sessions to abandoning my potential to learn the oboe, everything became meaningless.”

Clear organization:  The reader can easily get confused when new details are randomly introduced because of this essay’s lack of organization, so mapping out a clear flow of the story from beginning to middle to end would be beneficial. This essay should have begun with a depiction of this student’s life abroad in Russia, joyfully participating in the activities they abandon later. Then it would present the conflict of the divorce and the emotional turmoil the student experienced. Finally, they would demonstrate how their mindset shifted and what they learned. Presenting information in an organized, chronological way would greatly increase the reader’s ability to follow along.

Essay Example #2

Prompt: At MIT, we bring people together to better the lives of others. MIT students work to improve their communities in different ways, from tackling the world’s biggest challenges to being a good friend. Describe one way in which you have contributed to your community, whether in your family, the classroom, your neighborhood, etc. (200-250 words)

“Big Boy is back!” a child exclaimed excitedly, brandishing a marker and running towards me.

Having just walked into the room of the local nursery program at my church where I often volunteered, I couldn’t help but be amused. No matter how many times I told the kids my real name, I would always be known as “Big Boy.”

“Hey Sam! What are we doing today?” I asked enthusiastically, eyeing the chaotically moving marker that was inches away from my face. 

“We’re coloring angels, let me show you!” he responded. Looking at his multi-colored hands, I could only imagine the masterpieces he and the other kids had created.

When I tell people I’m interested in pursuing engineering, the last place they expect me to be spending my Sunday mornings is at a church hanging out with a bunch of little kids. Yet, that’s exactly where I’ll be. After they get over their disbelief, they often ask why, of all places, I would want to spend my time at such a chaotic place. The answer is simple: kids are fun! They do the most adorable things, and they surprise you in the best ways. But beyond that, I do it because I feel I can make a difference. I’ve watched many of these kids grow up since I started in 7th grade, and they always tell me that I’m their role model. If I can have such an impact on the life of a child, then why shouldn’t I continue?

At first glance you might think this essay is good—it has a surprising hook, it engages the reader with dialogue, and it includes the student’s playful voice. The big issue with this essay is it barely addresses the prompt and and the conversation with the kid has very little to do with the reflection the student provides at the end.

The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate your role within a given community. We want to see what your role is, what it entails, how the community has been affected, and hopefully how you have been affected or changed because of your involvement. We know that this student’s role is volunteering at a church nursery program, but that’s about it. 

While the final paragraph mentions “ I do it because I feel I can make a difference “, the rest of the essay doesn’t address this at all. The student refers to themself as “ their role model ” and yet the dialogue that encompasses half the essay doesn’t show us how this student is a role model nor how they’ve watched kids grow up and witnessed their impact. 

What Could Be Improved

This essay could easily be improved by tweaking the conversation with the little kid. Rather than making it about the student’s nickname and coloring, they could have discussed a conversation they had about teaching kids to work through a disagreement or how they inspired a group to start a hobby this student loves themself. The actual topic could vary but the important idea is conveying that this student is a role model and is making a difference in the lives of these children. 

It could also be nice to include details about older kids that they started working with a few years ago so the reader can actually see the impact of this student in the community. For example, maybe they use to kick a soccer ball around with a kid when they were in the program and now that kid is eight and they joined a local soccer team because they want to play varsity in high school like the student. An anecdote like that demonstrates a tangible impact this student had and makes it very easy to see how they are a role model.

Essay Example #3

Prompt: How did you discover your intellectual and academic interests, and how will you explore them at the University of Pennsylvania? Please respond considering the specific undergraduate school you have selected. (For students applying to the coordinated dual-degree and specialized programs, please answer these questions in regard to your single-degree school choice; your interest in the coordinated dual-degree or specialized program may be addressed through the program-specific essay.) (350-400 words)

My second grade accomplishment of being designated “Star of the Week” came with the  requirement of filling out a poster about myself. Besides telling the world my favorite snack, I had to write down my favorite subject and why—a box I ended up cramming, in the smallest handwriting possible, full of every single subject we’d explored at age seven. 

I have always been drawn to areas that allow me to combine my interdisciplinary passions. When I had the chance to promote school events as part of my school’s Leadership program, I realized that Marketing is one such subject. So I started seeking more venues to learn about the field. 

One of these opportunities came in the form of Wharton’s own Leadership in the Business World program. The RTAs-residential teaching assistants-helped me focus on the arena of  marketing as I conducted research on target markets and branding strategies to apply to our team’s startup. By the end of the program, I’d gotten a taste of the resources Penn has to offer to its undergraduate business students. 

At Wharton, I look forward to a varied curriculum that will enable me to pursue an interdisciplinary education which is strong in business and also offers a well-rounded General Education. Classes like “Creativity” and “Strategic Brand Management” will challenge me to learn and apply the diversity of technical and interpersonal skills required in the professional  world. 

I also look forward to the chances outside the classroom where I will be able to pursue my  interest in Marketing. I can join the MUSE organization (maybe under the Creative agency),  where upperclassmen and working professionals will mentor me in my education and career. I can look for opportunities to do research with professors like Dr. Kahn about brand loyalty or  visual design. At the Wharton School, the resources-faculty, curriculum, network-are abundant and diverse, making it the perfect place for me to pursue my interest in Marketing.

This essay makes a good effort, but ultimately feels flat and generic. To begin with, the story at the beginning was a nice attempt to establish pathos with a callback to their student’s childhood, but it doesn’t serve the essay at all. The whole essay is about pursuing marketing, therefore an anecdote about them discovering marketing would have been a much stronger opening. Instead of casually mentioning the “ chance to promote school events as part of my school’s Leadership program “, they could have shown the reader what that program looked like and why it piqued their interest.

In the body of the essay, there are many places where the author falls short in making connections between their own interests and UPenn’s unique resources. Highlighting Penn’s “ interdisciplinary education which is strong in business ” is by no means a unique school-specific offering, and the classes this student chose are pretty generic business classes. This student tells us what they will get out of these classes, but not why they want to take them. What prior experiences drew them to a class about creativity?

The student also mentions a club they want to join and a professor who’s research interests them, but again these aren’t Penn specific and there is a lack of personal connection. Why is learning about brand loyalty and visual design so important to this student? The reader gets no insight to the deeper emotional connection this student has to marketing. This essay is a prime example of how name dropping school resources isn’t enough.

The biggest change this essay could make would be to elaborate on their personal connection and fascination with marketing and UPenn. What would that look like?

To start, they would place us in the action at their school’s leadership program: describing the project they were working on, the creative ideas running through their head, and the adrenaline coursing through their body as they watched their marketing campaign get launched. 

The paragraph about Wharton’s Business program would be reworked to put the emphasis on the student’s startup and the process they went through to develop a marketing strategy, rather than what the program provided generally to all students.

When they discuss classes, clubs, and professors at Penn, the student would go into detail about why they are choosing this specific opportunity over anything else. How does it relate to their previous experiences? What skills are they hoping to develop and why? How will their future be impacted by participating in this particular opportunity? Each resource at Penn they mention has to drive home two points: the student will benefit from this opportunity and they could only have this at UPenn.

Writing college essays is hard; you need to show your personality, engage the reader, and answer the prompt fully. It’s important to get a second set of eyes on your essay so you can avoid these common college essay mistakes.  That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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Top Self Improvement Essay Topics for Personal Growth

• October 7, 2023 October 8, 2023

Self-improvement is a lifelong journey that allows individuals to evolve, grow, and become the best version of themselves. It involves actively working on personal development and striving for continuous progress in various aspects of life. One way to explore and delve deeper into the realm of self-improvement is through self-improvement essay topics. These topics serve as a platform for introspection, reflection, and exploration of personal growth. Choosing the right self improvement essay topics is crucial as it sets the foundation for the entire writing process. It provides a direction and focus, allowing individuals to express their thoughts and insights on specific areas of self-improvement. Whether it is overcoming fears, developing effective communication skills, or embracing mindfulness, the chosen topic should resonate with the writer’s personal experiences and aspirations. By selecting a topic that sparks curiosity and passion, individuals are more likely to engage with the writing process and present their ideas in a compelling manner.

Table of Contents

The Importance of Self-Improvement

Self-improvement is a concept that holds immense value in our lives. It is an ongoing process of enhancing oneself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. The importance of self-improvement lies in its ability to help us become the best version of ourselves, unlocking our true potential and achieving personal growth. Engaging in self-improvement activities allows us to identify our weaknesses and work towards overcoming them. By undertaking self-reflection and actively seeking ways to enhance our skills, knowledge, and mindset, we can strive for self-improvement. This journey enables us to become more resilient, adaptable, and capable individuals, equipped to face the challenges that life presents. With self-improvement, we can continuously learn, develop new skills, and evolve into better versions of ourselves, leading to a more fulfilling and purposeful life.

How To Manifest Money Easily Just Like The Elite Do!

Choosing the Right Self Improvement Essay Topics

Choosing the right self-improvement essay topic is crucial in ensuring that you are able to effectively convey your thoughts and ideas. With a vast array of self-improvement topics to choose from, it can sometimes be overwhelming to narrow down your options. However, by considering your personal interests, areas of growth, and current challenges, you can select a topic that resonates with you and allows for meaningful reflection and exploration. When selecting a self-improvement essay topic, it is important to choose something that genuinely interests you. This will help you stay motivated and engaged throughout the writing process. Think about the aspects of your life that you are most passionate about and consider how you can incorporate them into your essay. Whether it’s personal relationships, health, and wellness, career advancement, or personal finance, choosing a self-improvement topic that aligns with your interests will make the writing process more enjoyable and authentic.

Personal Development and Growth in Essays

In the realm of personal development and growth, essays serve as powerful tools for self-reflection and exploration. These written pieces provide individuals with an opportunity to delve into their own experiences, beliefs, and values, fostering personal growth and transformation. By putting pen to paper and examining their thoughts and feelings, individuals can gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their place in the world. Through the process of crafting an essay, individuals engage in a form of self-discovery. They are encouraged to examine their thoughts and emotions, explore their strengths and weaknesses, and reflect on their personal experiences. This introspective journey leads to personal development, as individuals gain a clearer sense of their values, goals, and aspirations. By articulating their thoughts and feelings through the written word, individuals are able to make sense of their experiences and make meaning out of their lives.

Self-Reflection and Self-Improvement Essays

Self-reflection and Self-Improvement Essays allow individuals to delve deep into their thoughts and experiences, providing an opportunity for personal growth and development. Through introspection and self-analysis, these essays encourage individuals to examine their beliefs, values, and behaviors, ultimately leading to self-awareness and improvement. In Self-Reflection and Self-Improvement Essays, individuals have the chance to explore their strengths and weaknesses and gain a better understanding of themselves. By reflecting on past experiences and analyzing their impact, individuals can identify areas where they have excelled and areas where they have room for growth. This self-reflection allows individuals to set realistic goals and develop strategies to enhance their personal development and overall well-being. Whether it’s examining their interpersonal skills, exploring their emotional intelligence, or evaluating their decision-making abilities, self-reflection serves as a catalyst for self-improvement. Writing a Self-Reflection and Self-Improvement Essay also enables individuals to assess their progress and track their growth over time. The process of documenting personal experiences and lessons learned enhances self-awareness and provides a roadmap for future development. By articulating their thoughts and feelings in written form, individuals can gain clarity and perspective, allowing them to make intentional choices and take deliberate actions toward their self-improvement journey.

How to Write an Effective Self-Improvement Essay

Writing an effective self-improvement essay can be a rewarding experience that allows you to reflect on your personal growth and inspire others to embark on their own journeys of self-improvement. However, it requires careful planning and execution to effectively convey your message and engage your readers. Firstly, it is important to choose a relevant and compelling topic for your self-improvement essay. Consider areas of your life where you have experienced significant growth or where you have overcome challenges. This will not only make your essay more relatable but also allow you to share valuable insights that can inspire and resonate with your readers. To make your self-improvement essay more impactful, incorporate personal anecdotes and real-life examples. By sharing your own experiences, you can create a connection with your audience and make your essay more relatable. Additionally, including specific details and examples will make your essay more interesting and persuasive, as it will demonstrate the practical application of your self-improvement journey.

Real-Life Examples of Self-Improvement Essays

When it comes to writing self-improvement essays, real-life examples can serve as powerful tools to inspire and guide readers on their own personal growth journeys. These examples can come from various areas of life, such as relationships, careers, health, and even spirituality. For instance, one could write an essay about their journey towards improving their communication skills, sharing specific experiences where they faced challenges in expressing themselves effectively and how they overcame those obstacles. 

By showcasing tangible examples, readers can relate to the writer’s struggles and successes, drawing valuable insights and motivation for their own self-improvement endeavors. Another example could be an essay on health and fitness, where the writer shares their personal transformation journey. They could reflect on their initial struggles with unhealthy habits, the turning point that prompted them to prioritize their well-being, and the steps they took to adopt a healthier lifestyle. By narrating their experiences in a relatable manner, the writer can inspire readers who may be facing similar struggles to take action and make positive changes in their own lives. 

Real-life examples not only make self-improvement essays more engaging and authentic but also highlight that personal growth is a continuous process that everyone can embark on.

Self-Improvement Essay Topics for Different Areas of Life

Self-improvement is a lifelong journey that encompasses various aspects of our lives. Whether it’s in our personal relationships, career, physical health, or emotional well-being, there are numerous essay topics that can help us delve into the different areas of life and explore ways to enhance and grow.

Self-Improvement Through Personal Relationships

One of the most common areas for self-improvement is personal relationships. Topics revolving around communication skills, conflict resolution, and building trust can be great starting points. For instance, you could write an essay exploring effective communication techniques for couples, discussing strategies to improve listening skills or empathetic responses. Another topic could focus on enhancing empathy in friendships and the impact it can have on our overall well-being.

Self-Improvement Through Careers

Another key area for self-improvement is our careers. Here, essay topics can revolve around professional development, goal setting, and strategies for success. For example, you could write an essay on setting achievable career goals, outlining steps to create a clear roadmap for professional growth. Alternatively, you could explore strategies for work-life balance and the importance of avoiding burnout in the workplace.

Maintaining Physical Health

Physical health is also a crucial aspect of self-improvement. Topics related to exercise, nutrition, and mental well-being can provide valuable insights and guidance. You could write an essay discussing the benefits of regular physical activity on mental health or explore the relationship between nutrition and energy levels. Additionally, topics such as mindfulness and stress management techniques can help readers find effective ways to improve their overall well-being.

Tips for Crafting a Compelling Self-Improvement Essay

Crafting a compelling self-improvement essay can be a challenging task, but with the right tips and techniques, you can create a piece that captivates readers and inspires personal growth. Here are some valuable insights to consider when writing your essay. 1. Start with a captivating introduction: Begin your essay with a compelling hook that grabs the reader’s attention. This could be a personal anecdote, a thought-provoking question, or a striking statistic related to self-improvement. By starting on an engaging note, you set the tone for the rest of your essay, making readers eager to explore your ideas further. 2. Reflect on personal experiences: A self-improvement essay is most effective when it discusses genuine personal experiences and the lessons learned from them. Share stories of challenges you faced and how you overcame them, providing insights into the growth and development you experienced. This adds authenticity to your essay and allows readers to connect with your journey. Remember to weave your experiences throughout the essay, relating them to the broader theme of self-improvement.

What is self-improvement?

Self-improvement refers to the process of making positive changes in oneself, both mentally and physically, to achieve personal growth and development.

How can I choose the right self-improvement essay topic?

To choose the right self-improvement essay topic, consider your personal interests, goals, and areas of improvement. Think about what aspects of your life you want to focus on and what message you want to convey through your essay.

How can personal development and growth be reflected in essays?

Personal development and growth can be reflected in essays by sharing personal experiences, discussing lessons learned, and showcasing the progress made toward self-improvement goals.

How can self-reflection be incorporated into self-improvement essays?

Self-reflection can be incorporated into self-improvement essays by analyzing your strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. Reflect on past experiences, evaluate your progress, and consider future goals.

Can you provide some real-life examples of self-improvement essays?

Real-life examples of self-improvement essays may include stories of overcoming personal challenges, learning new skills, improving relationships, achieving career success, or adopting healthier habits.

What are some self-improvement essay topics for different areas of life?

Self-improvement essay topics for different areas of life may include personal growth, career development, relationships, health and wellness, time management, mindfulness, financial management, and goal setting.

In the pursuit of self-improvement, individuals embark on a transformative journey filled with self-discovery, growth, and empowerment. This journey is not bound by age, circumstance, or limitations; it is a lifelong expedition where each step brings us closer to becoming the best version of ourselves.

Self-improvement essay topics serve as the compass guiding us through the vast landscape of personal development. They encourage introspection, self-reflection, and the sharing of invaluable insights gained along the way. As we navigate the realm of self-improvement, it becomes evident that the importance of this journey lies not only in the destination but in the continuous process of self-discovery and growth.

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Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 177 college essay examples for 11 schools + expert analysis.

College Admissions , College Essays

The personal statement might just be the hardest part of your college application. Mostly this is because it has the least guidance and is the most open-ended. One way to understand what colleges are looking for when they ask you to write an essay is to check out the essays of students who already got in—college essays that actually worked. After all, they must be among the most successful of this weird literary genre.

In this article, I'll go through general guidelines for what makes great college essays great. I've also compiled an enormous list of 100+ actual sample college essays from 11 different schools. Finally, I'll break down two of these published college essay examples and explain why and how they work. With links to 177 full essays and essay excerpts , this article is a great resource for learning how to craft your own personal college admissions essay!

What Excellent College Essays Have in Common

Even though in many ways these sample college essays are very different from one other, they do share some traits you should try to emulate as you write your own essay.

Visible Signs of Planning

Building out from a narrow, concrete focus. You'll see a similar structure in many of the essays. The author starts with a very detailed story of an event or description of a person or place. After this sense-heavy imagery, the essay expands out to make a broader point about the author, and connects this very memorable experience to the author's present situation, state of mind, newfound understanding, or maturity level.

Knowing how to tell a story. Some of the experiences in these essays are one-of-a-kind. But most deal with the stuff of everyday life. What sets them apart is the way the author approaches the topic: analyzing it for drama and humor, for its moving qualities, for what it says about the author's world, and for how it connects to the author's emotional life.

Stellar Execution

A killer first sentence. You've heard it before, and you'll hear it again: you have to suck the reader in, and the best place to do that is the first sentence. Great first sentences are punchy. They are like cliffhangers, setting up an exciting scene or an unusual situation with an unclear conclusion, in order to make the reader want to know more. Don't take my word for it—check out these 22 first sentences from Stanford applicants and tell me you don't want to read the rest of those essays to find out what happens!

A lively, individual voice. Writing is for readers. In this case, your reader is an admissions officer who has read thousands of essays before yours and will read thousands after. Your goal? Don't bore your reader. Use interesting descriptions, stay away from clichés, include your own offbeat observations—anything that makes this essay sounds like you and not like anyone else.

Technical correctness. No spelling mistakes, no grammar weirdness, no syntax issues, no punctuation snafus—each of these sample college essays has been formatted and proofread perfectly. If this kind of exactness is not your strong suit, you're in luck! All colleges advise applicants to have their essays looked over several times by parents, teachers, mentors, and anyone else who can spot a comma splice. Your essay must be your own work, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting help polishing it.

And if you need more guidance, connect with PrepScholar's expert admissions consultants . These expert writers know exactly what college admissions committees look for in an admissions essay and chan help you craft an essay that boosts your chances of getting into your dream school.

Check out PrepScholar's Essay Editing and Coaching progra m for more details!

Links to Full College Essay Examples

Some colleges publish a selection of their favorite accepted college essays that worked, and I've put together a selection of over 100 of these.

Common App Essay Samples

Please note that some of these college essay examples may be responding to prompts that are no longer in use. The current Common App prompts are as follows:

1. 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. 2. 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? 3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome? 4. 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? 5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. 6. 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?

7. 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.

Now, let's get to the good stuff: the list of 177 college essay examples responding to current and past Common App essay prompts. 

Connecticut college.

• 12 Common Application essays from the classes of 2022-2025

Hamilton College

• 7 Common Application essays from the class of 2026
• 7 Common Application essays from the class of 2022
• 7 Common Application essays from the class of 2018
• 8 Common Application essays from the class of 2012
• 8 Common Application essays from the class of 2007

Johns Hopkins

These essays are answers to past prompts from either the Common Application or the Coalition Application (which Johns Hopkins used to accept).

• 1 Common Application or Coalition Application essay from the class of 2026
• 6 Common Application or Coalition Application essays from the class of 2025
• 6 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2024
• 6 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2023
• 7 Common Application of Universal Application essays from the class of 2022
• 5 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2021
• 7 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2020

Essay Examples Published by Other Websites

• 2 Common Application essays ( 1st essay , 2nd essay ) from applicants admitted to Columbia

Other Sample College Essays

Here is a collection of essays that are college-specific.

Babson College

• 4 essays (and 1 video response) on "Why Babson" from the class of 2020

Emory University

• 5 essay examples ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ) from the class of 2020 along with analysis from Emory admissions staff on why the essays were exceptional
• 5 more recent essay examples ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ) along with analysis from Emory admissions staff on what made these essays stand out

University of Georgia

• 1 “strong essay” sample from 2019
• 1 “strong essay” sample from 2018
• 10 Harvard essays from 2023
• 10 Harvard essays from 2022
• 10 Harvard essays from 2021
• 10 Harvard essays from 2020
• 10 Harvard essays from 2019
• 10 Harvard essays from 2018
• 6 essays from admitted MIT students

Smith College

• 6 "best gift" essays from the class of 2018

Books of College Essays

If you're looking for even more sample college essays, consider purchasing a college essay book. The best of these include dozens of essays that worked and feedback from real admissions officers.

College Essays That Made a Difference —This detailed guide from Princeton Review includes not only successful essays, but also interviews with admissions officers and full student profiles.

50 Successful Harvard Application Essays by the Staff of the Harvard Crimson—A must for anyone aspiring to Harvard .

50 Successful Ivy League Application Essays and 50 Successful Stanford Application Essays by Gen and Kelly Tanabe—For essays from other top schools, check out this venerated series, which is regularly updated with new essays.

Heavenly Essays by Janine W. Robinson—This collection from the popular blogger behind Essay Hell includes a wider range of schools, as well as helpful tips on honing your own essay.

Analyzing Great Common App Essays That Worked

I've picked two essays from the examples collected above to examine in more depth so that you can see exactly what makes a successful college essay work. Full credit for these essays goes to the original authors and the schools that published them.

Example 1: "Breaking Into Cars," by Stephen, Johns Hopkins Class of '19 (Common App Essay, 636 words long)

I had never broken into a car before.

We were in Laredo, having just finished our first day at a Habitat for Humanity work site. The Hotchkiss volunteers had already left, off to enjoy some Texas BBQ, leaving me behind with the college kids to clean up. Not until we were stranded did we realize we were locked out of the van.

Someone picked a coat hanger out of the dumpster, handed it to me, and took a few steps back.

"Can you do that thing with a coat hanger to unlock it?"

"Why me?" I thought.

More out of amusement than optimism, I gave it a try. I slid the hanger into the window's seal like I'd seen on crime shows, and spent a few minutes jiggling the apparatus around the inside of the frame. Suddenly, two things simultaneously clicked. One was the lock on the door. (I actually succeeded in springing it.) The other was the realization that I'd been in this type of situation before. In fact, I'd been born into this type of situation.

My upbringing has numbed me to unpredictability and chaos. With a family of seven, my home was loud, messy, and spottily supervised. My siblings arguing, the dog barking, the phone ringing—all meant my house was functioning normally. My Dad, a retired Navy pilot, was away half the time. When he was home, he had a parenting style something like a drill sergeant. At the age of nine, I learned how to clear burning oil from the surface of water. My Dad considered this a critical life skill—you know, in case my aircraft carrier should ever get torpedoed. "The water's on fire! Clear a hole!" he shouted, tossing me in the lake without warning. While I'm still unconvinced about that particular lesson's practicality, my Dad's overarching message is unequivocally true: much of life is unexpected, and you have to deal with the twists and turns.

Living in my family, days rarely unfolded as planned. A bit overlooked, a little pushed around, I learned to roll with reality, negotiate a quick deal, and give the improbable a try. I don't sweat the small stuff, and I definitely don't expect perfect fairness. So what if our dining room table only has six chairs for seven people? Someone learns the importance of punctuality every night.

But more than punctuality and a special affinity for musical chairs, my family life has taught me to thrive in situations over which I have no power. Growing up, I never controlled my older siblings, but I learned how to thwart their attempts to control me. I forged alliances, and realigned them as necessary. Sometimes, I was the poor, defenseless little brother; sometimes I was the omniscient elder. Different things to different people, as the situation demanded. I learned to adapt.

Back then, these techniques were merely reactions undertaken to ensure my survival. But one day this fall, Dr. Hicks, our Head of School, asked me a question that he hoped all seniors would reflect on throughout the year: "How can I participate in a thing I do not govern, in the company of people I did not choose?"

The question caught me off guard, much like the question posed to me in Laredo. Then, I realized I knew the answer. I knew why the coat hanger had been handed to me.

Growing up as the middle child in my family, I was a vital participant in a thing I did not govern, in the company of people I did not choose. It's family. It's society. And often, it's chaos. You participate by letting go of the small stuff, not expecting order and perfection, and facing the unexpected with confidence, optimism, and preparedness. My family experience taught me to face a serendipitous world with confidence.

What Makes This Essay Tick?

It's very helpful to take writing apart in order to see just how it accomplishes its objectives. Stephen's essay is very effective. Let's find out why!

An Opening Line That Draws You In

In just eight words, we get: scene-setting (he is standing next to a car about to break in), the idea of crossing a boundary (he is maybe about to do an illegal thing for the first time), and a cliffhanger (we are thinking: is he going to get caught? Is he headed for a life of crime? Is he about to be scared straight?).

Great, Detailed Opening Story

More out of amusement than optimism, I gave it a try. I slid the hanger into the window's seal like I'd seen on crime shows, and spent a few minutes jiggling the apparatus around the inside of the frame.

It's the details that really make this small experience come alive. Notice how whenever he can, Stephen uses a more specific, descriptive word in place of a more generic one. The volunteers aren't going to get food or dinner; they're going for "Texas BBQ." The coat hanger comes from "a dumpster." Stephen doesn't just move the coat hanger—he "jiggles" it.

Details also help us visualize the emotions of the people in the scene. The person who hands Stephen the coat hanger isn't just uncomfortable or nervous; he "takes a few steps back"—a description of movement that conveys feelings. Finally, the detail of actual speech makes the scene pop. Instead of writing that the other guy asked him to unlock the van, Stephen has the guy actually say his own words in a way that sounds like a teenager talking.

Turning a Specific Incident Into a Deeper Insight

Suddenly, two things simultaneously clicked. One was the lock on the door. (I actually succeeded in springing it.) The other was the realization that I'd been in this type of situation before. In fact, I'd been born into this type of situation.

Stephen makes the locked car experience a meaningful illustration of how he has learned to be resourceful and ready for anything, and he also makes this turn from the specific to the broad through an elegant play on the two meanings of the word "click."

Using Concrete Examples When Making Abstract Claims

My upbringing has numbed me to unpredictability and chaos. With a family of seven, my home was loud, messy, and spottily supervised. My siblings arguing, the dog barking, the phone ringing—all meant my house was functioning normally.

"Unpredictability and chaos" are very abstract, not easily visualized concepts. They could also mean any number of things—violence, abandonment, poverty, mental instability. By instantly following up with highly finite and unambiguous illustrations like "family of seven" and "siblings arguing, the dog barking, the phone ringing," Stephen grounds the abstraction in something that is easy to picture: a large, noisy family.

Using Small Bits of Humor and Casual Word Choice

My Dad, a retired Navy pilot, was away half the time. When he was home, he had a parenting style something like a drill sergeant. At the age of nine, I learned how to clear burning oil from the surface of water. My Dad considered this a critical life skill—you know, in case my aircraft carrier should ever get torpedoed.

Obviously, knowing how to clean burning oil is not high on the list of things every 9-year-old needs to know. To emphasize this, Stephen uses sarcasm by bringing up a situation that is clearly over-the-top: "in case my aircraft carrier should ever get torpedoed."

The humor also feels relaxed. Part of this is because he introduces it with the colloquial phrase "you know," so it sounds like he is talking to us in person. This approach also diffuses the potential discomfort of the reader with his father's strictness—since he is making jokes about it, clearly he is OK. Notice, though, that this doesn't occur very much in the essay. This helps keep the tone meaningful and serious rather than flippant.

An Ending That Stretches the Insight Into the Future

But one day this fall, Dr. Hicks, our Head of School, asked me a question that he hoped all seniors would reflect on throughout the year: "How can I participate in a thing I do not govern, in the company of people I did not choose?"

The ending of the essay reveals that Stephen's life has been one long preparation for the future. He has emerged from chaos and his dad's approach to parenting as a person who can thrive in a world that he can't control.

This connection of past experience to current maturity and self-knowledge is a key element in all successful personal essays. Colleges are very much looking for mature, self-aware applicants. These are the qualities of successful college students, who will be able to navigate the independence college classes require and the responsibility and quasi-adulthood of college life.

What Could This Essay Do Even Better?

Even the best essays aren't perfect, and even the world's greatest writers will tell you that writing is never "finished"—just "due." So what would we tweak in this essay if we could?

Replace some of the clichéd language. Stephen uses handy phrases like "twists and turns" and "don't sweat the small stuff" as a kind of shorthand for explaining his relationship to chaos and unpredictability. But using too many of these ready-made expressions runs the risk of clouding out your own voice and replacing it with something expected and boring.

Use another example from recent life. Stephen's first example (breaking into the van in Laredo) is a great illustration of being resourceful in an unexpected situation. But his essay also emphasizes that he "learned to adapt" by being "different things to different people." It would be great to see how this plays out outside his family, either in the situation in Laredo or another context.

Example 2: By Renner Kwittken, Tufts Class of '23 (Common App Essay, 645 words long)

My first dream job was to be a pickle truck driver. I saw it in my favorite book, Richard Scarry's "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go," and for some reason, I was absolutely obsessed with the idea of driving a giant pickle. Much to the discontent of my younger sister, I insisted that my parents read us that book as many nights as possible so we could find goldbug, a small little golden bug, on every page. I would imagine the wonderful life I would have: being a pig driving a giant pickle truck across the country, chasing and finding goldbug. I then moved on to wanting to be a Lego Master. Then an architect. Then a surgeon.

Then I discovered a real goldbug: gold nanoparticles that can reprogram macrophages to assist in killing tumors, produce clear images of them without sacrificing the subject, and heat them to obliteration.

Suddenly the destination of my pickle was clear.

I quickly became enveloped by the world of nanomedicine; I scoured articles about liposomes, polymeric micelles, dendrimers, targeting ligands, and self-assembling nanoparticles, all conquering cancer in some exotic way. Completely absorbed, I set out to find a mentor to dive even deeper into these topics. After several rejections, I was immensely grateful to receive an invitation to work alongside Dr. Sangeeta Ray at Johns Hopkins.

In the lab, Dr. Ray encouraged a great amount of autonomy to design and implement my own procedures. I chose to attack a problem that affects the entire field of nanomedicine: nanoparticles consistently fail to translate from animal studies into clinical trials. Jumping off recent literature, I set out to see if a pre-dose of a common chemotherapeutic could enhance nanoparticle delivery in aggressive prostate cancer, creating three novel constructs based on three different linear polymers, each using fluorescent dye (although no gold, sorry goldbug!). Though using radioactive isotopes like Gallium and Yttrium would have been incredible, as a 17-year-old, I unfortunately wasn't allowed in the same room as these radioactive materials (even though I took a Geiger counter to a pair of shoes and found them to be slightly dangerous).

I hadn't expected my hypothesis to work, as the research project would have ideally been led across two full years. Yet while there are still many optimizations and revisions to be done, I was thrilled to find -- with completely new nanoparticles that may one day mean future trials will use particles with the initials "RK-1" -- thatcyclophosphamide did indeed increase nanoparticle delivery to the tumor in a statistically significant way.

A secondary, unexpected research project was living alone in Baltimore, a new city to me, surrounded by people much older than I. Even with moving frequently between hotels, AirBnB's, and students' apartments, I strangely reveled in the freedom I had to enjoy my surroundings and form new friendships with graduate school students from the lab. We explored The Inner Harbor at night, attended a concert together one weekend, and even got to watch the Orioles lose (to nobody's surprise). Ironically, it's through these new friendships I discovered something unexpected: what I truly love is sharing research. Whether in a presentation or in a casual conversation, making others interested in science is perhaps more exciting to me than the research itself. This solidified a new pursuit to angle my love for writing towards illuminating science in ways people can understand, adding value to a society that can certainly benefit from more scientific literacy.

It seems fitting that my goals are still transforming: in Scarry's book, there is not just one goldbug, there is one on every page. With each new experience, I'm learning that it isn't the goldbug itself, but rather the act of searching for the goldbugs that will encourage, shape, and refine my ever-evolving passions. Regardless of the goldbug I seek -- I know my pickle truck has just begun its journey.

Renner takes a somewhat different approach than Stephen, but their essay is just as detailed and engaging. Let's go through some of the strengths of this essay.

One Clear Governing Metaphor

This essay is ultimately about two things: Renner’s dreams and future career goals, and Renner’s philosophy on goal-setting and achieving one’s dreams.

But instead of listing off all the amazing things they’ve done to pursue their dream of working in nanomedicine, Renner tells a powerful, unique story instead. To set up the narrative, Renner opens the essay by connecting their experiences with goal-setting and dream-chasing all the way back to a memorable childhood experience:

This lighthearted–but relevant!--story about the moment when Renner first developed a passion for a specific career (“finding the goldbug”) provides an anchor point for the rest of the essay. As Renner pivots to describing their current dreams and goals–working in nanomedicine–the metaphor of “finding the goldbug” is reflected in Renner’s experiments, rejections, and new discoveries.

Though Renner tells multiple stories about their quest to “find the goldbug,” or, in other words, pursue their passion, each story is connected by a unifying theme; namely, that as we search and grow over time, our goals will transform…and that’s okay! By the end of the essay, Renner uses the metaphor of “finding the goldbug” to reiterate the relevance of the opening story:

While the earlier parts of the essay convey Renner’s core message by showing, the final, concluding paragraph sums up Renner’s insights by telling. By briefly and clearly stating the relevance of the goldbug metaphor to their own philosophy on goals and dreams, Renner demonstrates their creativity, insight, and eagerness to grow and evolve as the journey continues into college.

An Engaging, Individual Voice

This essay uses many techniques that make Renner sound genuine and make the reader feel like we already know them.

Technique #1: humor. Notice Renner's gentle and relaxed humor that lightly mocks their younger self's grand ambitions (this is different from the more sarcastic kind of humor used by Stephen in the first essay—you could never mistake one writer for the other).

My first dream job was to be a pickle truck driver.

I would imagine the wonderful life I would have: being a pig driving a giant pickle truck across the country, chasing and finding goldbug. I then moved on to wanting to be a Lego Master. Then an architect. Then a surgeon.

Renner gives a great example of how to use humor to your advantage in college essays. You don’t want to come off as too self-deprecating or sarcastic, but telling a lightheartedly humorous story about your younger self that also showcases how you’ve grown and changed over time can set the right tone for your entire essay.

Technique #2: intentional, eye-catching structure. The second technique is the way Renner uses a unique structure to bolster the tone and themes of their essay . The structure of your essay can have a major impact on how your ideas come across…so it’s important to give it just as much thought as the content of your essay!

For instance, Renner does a great job of using one-line paragraphs to create dramatic emphasis and to make clear transitions from one phase of the story to the next:

Suddenly the destination of my pickle car was clear.

Not only does the one-liner above signal that Renner is moving into a new phase of the narrative (their nanoparticle research experiences), it also tells the reader that this is a big moment in Renner’s story. It’s clear that Renner made a major discovery that changed the course of their goal pursuit and dream-chasing. Through structure, Renner conveys excitement and entices the reader to keep pushing forward to the next part of the story.

Technique #3: playing with syntax. The third technique is to use sentences of varying length, syntax, and structure. Most of the essay's written in standard English and uses grammatically correct sentences. However, at key moments, Renner emphasizes that the reader needs to sit up and pay attention by switching to short, colloquial, differently punctuated, and sometimes fragmented sentences.

Even with moving frequently between hotels, AirBnB's, and students' apartments, I strangely reveled in the freedom I had to enjoy my surroundings and form new friendships with graduate school students from the lab. We explored The Inner Harbor at night, attended a concert together one weekend, and even got to watch the Orioles lose (to nobody's surprise). Ironically, it's through these new friendships I discovered something unexpected: what I truly love is sharing research.

In the examples above, Renner switches adeptly between long, flowing sentences and quippy, telegraphic ones. At the same time, Renner uses these different sentence lengths intentionally. As they describe their experiences in new places, they use longer sentences to immerse the reader in the sights, smells, and sounds of those experiences. And when it’s time to get a big, key idea across, Renner switches to a short, punchy sentence to stop the reader in their tracks.

The varying syntax and sentence lengths pull the reader into the narrative and set up crucial “aha” moments when it’s most important…which is a surefire way to make any college essay stand out.

Renner's essay is very strong, but there are still a few little things that could be improved.

Connecting the research experiences to the theme of “finding the goldbug.”  The essay begins and ends with Renner’s connection to the idea of “finding the goldbug.” And while this metaphor is deftly tied into the essay’s intro and conclusion, it isn’t entirely clear what Renner’s big findings were during the research experiences that are described in the middle of the essay. It would be great to add a sentence or two stating what Renner’s big takeaways (or “goldbugs”) were from these experiences, which add more cohesion to the essay as a whole.

Give more details about discovering the world of nanomedicine. It makes sense that Renner wants to get into the details of their big research experiences as quickly as possible. After all, these are the details that show Renner’s dedication to nanomedicine! But a smoother transition from the opening pickle car/goldbug story to Renner’s “real goldbug” of nanoparticles would help the reader understand why nanoparticles became Renner’s goldbug. Finding out why Renner is so motivated to study nanomedicine–and perhaps what put them on to this field of study–would help readers fully understand why Renner chose this path in the first place.

4 Essential Tips for Writing Your Own Essay

How can you use this discussion to better your own college essay? Here are some suggestions for ways to use this resource effectively.

#1: Get Help From the Experts

Getting your college applications together takes a lot of work and can be pretty intimidatin g. Essays are even more important than ever now that admissions processes are changing and schools are going test-optional and removing diversity standards thanks to new Supreme Court rulings .  If you want certified expert help that really makes a difference, get started with  PrepScholar’s Essay Editing and Coaching program. Our program can help you put together an incredible essay from idea to completion so that your application stands out from the crowd. We've helped students get into the best colleges in the United States, including Harvard, Stanford, and Yale.  If you're ready to take the next step and boost your odds of getting into your dream school, connect with our experts today .

#2: Read Other Essays to Get Ideas for Your Own

As you go through the essays we've compiled for you above, ask yourself the following questions:

• Can you explain to yourself (or someone else!) why the opening sentence works well?
• Look for the essay's detailed personal anecdote. What senses is the author describing? Can you easily picture the scene in your mind's eye?
• Find the place where this anecdote bridges into a larger insight about the author. How does the essay connect the two? How does the anecdote work as an example of the author's characteristic, trait, or skill?
• Check out the essay's tone. If it's funny, can you find the places where the humor comes from? If it's sad and moving, can you find the imagery and description of feelings that make you moved? If it's serious, can you see how word choice adds to this tone?

Make a note whenever you find an essay or part of an essay that you think was particularly well-written, and think about what you like about it . Is it funny? Does it help you really get to know the writer? Does it show what makes the writer unique? Once you have your list, keep it next to you while writing your essay to remind yourself to try and use those same techniques in your own essay.

#3: Find Your "A-Ha!" Moment

All of these essays rely on connecting with the reader through a heartfelt, highly descriptive scene from the author's life. It can either be very dramatic (did you survive a plane crash?) or it can be completely mundane (did you finally beat your dad at Scrabble?). Either way, it should be personal and revealing about you, your personality, and the way you are now that you are entering the adult world.

Check out essays by authors like John Jeremiah Sullivan , Leslie Jamison , Hanif Abdurraqib , and Esmé Weijun Wang to get more examples of how to craft a compelling personal narrative.

#4: Start Early, Revise Often

Let me level with you: the best writing isn't writing at all. It's rewriting. And in order to have time to rewrite, you have to start way before the application deadline. My advice is to write your first draft at least two months before your applications are due.

Let it sit for a few days untouched. Then come back to it with fresh eyes and think critically about what you've written. What's extra? What's missing? What is in the wrong place? What doesn't make sense? Don't be afraid to take it apart and rearrange sections. Do this several times over, and your essay will be much better for it!

For more editing tips, check out a style guide like Dreyer's English or Eats, Shoots & Leaves .

What's Next?

Still not sure which colleges you want to apply to? Our experts will show you how to make a college list that will help you choose a college that's right for you.

Interested in learning more about college essays? Check out our detailed breakdown of exactly how personal statements work in an application , some suggestions on what to avoid when writing your essay , and our guide to writing about your extracurricular activities .

Working on the rest of your application? Read what admissions officers wish applicants knew before applying .

The recommendations in this post are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links PrepScholar may receive a commission.

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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Essay on Self Improvement

Students are often asked to write an essay on Self Improvement in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Self Improvement

What is self improvement.

Self-improvement is when you make yourself better. You can do this in many different ways. It could be learning a new thing, changing a bad habit, or becoming kinder. It’s about making positive changes to yourself.

Why is Self Improvement Important?

Self-improvement is important because it helps us grow. It helps us become better people. When we improve ourselves, we feel happier and more confident. We can do more things and achieve our goals.

How to Start Self Improvement?

To start self-improvement, you need to think about what you want to change. You might want to learn a new skill or stop a bad habit. Then, you make a plan and start working on it.

Tips for Self Improvement

Here are some tips for self-improvement: set clear goals, be patient, and keep going even when it’s hard. Also, remember to reward yourself when you achieve your goals. This will keep you motivated.

In conclusion, self-improvement is a journey. It takes time and effort. But it’s worth it because you become a better person. So, start your self-improvement journey today!

Also check:

• Speech on Self Improvement

250 Words Essay on Self Improvement

Self Improvement is the act of making yourself better. It’s about learning new things and getting rid of bad habits. It’s like planting a seed and taking care of it until it grows into a big, strong tree.

Self Improvement is important because it helps us grow and become better people. It’s like climbing a ladder. Each step we take brings us closer to the top. We learn new things, become better at what we do, and feel happier. It’s a journey that never ends.

Starting Self Improvement is easy. First, think about what you want to improve. It could be anything. Maybe you want to read more books, or learn a new skill, or be kinder to people. Then, make a plan. Write down what you want to do and how you will do it. And then, start doing it. It’s as simple as that.

Challenges in Self Improvement

Self Improvement can be hard. Sometimes, we might feel like giving up. But remember, every step counts. Even small changes can make a big difference. And if you keep going, you will get better. It’s like a journey. There might be bumps along the way, but in the end, you will reach your destination.

Self Improvement is a journey of learning and growing. It’s about becoming the best version of ourselves. It might be hard, but it’s worth it. So, let’s start our journey of Self Improvement today. Let’s plant our seeds and watch them grow into strong, beautiful trees.

500 Words Essay on Self Improvement

Understanding self-improvement.

Self-improvement is the process of making yourself a better person. It is about learning new things, developing new skills, and becoming a better version of yourself. It can include many things like learning a new language, improving your physical health, or becoming a better listener.

The Importance of Self-Improvement

Self-improvement is important for many reasons. It can help you achieve your goals, make you feel good about yourself, and improve your life in general. For example, if you want to become a better student, you might focus on improving your study habits. This could include things like setting aside more time for studying, learning new study techniques, or finding a study group to join.

Ways to Improve Yourself

There are many ways you can work on self-improvement. One way is to set goals for yourself. These goals should be things that you want to achieve or improve about yourself. They could be big goals like getting into a good college, or smaller goals like reading a new book every month.

Another way to improve yourself is to learn new skills. This could be anything from learning how to cook a new recipe, to learning how to play a musical instrument, to learning how to code. Learning new skills can be fun and rewarding, and it can also help you become a more well-rounded person.

Challenges in Self-Improvement

While self-improvement can be rewarding, it can also be challenging. Sometimes, it can be hard to stick to your goals, especially if they are big and take a long time to achieve. It can also be hard to find the time to work on self-improvement, especially if you have a busy schedule.

Despite these challenges, it’s important to remember that self-improvement is a journey, not a destination. It’s about making progress, not about being perfect. Even small steps towards your goals can make a big difference.

The Role of Patience in Self-Improvement

Patience plays a key role in self-improvement. It’s important to remember that change takes time. You won’t become a better person overnight. It takes time, effort, and patience. But with persistence, you can make progress and see improvements in yourself.

In conclusion, self-improvement is a lifelong journey. It’s about setting goals, learning new skills, and overcoming challenges. It’s about becoming a better version of yourself, one step at a time. So, keep moving forward, keep learning, and keep improving. The journey of self-improvement is a rewarding one, and it’s a journey that’s worth taking.

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12 Ways to Quickly Improve Your Academic Essay Writing Skills

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Written by  Scribendi

Anyone can learn to produce an academic essay if they begin with a few basic essay-writing rules. 

An academic essay must be based upon a solid but debatable thesis, supported by relevant and credible evidence, and closed with a succinct and thorough conclusion.

By adhering to the best way to write an essay, you can create valuable, persuasive papers even when you're under a time crunch!

What Makes a Good Essay?

As previously noted, the foundation of any good academic essay is its thesis statement. 

Do not confuse your thesis with your opening sentence. There are many good ways to start an essay , but few essays immediately present their main ideas.

After you draft your thesis, you can begin to develop your essay around it. This development will include the main supporting points of your essay, which will scaffold its main body. 

Essays also typically include a relevant and compelling introduction and conclusion.

Learn How to Write a Great Thesis Statement .

Understanding How to Write a Good Essay

When writing an academic essay, you must take a number of qualities and characteristics into careful consideration. Focus, development, unity, coherence, and correctness all play critical roles when it comes to distinguishing an exceptional essay from one that is less than perfect.

The following essay-writing tips can help writers organize, format, and support their essays in ways that fit their intended purpose and optimize their overall persuasiveness. Here are 12 essay tips for developing and writing your next academic paper.

1. Know What You Are Going to Write About Before You Start Writing

While untrained writers might just sit down and start typing, educated and experienced writers know that there are many steps to writing an essay.

In short, you should know what you want to say before you type a single word. The easiest way to narrow down a thesis and create a proper argument is to make a basic outline before you begin composing your essay.

Your outline should consist of rough notes that sketch out your introduction (including your thesis), the body of your essay (which should include separate paragraphs that present your main supporting points with plenty of evidence and examples), and your conclusion (which ties everything together and connects the argument back to your thesis).

2. Acquire a Solid Understanding of Basic Grammar, Punctuation, and Style

Before getting into more refined essay-writing techniques, you must have a solid grasp of grammar, punctuation, and style. Without these writing fundamentals, it will be difficult to communicate your ideas effectively and ensure that they are taken seriously.

Grammar basics include subject and verb agreement, correct article and pronoun use, and well-formed sentence structures. Make sure you know the proper uses for the most common forms of punctuation. Be mindful of your comma usage and know when a period is needed.

Finally, voice is tremendously important in academic essay writing. Employ language that is as concise as possible. Avoid transition words that don't add anything to the sentence and unnecessary wordiness that detracts from your argument.

Furthermore, use the active voice instead of the passive whenever possible (e.g., "this study found" instead of "it was found by this study"). This will make your essay's tone clear and direct.

3. Use the Right Vocabulary and Know What the Words You Are Using Actually Mean

How you use language is important, especially in academic essay writing. When writing an academic essay, remember that you are persuading others that you are an expert who argues intelligently about your topic.

Using big words just to sound smart often results in the opposite effect—it is easy to detect when someone is overcompensating in their writing.

If you aren't sure of the exact meaning of a word, you risk using it incorrectly. There's no shame in checking, and it might save you from an embarrassing word misuse later!

Using obscure language can also detract from the clarity of your argument—you should consider this before pulling out a thesaurus to change a perfectly appropriate word to something completely different.

4. Understand the Argument and Critically Analyze the Evidence

While writing a good essay, your main argument should always be at the front of your mind. While it's tempting to go off on a tangent about an interesting side note, doing so makes your writing less concise.

Always question the evidence you include in your essay; ask yourself, "Does this directly support my thesis?" If the answer is "no," then that evidence should probably be excluded. 

When you are evaluating evidence, be critical and thorough. You want to use the strongest research to back up your thesis. It is not enough to simply present evidence in support of an argument. A good writer must also explain why the evidence is relevant and supportive.

Everything you include should clearly connect to your topic and argument.   

5. Know How to Write a Conclusion That Supports Your Research

One of the most overlooked steps to writing an essay is the conclusion. Your conclusion ties all your research together and proves your thesis. It should not be a restatement of your introduction or a copy-and-paste of your thesis.

A strong conclusion briefly outlines the key evidence discussed in the body of an essay and directly ties it to the thesis to show how the evidence proves or disproves the main argument of your research.

Countless great essays have been written only to be derailed by vague, weakly worded conclusions. Don't let your next essay become one of those.     

6. Build a Solid Thesis to Support Your Arguments

A thesis is the main pillar of an essay. By selecting a specific thesis, you'll be able to develop arguments to support your central opinion. Consider writing about a unique experience or your own particular view of a topic .

Your thesis should be clear and logical, but it should also be debatable. Otherwise, it might be difficult to support it with compelling arguments.

7. Develop an Interesting Opening Paragraph to Hook In Readers from the Get-Go

No matter how you begin your essay, you must strive to capture the reader's interest immediately. If your opening paragraph doesn't catch the eye and engage the brain, any attempt at persuasion may end before the essay even starts. 

The beginning of your essay is crucial for setting the stage for your thesis.

8. Always Remember to Edit and Proofread Your Essay

Any decent writer will tell you that writing is really rewriting. A good academic essay will inevitably go through multiple drafts as it slowly takes shape. When you arrive at a final draft, you must make sure that it is as close to perfect as possible.

This means subjecting your essay to close and comprehensive editing and proofreading processes. In other words, you must read your paper as many times as necessary to eliminate all grammar/punctuation mistakes and typos.

It is helpful to have a third party review your work. Consider consulting a peer or professional editing service. Keep in mind that professional editors are able to help you identify underdeveloped arguments and unnecessarily wordy language, and provide other feedback.

Get Critical Feedback on Your Writing

Hire an expert academic editor , or get a free sample, 9. when developing your essay's main body, build strong and relevant arguments.

Every sentence in the main body of your paper should explain and support your thesis. When deciding how much evidence to include in an academic essay, a good guideline is to include at least three main supporting arguments.

Those main supporting arguments, in turn, require support in the form of relevant facts, figures, examples, analogies, and observations. 

You will need to engage in appropriate research to accomplish this. To organize your research efforts, you may want to develop a list of good research questions . 

10. Choose the Format of Your Essay before Writing It

The final shape that your essay takes depends a great deal on what kind of format you use. Popular college essay format types include the Modern Language Association of America ( MLA ), American Psychological Association ( APA ), and Chicago Manual of Style ( Chicago style).

These formats govern everything from capitalization rules to source citation. Often, professors dictate a specific format for your essay. If they do not, you should choose the format that best suits your field.

11. Create Clear Transitions between Your Ideas

Although unnecessary transition words are the enemy of clarity and concision, they can be invaluable tools when it comes to separating and connecting the different sections of your essay. 

Not only do they help you express your ideas but they also bring a cohesive structure to your sentences and a pleasant flow to your writing. Just be sure that you are using the right transition words for the right purpose and to the proper effect.

12. Always Include an Organized Reference Page at the End of Your Essay

As a key component of MLA, APA, and Chicago Style formatting, the reference or Works Cited page is an essential part of any academic essay.

Regardless of the format used, the reference page must be well organized and easy to read so that your audience can see exactly where your outside information came from. 

To produce a properly formatted reference page, you may have to familiarize yourself with specialized phrases and abbreviations, such as " et al ." 

How to Write a Good Hook for an Essay

The key to a good hook is to introduce an unexplored or absorbing line of inquiry in your introduction that addresses the main point of your thesis. 

By carefully choosing your language and slowly revealing details, you can build reader anticipation for what follows. 

Much like an actual worm-baited fishing hook, a successful hook will lure and capture readers, allowing the writer to "reel them in."

How to Get Better at Writing Essays

You can get better at writing essays the same way that you improve at anything else: practice, practice, practice! However, there are a few ways that you can improve your writing quickly so you can turn in a quality academic essay on time.

In addition to following the 12 essay tips and guidelines above, you can familiarize yourself with a few common practices and structures for essay development. 

Great writing techniques for essays include brainstorming and tree diagrams, especially when coming up with a topic for your thesis statement. Becoming familiar with different structures for organizing your essay (order of importance, chronological, etc.) is also extremely helpful.

How to Write a Good Introduction for an Essay

To learn how to write a good essay, you must also learn how to write a good introduction. 

Most effective essay introductions begin with relatively broad and general subject matter and then gradually narrow in focus and scope until they arrive at something extremely specific: the thesis. This is why writers tend to place their thesis statements at the very end of their introductory paragraph(s).

Because they are generally broad and often relate only tangentially to an essay's main point, there is virtually no limit on what the beginning of a good introduction can look like. However, writers still tend to rely on somewhat cliché opening sentences, such as quotations and rhetorical questions.

How to Write a Good Conclusion for an Essay

Briefly put, a good conclusion does two things. It wraps up any loose ends and drives home the main point of your essay. 

To learn how to write a good conclusion, you will want to ensure that no unanswered questions remain in the reader's mind. A good conclusion will restate the thesis and reinforce the essay's main supporting points.

Take Your Essay from Good to Great

About the author.

Scribendi's in-house editors work with writers from all over the globe to perfect their writing. They know that no piece of writing is complete without a professional edit, and they love to see a good piece of writing turn into a great one after the editing process. Scribendi's in-house editors are unrivaled in both experience and education, having collectively edited millions of words and obtained nearly 20 degrees collectively. They love consuming caffeinated beverages, reading books of various genres, and relaxing in quiet, dimly lit spaces.

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• Essay Database >
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• Essay on Life

Self Improvement Essay Examples

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Life , Family , Children , Confidence , Development , My Life , Control , Trying

Published: 03/30/2023

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Self Improment

Introduction It is every parent's dream to provide a good life for his or her children. Being a 35-year-old single father of three children with a salary of 50,000 dollars per year, life is not easy. I am trying to save for my children’s college, save for retirement, and pay my bills. There are many challenges in life that require me to find a better paying job. However, I have realized that for me to achieve the objectives I have in life, I must develop the right mindset. As such, I developed the plan below to improve my life, which mostly involves developing a positive mindset. Improving my life would include relinquishing and letting go of things I cannot control. The main point here would be to empower myself to change the things I can manage to change and ignore the rest. It would be a bad idea to expend energy trying to control other things. In letting go of things I cannot control, I can develop a positive visualization of my life and children that would increase the possibilities of achieving a good and successful life. Human beings create their realities through their intentions and thoughts. As such, it would be important to note the objectives and goals that can help in improving our lives. The moment after divorce is always challenging to both men and women. Since I am taking care of my children and trying to save for retirement, there are high chances that I will develop stress within the way. According to Dan Gardner, nobody knows what the future holds. Despite hoping for the best, the chances are that the situation can get worse (Gardner, 2011). As such, it would be important for me to get connected with how and why things will happen. Connecting with the two will help increase my energy level, overcome setbacks and adversity, and think more clearly. Getting connected with one’s why helps in discovering their life’s purpose, which changes their lives for the better. The situation would also require me to have mental discipline, which can be achieved through meditation and mindfulness. Having a mental discipline will play a great role in guiding me in the right things to do in the challenging times. It will be important for me to be aware of my emotions, react with empathy and compassion, and slow down my heart rate and activities through presenting the present moment. Meditation will be important since it will help lower the risk of depression, and at the same time help me develop better stress management. The main reason behind this is to avoid chronic anxiety. In Emotional Intelligence, Goleman says how divorce can lead to depression and sadness to individuals (Goleman, 1995). Since I have the responsibility of taking care and providing for my children, I will put efforts towards fighting long periods of pessimism and sadness. Meditation will help me focus on the positive things in life, rather than showing incessant hostility and unremitting tension to the children. The low finances will be required to do the important things in our lives. As such, taking part in meditation will help me avoid the risk of getting chronic anxiety diseases such as peptic ulcers and heart diseases that will use a lot of money. I will move towards a better life by showing confidence in all the things that I will be doing. Confidence is a very important aspect of the human lives. However, many people struggle to find confidence, with the lack of confidence making it difficult for many people to become successful. It will be important to note that my children will be looking up at me. Being confident will also inspire confidence in them, which will help them in realizing that things are under control. Gaining the confidence of these children will help me find success. It will be important for me to know how to show confidence to my children, which can be done through body language, behavior, how one speaks, and what one says. I will improve my life by learning how to open up. The sad thing is that despite many men going through problems, they are always unwilling to open up or articulate their emotions. It is always important for one to learn how to share and verbalize their doubts. As a divorced father who is trying to improve his life and that of his children, articulating my problems to professional counselors will play a great and important role towards improving my life. Sharing my insecurities, worries and doubts will be the first step towards achieving a better life.

In conclusion, improving my life will require me to have a positive mindset, which will be achieved by learning how to maintain a positive outlook by filtering the negative. Filtering the negative messages, including those found in the media and social media, can change everything. It will be important to tell myself a better story, which will help me in picking the correct message.

Gardner, D. (2011). Future babble: Why expert predictions fail and why we believe them anyway. London: Virgin Books. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books. New York : Bantam Books

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Making The World a Better Place — Self-Improvement and Changing the World

Self-improvement and Changing The World

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Published: Feb 12, 2024

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• How to improve...

How to improve healthcare improvement—an essay by Mary Dixon-Woods

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• Mary Dixon-Woods , director
• THIS Institute, Cambridge, UK
• director{at}thisinstitute.cam.ac.uk

As improvement practice and research begin to come of age, Mary Dixon-Woods considers the key areas that need attention if we are to reap their benefits

In the NHS, as in health systems worldwide, patients are exposed to risks of avoidable harm 1 and unwarranted variations in quality. 2 3 4 But too often, problems in the quality and safety of healthcare are merely described, even “admired,” 5 rather than fixed; the effort invested in collecting information (which is essential) is not matched by effort in making improvement. The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death, for example, has raised many of the same concerns in report after report. 6 Catastrophic degradations of organisations and units have recurred throughout the history of the NHS, with depressingly similar features each time. 7 8 9

More resources are clearly necessary to tackle many of these problems. There is no dispute about the preconditions for high quality, safe care: funding, staff, training, buildings, equipment, and other infrastructure. But quality health services depend not just on structures but on processes. 10 Optimising the use of available resources requires continuous improvement of healthcare processes and systems. 5

The NHS has seen many attempts to stimulate organisations to improve using incentive schemes, ranging from pay for performance (the Quality and Outcomes Framework in primary care, for example) to public reporting (such as annual quality accounts). They have had mixed results, and many have had unintended consequences. 11 12 Wanting to improve is not the same as knowing how to do it.

In response, attention has increasingly turned to a set of approaches known as quality improvement (QI). Though a definition of exactly what counts as a QI approach has escaped consensus, QI is often identified with a set of techniques adapted from industrial settings. They include the US Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Model for Improvement, which, among other things, combines measurement with tests of small change (plan-do-study-act cycles). 8 Other popular approaches include Lean and Six Sigma. QI can also involve specific interventions intended to improve processes and systems, ranging from checklists and “care bundles” of interventions (a set of evidence based practices intended to be done consistently) through to medicines reconciliation and clinical pathways.

QI has been advocated in healthcare for over 30 years 13 ; policies emphasise the need for QI and QI practice is mandated for many healthcare professionals (including junior doctors). Yet the question, “Does quality improvement actually improve quality?” remains surprisingly difficult to answer. 14 The evidence for the benefits of QI is mixed 14 and generally of poor quality. It is important to resolve this unsatisfactory situation. That will require doing more to bring together the practice and the study of improvement, using research to improve improvement, and thinking beyond effectiveness when considering the study and practice of improvement.

Uniting practice and study

The practice and study of improvement need closer integration. Though QI programmes and interventions may be just as consequential for patient wellbeing as drugs, devices, and other biomedical interventions, research about improvement has often been seen as unnecessary or discretionary, 15 16 particularly by some of its more ardent advocates. This is partly because the challenges faced are urgent, and the solutions seem obvious, so just getting on with it seems the right thing to do.

But, as in many other areas of human activity, QI is pervaded by optimism bias. It is particularly affected by the “lovely baby” syndrome, which happens when formal evaluation is eschewed because something looks so good that it is assumed it must work. Five systematic reviews (published 2010-16) reporting on evaluations of Lean and Six Sigma did not identify a single randomised controlled trial. 17 18 19 20 21 A systematic review of redesigning care processes identified no randomised trials. 22 A systematic review of the application of plan-do-study-act in healthcare identified no randomised trials. 23 A systematic review of several QI methods in surgery identified just one randomised trial. 56

The sobering reality is that some well intentioned, initially plausible improvement efforts fail when subjected to more rigorous evaluation. 24 For instance, a controlled study of a large, well resourced programme that supported a group of NHS hospitals to implement the IHI’s Model for Improvement found no differences in the rate of improvement between participating and control organisations. 25 26 Specific interventions may, similarly, not survive the rigours of systematic testing. An example is a programme to reduce hospital admissions from nursing homes that showed promise in a small study in the US, 27 but a later randomised implementation trial found no effect on admissions or emergency department attendances. 28

Some interventions are probably just not worth the effort and opportunity cost: having nurses wear “do not disturb” tabards during drug rounds, is one example. 29 And some QI efforts, perversely, may cause harm—as happened when a multicomponent intervention was found to be associated with an increase rather than a decrease in surgical site infections. 30

Producing sound evidence for the effectiveness of improvement interventions and programmes is likely to require a multipronged approach. More large scale trials and other rigorous studies, with embedded qualitative inquiry, should be a priority for research funders.

Not every study of improvement needs to be a randomised trial. One valuable but underused strategy involves wrapping evaluation around initiatives that are happening anyway, especially when it is possible to take advantage of natural experiments or design roll-outs. 31 Evaluation of the reorganisation of stroke care in London and Manchester 32 and the study of the Matching Michigan programme to reduce central line infections are good examples. 33 34

It would be impossible to externally evaluate every QI project. Critically important therefore will be increasing the rigour with which QI efforts evaluate themselves, as shown by a recent study of an attempt to improve care of frail older people using a “hospital at home” approach in southwest England. 35 This ingeniously designed study found no effect on outcomes and also showed that context matters.

Despite the potential value of high quality evaluation, QI reports are often weak, 18 with, for example, interventions so poorly reported that reproducibility is frustrated. 36 Recent reporting guidelines may help, 37 but some problems are not straightforward to resolve. In particular, current structures for governance and publishing research are not always well suited to QI, including situations where researchers study programmes they have not themselves initiated. Systematic learning from QI needs to improve, which may require fresh thinking about how best to align the goals of practice and study, and to reconcile the needs of different stakeholders. 38

Using research to improve improvement

Research can help to support the practice of improvement in many ways other than evaluation of its effectiveness. One important role lies in creating assets that can be used to improve practice, such as ways to visualise data, analytical methods, and validated measures that assess the aspects of care that most matter to patients and staff. This kind of work could, for example, help to reduce the current vast number of quality measures—there are more than 1200 indicators of structure and process in perioperative care alone. 39

The study of improvement can also identify how improvement practice can get better. For instance, it has become clear that fidelity to the basic principles of improvement methods is a major problem: plan-do-study-act cycles are crucial to many improvement approaches, yet only 20% of the projects that report using the technique have done so properly. 23 Research has also identified problems in measurement—teams trying to do improvement may struggle with definitions, data collection, and interpretation 40 —indicating that this too requires more investment.

Improvement research is particularly important to help cumulate, synthesise, and scale learning so that practice can move forward without reinventing solutions that already exist or reintroducing things that do not work. Such theorising can be highly practical, 41 helping to clarify the mechanisms through which interventions are likely to work, supporting the optimisation of those interventions, and identifying their most appropriate targets. 42

Research can systematise learning from “positive deviance,” approaches that examine individuals, teams, or organisations that show exceptionally good performance. 43 Positive deviance can be used to identify successful designs for clinical processes that other organisations can apply. 44

Crucially, positive deviance can also help to characterise the features of high performing contexts and ensure that the right lessons are learnt. For example, a distinguishing feature of many high performing organisations, including many currently rated as outstanding by the Care Quality Commission, is that they use structured methods of continuous quality improvement. But studies of high performing settings, such as the Southmead maternity unit in Bristol, indicate that although continuous improvement is key to their success, a specific branded improvement method is not necessary. 45 This and other work shows that not all improvement needs to involve a well defined QI intervention, and not everything requires a discrete project with formal plan-do-study-act cycles.

More broadly, research has shown that QI is just one contributor to improving quality and safety. Organisations in many industries display similar variations to healthcare organisations, including large and persistent differences in performance and productivity between seemingly similar enterprises. 46 Important work, some of it experimental, is beginning to show that it is the quality of their management practices that distinguishes them. 47 These practices include continuous quality improvement as well as skills training, human resources, and operational management, for example. QI without the right contextual support is likely to have limited impact.

Beyond effectiveness

Important as they are, evaluations of the approaches and interventions in individual improvement programmes cannot answer every pertinent question about improvement. 48 Other key questions concern the values and assumptions intrinsic to QI.

Consider the “product dominant” logic in many healthcare improvement efforts, which assumes that one party makes a product and conveys it to a consumer. 49 Paul Batalden, one of the early pioneers of QI in healthcare, proposes that we need instead a “service dominant” logic, which assumes that health is co-produced with patients. 49

More broadly, we must interrogate how problems of quality and safety are identified, defined, and selected for attention by whom, through which power structures, and with what consequences. Why, for instance, is so much attention given to individual professional behaviour when systems are likely to be a more productive focus? 50 Why have quality and safety in mental illness and learning disability received less attention in practice, policy, and research 51 despite high morbidity and mortality and evidence of both serious harm and failures of organisational learning? The concern extends to why the topic of social inequities in healthcare improvement has remained so muted 52 and to the choice of subjects for study. Why is it, for example, that interventions like education and training, which have important roles in quality and safety and are undertaken at vast scale, are often treated as undeserving of evaluation or research?

How QI is organised institutionally also demands attention. It is often conducted as a highly local, almost artisan activity, with each organisation painstakingly working out its own solution for each problem. Much improvement work is conducted by professionals in training, often in the form of small, time limited projects conducted for accreditation. But working in this isolated way means a lack of critical mass to support the right kinds of expertise, such as the technical skill in human factors or ergonomics necessary to engineer a process or devise a safety solution. Having hundreds of organisations all trying to do their own thing also means much waste, and the absence of harmonisation across basic processes introduces inefficiencies and risks. 14

A better approach to the interorganisational nature of health service provision requires solving the “problem of many hands.” 53 We need ways to agree which kinds of sector-wide challenges need standardisation and interoperability; which solutions can be left to local customisation at implementation; and which should be developed entirely locally. 14 Better development of solutions and interventions is likely to require more use of prototyping, modelling and simulation, and testing in different scenarios and under different conditions, 14 ideally through coordinated, large scale efforts that incorporate high quality evaluation.

Finally, an approach that goes beyond effectiveness can also help in recognising the essential role of the professions in healthcare improvement. The past half century has seen a dramatic redefining of the role and status of the healthcare professions in health systems 54 : unprecedented external accountability, oversight, and surveillance are now the norm. But policy makers would do well to recognise how much more can be achieved through professional coalitions of the willing than through too many imposed, compliance focused diktats. Research is now showing how the professions can be hugely important institutional forces for good. 54 55 In particular, the professions have a unique and invaluable role in working as advocates for improvement, creating alliances with patients, providing training and education, contributing expertise and wisdom, coordinating improvement efforts, and giving political voice for problems that need to be solved at system level (such as, for example, equipment design).

Improvement efforts are critical to securing the future of the NHS. But they need an evidence base. Without sound evaluation, patients may be deprived of benefit, resources and energy may be wasted on ineffective QI interventions or on interventions that distribute risks unfairly, and organisations are left unable to make good decisions about trade-offs given their many competing priorities. The study of improvement has an important role in developing an evidence-base and in exploring questions beyond effectiveness alone, and in particular showing the need to establish improvement as a collective endeavour that can benefit from professional leadership.

Mary Dixon-Woods is the Health Foundation professor of healthcare improvement studies and director of The Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute at the University of Cambridge, funded by the Health Foundation. Co-editor-in-chief of BMJ Quality and Safety , she is an honorary fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Physicians. This article is based largely on the Harveian oration she gave at the RCP on 18 October 2018, in the year of the college’s 500th anniversary. The oration is available here: http://www.clinmed.rcpjournal.org/content/19/1/47 and the video version here: https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/events/harveian-oration-and-dinner-2018

This article is one of a series commissioned by The BMJ based on ideas generated by a joint editorial group with members from the Health Foundation and The BMJ , including a patient/carer. The BMJ retained full editorial control over external peer review, editing, and publication. Open access fees and The BMJ ’s quality improvement editor post are funded by the Health Foundation.

Competing interests: I have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and a statement is available here: https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/advisory-panels/editorial-advisory-board/mary-dixonwoods

Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ .

• Neuburger J ,
• Hutchings A ,
• Stewart K ,
• Buckingham R
• Castelli A ,
• Verzulli R ,
• Allwood D ,
• Sunstein CR
• Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership
• Shortell SM
• Martin GP ,
• Dixon-Woods M
• Donabedian A
• Himmelstein DU ,
• Woolhandler S
• Woolhandler S ,
• Himmelstein DU
• Dixon-Woods M ,
• Ioannidis JPA ,
• Marshall M ,
• Pronovost P ,
• Glasgow JM ,
• Scott-Caziewell JR ,
• Nicolay CR ,
• Deblois S ,
• Moraros J ,
• Lemstra M ,
• Amaratunga T ,
• Dobranowski J
• van Leijen-Zeelenberg JE ,
• Elissen AMJ ,
• Taylor MJ ,
• McNicholas C ,
• Nicolay C ,
• Morgan DJ ,
• Diekema DJ ,
• Sepkowitz K ,
• Perencevich EN
• Benning A ,
• Ouslander JG ,
• Huckfeldt P ,
• Westbrook JI ,
• Hooper TD ,
• Middleton S ,
• Anthony T ,
• Murray BW ,
• Sum-Ping JT ,
• Portela MC ,
• Pronovost PJ ,
• Woodcock T ,
• Ramsay AIG ,
• Hoffman A ,
• Richardson A ,
• Hibbert P ,
• Matching Michigan Collaboration & Writing Committee
• Tarrant C ,
• Pearson M ,
• Hemsley A ,
• Blackwell R ,
• Custerson L
• Goodman D ,
• Watson SI ,
• Taylor CA ,
• Chazapis M ,
• Gilhooly D ,
• Liberati EG ,
• Davidoff F ,
• Leviton L ,
• Johnston M ,
• Abraham C ,
• “Psychological Theory” Group
• Clay-Williams R ,
• Braithwaite J
• Bradley EH ,
• Willars J ,
• Mahajan A ,
• Aveling EL ,
• Thibaut BI ,
• Ramtale SC ,
• Boozary AS ,
• Shojania KG
• Pronovost PJ
• Armstrong N ,
• Herbert G ,
• Purkayastha S ,
• Greenhalgh A ,

Improvement Essays

Developing professional skills: a journey of self-reflection and improvement, popular essay topics.

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5 Process Essay Examples

A process essay is a type of essay that explains a process in detail. Good process essays don’t just explain the process but provides details about common mistakes to avoid as well as tips and methods to achieve success. Below are some example essays:

Process Essay Examples

#1 how to bake a chocolate cake.

1337 Words | 4 Pages

Thesis Statement: “The purpose of this essay is to guide readers through the enjoyable and straightforward process of baking a chocolate cake, highlighting the essential steps and tips to ensure a delicious and successful outcome.”

#2 How to Write a Resume

Thesis Statement: “This essay aims to provide a comprehensive guide on crafting an effective resume, detailing each step from gathering relevant information to finalizing the document, while offering practical tips and common pitfalls to avoid, ensuring a polished and professional presentation of one’s career achievements and qualifications.”

#3 How to Train for a Marathon

1508 Words | 5 Pages

Thesis Statement: “This essay provides a comprehensive guide to marathon training, detailing a strategic approach to building endurance, strength, and speed, coupled with essential advice on nutrition, hydration, and mental preparation, to equip runners of all levels with the knowledge and tools necessary for successfully completing a marathon.”

#4 How to Prepare for a Job Interview

1309 Words | 5 Pages

Thesis Statement: “This essay outlines a comprehensive strategy for job interview preparation, encompassing in-depth company research, personalized response formulation, professional presentation, and logistical planning, to equip candidates with the tools necessary for making a compelling and confident impression in their pursuit of career opportunities.”

#5 How to Write an Essay

1473 Words | 5 Pages

Thesis Statement: “This essay outlines a comprehensive, step-by-step approach to essay writing, from understanding the prompt to the final stages of revision and editing, providing essential tips and strategies to enhance writing skills and ensure the creation of a well-structured, persuasive, and effectively communicated piece.”

How to Write a Process Essay

The following template provides an overview of a process essay structure:

Grab this process essay template here.

Instructions: To write a process essay, start by introducing the process and its significance, ensuring the reader understands the purpose and value of the instructions. Next, present the preparation and materials required, before outlining each step of the process in a logical order, offering detailed explanations, tips, and potential pitfalls to avoid, ensuring clarity and ease of understanding. Conclude by summarizing the main steps and reinforcing the benefits or results of completing the process, leaving the reader with a clear understanding and the confidence to undertake the task.

How to Write a Thesis Statement for a Process

To write a thesis statement for a process essay, identify the process you’re explaining and clearly state the purpose or goal of the essay. Concisely outline the primary steps or stages involved in the process, ensuring clarity and direction for the reader. The thesis should be informative, indicating what the reader can expect to learn and achieve by following the essay.

💡 AI Prompt For Writing a Process Essay Thesis Statement “Create a thesis statement for a process essay on [TOPIC] that clearly identifies the specific process being explained. The thesis should state the purpose of the essay and briefly outline the main steps or stages involved in the process. Ensure that the statement is concise, informative, and guides the reader on what they will learn and achieve by reading the essay.”

Read Also: 101 Thesis Statement Examples

Suggested Process Essay Topics

For Grades 4 to 8:

• How to Organize a School Backpack.
• Steps to Create a Simple Science Fair Project.
• The Process of Planting and Caring for a Vegetable Garden.
• How to Write a Book Report.
• Making a Handcrafted Greeting Card.

For Grades 9 to 12:

• How to Prepare for the SATs.
• Steps for Conducting a Basic Scientific Experiment.
• Crafting an Effective Persuasive Essay.
• Planning and Executing a Community Service Project.
• The Process of Creating a Personal Budget.

For University/College:

• How to Conduct a Literature Review for a Research Paper.
• Writing a Successful College Application Essay.
• The Process of Developing a Mobile App.
• How to Create a Comprehensive Marketing Plan.
• Steps for Conducting a Qualitative Research Study.
• Preparing and Delivering an Effective Oral Presentation.
• The Process of Writing a Business Plan.
• How to Analyze a Case Study in Business School.
• Crafting a Dissertation or Thesis Proposal.
• Developing and Implementing a Personal Fitness Plan.

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Take action! Choose one of the following options to start writing your essay now:

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How to Write Up Your Quality Improvement Initiatives for Publication

The Journal of Graduate Medical Education often receives submissions from trainees and educators highlighting work they do in quality improvement (QI). This is remarkably encouraging given the emphasis that the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Next Accreditation System has placed on integrating QI into the clinical learning environment. 1 A major challenge for editors reviewing these manuscripts is the inconsistency with which authors report QI initiatives. After reviewing a large number of these submissions, we have noted common problems that arise and have prepared the following guide to help prospective authors prepare QI reports for publication.

Consistent with the Journal 's common format for Original Research or Educational Innovation articles (ie, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion), our suggestions will highlight what authors should explicitly emphasize within each of these manuscript sections as it pertains to their QI initiative. We realize that a number of other frameworks and guidelines exist, the most common being the SQUIRE guidelines, which were updated in the fall of 2015. 2 Our suggestions are synergistic with the updated SQUIRE 2.0 guidelines, yet they also provide a high-level view of the philosophies that underpin these guidelines to help authors not only at the time of writing, but also when planning and implementing their QI initiatives.

What Is the Quality Problem, Why Is It Important, and What Is Your Aim?

The Introduction section must be brief. This is not the time to provide an in-depth review of the literature on your quality problem of interest—which could be an important but separate paper. Instead, it is most important to articulate why this quality problem is relevant beyond your local institution . Is it a common safety problem ubiquitous to multiple care settings, such as the need to improve patient handoffs? Or perhaps there are legislative changes or financial incentives that promote interest in your issue, such as the linking of financial reimbursement to readmission rates. Whatever the reason, it is critical to make clear what the external impact of your QI initiative would be for other groups and the readers of the journal. If the QI problem can be framed only as a need specific to your own setting, then the results may be best published in a local newsletter rather than a national or international journal.

After succinctly outlining the importance and relevance of the QI problem, the Introduction must describe the gap between current practice and preferred practice . What prior QI strategies have or have not worked to address this quality problem? If there is no gap in our understanding on how to improve practice, then further study of the area would be of limited value. Authors must demonstrate understanding of the pertinent literature in order to briefly discuss prior strategies that have been attempted; this usually includes the strategy as well as the required resources and resulting outcomes. Replication of a successful intervention in a new setting can help to fill key gaps in understanding: here the evidence gap is whether a prior strategy can be replicated in a different setting, one that is dissimilar in important features to the initial study.

Finally, the Introduction must also make clear what you hoped to achieve by carrying out your QI initiative. In 1 or 2 sentences, the final paragraph should clearly state the primary aim of your QI project. There are numerous references providing guidance on how to write good “aim” statements, by making sure that they are “SMART” (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, anytime bound). 3 A clear and concise statement of the primary aim, and any relevant sub-aims, will ground the readers in the main purpose of your QI project.

Describing the Proposed Intervention, Including a Theory for Change, and the Road Toward Improvement

For QI reports the Methods section is probably the most important section as it ensures that readers understand how they can translate your reported innovation into their own settings. To facilitate this, authors must attend to several important issues. These include the context in which the QI work was carried out (ie, setting and participants) and a detailed description of the implementation strategy . The strategy must also include a theory for why a specific intervention (or set of interventions) was chosen.

Let's start with the proposed intervention. In QI, too often authors simply reach for the first available solution off the shelf without first considering why that particular solution could address the problem at hand. Frequently, authors appear to believe that checklists and order sets will solve everything. The truth is that if authors do not articulate a theory or rationale for why their proposed intervention should fix the quality problem of interest, they run the risk of designing a suboptimal intervention or choosing the wrong approach altogether. For example, attempts to reduce physician prescribing of unnecessary antibiotics to children with upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs; eg, continuing medical education, postcard reminders summarizing treatment guidelines, etc) consistently fail because they primarily address provider awareness rather than the dominant driver, which is parental demand for antibiotics. Theorizing that the ideal intervention should address parental expectations, one would instead choose an approach such as implementing the use of delayed antibiotic prescriptions, which in a recent Cochrane review has been shown to significantly reduce antibiotic utilization for the treatment of URTIs in children. 4

Similar to the general call for more theory-based interventions in medical education, 5 there has been a recent call for more theory-based QI interventions. 6 Therefore, the preferred approach is to clearly articulate the link between the proposed solution and the problem it will solve. For example, a hospitalist team seeking to reduce unnecessary urinary catheter use might theorize that a key driver is that residents do not know whether a patient has a urinary catheter in situ . A sensible solution therefore might bypass the physician altogether. For example, instituting automatic stop orders 7 and nursing advanced directives 8 to remove urinary catheters are 2 interventions that have previously been shown to be effective.

It is also crucial that authors state not only what the intervention was and its underlying rationale, but also how it was iteratively tested, refined, and eventually implemented. A common framework used in QI is rapid cycle change methodology or PDSA (plan-do-study-act) cycles. 9 Unfortunately, many published QI reports, despite claiming to use PDSA cycles, demonstrate little evidence that they refined their intervention prior to implementation. 10 This is a problem because for QI initiatives the devil really is in the details. It is simply not good enough to say that “we implemented a checklist” or “we created a new care pathway.” Instead, authors need to report how changes were tested and refined; reflect on what worked, what did not, and why; and provide a description of the eventual intervention. Recognizing how challenging it can be to chronicle the evolution of the proposed intervention from start to finish in a concise manner, authors should consider the use of a figure or a table to summarize the key PDSA cycles, which will avoid excess word length while still providing a concise summary of what was actually done. Another option for providing more details is to include additional supplemental information for publication online. For QI projects it is imperative that at least 2 cycles, and usually more, are described in the Methods section.

The Local Context and Its Impact on the QI Initiative

In evaluative research, authors go to great lengths to describe how they have controlled for contextual factors to ensure that they have eliminated any bias that might unduly influence their outcomes of interest. QI is different in this regard: context is critical to understand and characterize, not control . Authors must include details about their context and how these might influence the implementation or outcomes of QI projects to sensitize readers to the contextual factors that require careful consideration when introducing the QI intervention to local institutions.

Batalden and Davidoff 11 described the importance of context in a brief commentary. They provided a framework for QI that links generalizable scientific evidence to a particular context in order to generate measured performance improvement. Importantly, they emphasized that the focus should be both on the context, as well as how the generalizable scientific evidence (or the proposed intervention) integrates within the particular local context. In QI, a detailed description of the context is just as important as a detailed description of the proposed intervention.

Consider the example of a QI project to reduce unnecessary lab ordering. The reader would want to know: Does the institution have computer-based or paper-based orders? If computer-based, is it easy to make changes to the order entry system to introduce clinical decision support? How engaged is the lab in clinical QI initiatives? What is the front line staff capacity and capability for QI? All of these contextual factors play heavily into the choice of the intervention, how the intervention gets implemented, and how it affects project outcomes.

This emphasis on context for QI reports parallels a similar need in reports of educational interventions. For example, educators implementing bedside procedure training must also account for and describe relevant contextual factors, such as whether a simulation lab is available, whether faculty have maintained competence in bedside procedures, whether a culture of direct observation and feedback exists, and whether there is a mechanism to track procedures and monitor for complications. Similar to medical education research, explicitly acknowledging the role of context is paramount in the reporting of any QI initiative.

What Is the Evaluation Plan?

Most QI initiatives rely on the Donabedian model of outcome, process, and balancing measures to evaluate the impact of their intervention. 12 While beyond the scope of this article to address the specifics of measurement in QI, we will offer several practical suggestions. First, most QI projects will focus on improving processes of care and may not be able to demonstrate downstream impact on clinical outcomes. This is acceptable, as long as the authors have selected process measures that are tightly coupled with the clinical outcome of interest. For example, an orthopedic surgery residency team aiming to improve venothromboembolism (VTE) prophylaxis rates could justifiably track VTE prophylaxis administration as a clinical process because hospitalized patients who receive VTE prophylaxis have a very low likelihood of developing VTEs. 13

Another useful process measure to report is one that measures the fidelity of the intervention. In other words, include a process measure that tracks how consistently or reliably your intervention is applied. For example, if your main intervention to improve VTE prophylaxis is the creation and implementation of a standardized order set, a measure of implementation fidelity would be to track whether residents and faculty actually used the order set. This is particularly informative for unsuccessful QI projects—interventions with high fidelity suggest that other contributing factors require attention, whereas interventions with low fidelity suggest that the evaluation may have been premature and more work is needed to increase uptake of the intervention before large-scale implementation and evaluation are undertaken.

Last but not least, balancing measures, which are intended to measure unintended consequences, often are missing from QI reports. A medical journal would not accept a clinical trial that reports only on the potential benefits and not the harms of a novel therapy, and we need to hold reports of QI interventions to a similar standard. Therefore, balancing measures of unintended consequence should be reported to ensure that the QI intervention improves care and does not create new problems. For example, if a QI initiative focuses on improving resident adherence to guidelines for a clinical area, such as diabetes care, does adherence to other guidelines, such as preventive screening, decline? If a new electronic handover tool is developed to support handoff communication, are there errors in the new document due to cut/paste activities? Selecting and reporting on sound balancing measures ensures a healthy respect for the law of unintended consequences in QI.

Providing Data With Greater Clarity

When it comes to displaying the data, it is best to avoid simple before-after comparisons. This evaluative approach is suboptimal because secular trends make it difficult to attribute observed differences to the intervention. Traditional approaches to research and evaluation would typically address this limitation through the inclusion of a contemporaneous control group or setting, which is also suitable for QI studies.

An alternative approach would be to display your outcome or process measures over time through the use of statistical process control. This methodology often utilizes run charts or control chart s to display data over time ( figure ). Following run chart or control chart “rules,” one can interpret the data plotted sequentially over time to identify instances when variation is not due to random chance (so-called special cause variation). Such handling of data enhances the ability to determine whether changes that occurred were a result of the interventions introduced, and greatly strengthens the evaluative approach as compared to aggregated before-after data. The BMJ Quality & Safety journal has published an overview on the use and interpretation of run charts. 14

Example of Control Chart to Display Quality Data Over Time

Note: This is an example of a control chart (specifically a P-chart). A typical control chart has the quality measure of interest on the Y-axis. The X-axis is always a time scale (in this case, consecutive months). As the team carries out the quality improvement initiative, they collect data prospectively over time and plot the data on a control chart. Using statistical process control software, several lines are plotted. The dotted line is the center line (CL) and is equivalent to the mean. The dashed lines on either side of the mean are the upper and lower control limits (UCL and LCL; approximately 3 standard deviations, or sigmas, on either side of the mean). Using this information, the statistical process control software can identify segments of the chart where nonrandom variation is occurring (so-called special cause variation). On this graph, the 2 times where nonrandom variation are occurring are indicated by the triangle and circle markers, suggesting that modification to the order set, and not education, was likely responsible for the improvement seen in venothromboembolism (VTE) prophylaxis ordering.

What Are the Implications of the Work? What Are the Next Steps?

For QI papers, the Discussion section will be similar to papers describing educational innovations or research. This section should concisely summarize the main findings of the QI project, relate the key findings to what is already known in the published literature, reflect on the broader implications of the findings, discuss how important limitations could have affected the findings, and briefly introduce next steps to further understand the field.

Perhaps most important are the reflections on lessons learned and future directions. In particular, reflections on the influence of the local context on project implementation and outcomes are highly relevant as readers will need to understand this if they want to replicate the intervention within their local context.

Well-conducted QI interventions that produced “negative” results (ie, did not achieve their intended outcomes) are still important and worthwhile for dissemination. Your reflections on why the intervention did not work can be helpful to others who might consider a similar initiative. In some cases, the problem may be the intervention itself, which signals the need to consider an alternative approach to addressing the QI problem of interest. More commonly, the implementation of the intervention lacked fidelity, or the integration of the intervention within the local context was suboptimal. In these instances, your QI report will still be helpful to others who can build on your work.

The Conclusion section of the report is also similar to Original Research and Educational Innovation articles. This short paragraph succinctly summarizes the most important findings from the study, without speculating beyond the results. Conclusions should be appropriately conservative in relation to the study findings. See the table for a summary of elements essential for QI reports.

Quality Improvement (QI) Reports: Recommended Elements and Common Pitfalls

By providing this overview of the approach to writing up QI initiatives, we hope to clarify, up front, those aspects of your initiative that require the most emphasis. The considerations presented here can serve as a high-level guide to authors, with the goal of disseminating QI reports that are more useful for other programs. QI studies that involve residents, faculty, or the general graduate medical education environment as key elements of the context or intervention are appropriate for submission to the Journal of Graduate Medical Education . We look forward to publishing reports that inform programs and educators about effective faculty and learner engagement in QI activities within the graduate medical education learning environment.

The Application of the PDSA Improvement Model Essay

The pdsa improvement project.

As Spath (2013) describes it, the PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) improvement model is the most widely recognized improvement process today, consisting of four fundamental steps (Chapter 5). In this paper, the PDSA cycle will be applied to a particular practice problem. Therefore, the improvement project will be suggested, and the discussion entry will be given.

The objective of this project is to reduce the long wait times and delays for outpatient diagnostic services since it creates the patients’ dissatisfaction with the treatment and it could also “pose an important threat to healthcare quality and safety in outpatient settings” (Singh, Meyer, & Thomas, 2014, p. 727). The plan is (1) to distribute the incoming requests by the groups of diseases, because it would ameliorate the process of handling the inquiries, and (2) to “promote the implementation of enhancements to electronic health record systems that would facilitate communication among providers and between providers and patients” (Giardina et al., 2013, p. 1373). The reduction of the wait time and the delayed diagnosis is an expected result. The result will be determined by the decrease of the interval between the patient’s request and the received treatment. The feedback from the patients will also be considered.

For two weeks the particular receptionists will be processing only the particular type of requests (e.g., the one only deals with inquiries about mental health, the other concerns just colds, etc.). Additionally, the pre-attendance check-in online system will be introduced.

During two weeks, the delay time was reduced approximately by one third. In the overall result, the online check-in system showed higher efficiency in patients’ serving. They expressed a higher level of satisfaction with the treatment. The distribution of the inquiries by the types of diseases also increased the productivity, but at a slightly lower rate than the online system.

Since the pre-attendance check-in online system showed its efficiency, it is suggested to promote it in all outpatient diagnostic units (for example, by printing the pamphlets with instructions for individual use). However, the distribution of requests between receptionists should be changed: it is suggested that inquiries should be distributed by the type of check-in (online or offline). The feedback from the patients should be collected as often as possible to evaluate the level of satisfaction and to detect potential paths for improvement.

Of course, the suggested improvement project should be further complemented in the process of applying. The described PDSA cycle could be included in a Rapid Cycle Improvement project alongside with other related PDSA projects. Since the issue of delays in treatment and diagnosis is a part of a more complex problem, occasional confluences with different fields of study will occur. For example, in the diagnostic sphere, there are “pre-determined sequences that relate the number of tests to the specific combination of tests”, which could be reduced to prevent overtesting (Dai, Akan, & Tayur, 2016, p. 5). Furthermore, “the physicians routinely experience uncertainty and challenges in ordering and interpreting diagnostic laboratory tests”, and such uncertainty could be reduced by improving ordering and reporting methods (Hickner et al., 2014, p. 268). Also, there is a capability of dual diagnosis (for example, mental health and substance addiction treatment), and the increase in productivity, which is obtained by such technique, justifies the legitimacy of such method (McGovern, Lambert-Harris, Gotham, Claus, & Xie, 2014). In conclusion, one could observe the necessity of repeating the described PDSA cycle to improve the situation continuously. Also, one should apply it to a broader range of outpatient diagnostic units and services, because it would improve the current state of outpatient treatment and prevent inefficient strategies in the healthcare system.

Dai, T., Akan, M., & Tayur, S. (2016). Imaging room and beyond: The underlying economics behind physicians’ test-ordering behavior in outpatient services. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management , 19 (1), 99-113.

Giardina, D. T., King, B. J., Ignaczak, A. P., Paull, D. E., Hoeksema, L., Mills, P. D.,… Singh, H. (2013). Root cause analysis reports help identify common factors in delayed diagnosis and treatment of outpatients. Health Affairs , 32 (8), 1368-1375.

Hickner, J., Thompson, P. J., Wilkinson, T., Epner, P., Shaheen, M., Pollock, A. M.,… Taylor, J. R. (2014). Primary care physicians’ challenges in ordering clinical laboratory tests and interpreting results. The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine , 27 (2), 268-274.

McGovern, M. P., Lambert-Harris, C., Gotham, H. J., Claus, R. E., & Xie, H. (2014). Dual diagnosis capability in mental health and addiction treatment services: An assessment of programs across multiple state systems. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research , 41 (2), 205-214.

Singh, H., Meyer, A. N., & Thomas, E. J. (2014). The frequency of diagnostic errors in outpatient care: Estimations from three large observational studies involving US adult populations. BMJ Qual Saf , 23(9) , 727-731.

Spath, P. (2013). Introduction to healthcare quality management (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: Health Administration Press.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, March 22). The Application of the PDSA Improvement Model. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-application-of-the-pdsa-improvement-model/

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Application of the PDSA Improvement Model." March 22, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-application-of-the-pdsa-improvement-model/.

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