<p>My English teacher is starting to scare us with college. She's been claiming that in freshmen college, you have a research paper a week? Is that true, or is it a little over exaggerated? I just feel that my English teacher had more work obviously because she majored in English.</p>
<p>I know every college is different, but if I could get a good estimate on how much writing I'm REALLY going to have to do, then that would be great.</p>
<p>Majoring in Computer Information Systems BTW.</p>
<p>I’d say that’s over-exaggerated. However, you will probably have more writing than you do in high school. Keep in mind that what I say below represents averages based on institutions I’m familiar with, and it doesn’t at all capture the anecdotal nature of each college datapoint.</p>
<p>Lots of colleges have a “Freshman Seminar” that focuses on writing. In those classes, you typically have 5-6 writing assignments that range from 3-10 (or so) pages, often with required rough drafts and revisions.</p>
<p>In many lower level humanities classes you might well have one or several papers, typically 3-7 pages. In many upper level humanities classes you will typically have more papers, or longer papers. So you might just have one paper due but it might be 10-20 pages. Or, you might have several 5-10 page papers due.</p>
<p>Sometimes, science and even math classes will assign papers as well but it is less common.</p>
<p>In addition, many classes require journals, reaction paper, or other frequent writing assignments of a page or so.</p>
<p>Given those numbers and given that a student typically takes four courses a semester, it would not be unusual for a student to average a (shortish, 3-7 page) paper a week. However, it would be unusual for a student to average a 10-20 page paper a week.</p>
<p>In all honesty so far there has been less work in college than there has been in high school and Im a technical major, and my freshman english class was literally one 3 page paper and one 7 page paper.</p>
<p>if you go to a private or top hs college is a breeze…people that graduated from exeter who went to MIT and major in chem eng think its a joke while people from my local hs struggle at college…</p>
<p>depends on how prep’d you are</p>
<p>Just do engineering. The longest thing I’ve written all year was like 3 pages.</p>
<p>I’m a current freshmen taking introductory english course and we have to write two page papers a week over readings and we have a total of 3 projects. The first two projects had to be 4-6 papers and the final project, the research paper has to be at least 8 pages. It’s very easy.</p>
<p>Depends where you go. I took English 110 and it was just horrible. My school was a good regional school with some excellent departments, but the English department was nauseatingly bad. I mean it was BAD. We didn’t do much writing (maybe five papers over twelve weeks, and each of those were just three to five pages double-spaced–I recently went through my college papers so it’s fresh in my mind again), and almost no research. She seriously had us read articles from like, Newsweek. I was massively disappointed and never took another English course there. I hope I get to take one or two in grad school that are of a better caliber.</p>
<p>Don’t worry too much. It’s usually not bad at all. One semester, though, I was insane and took five English courses plus a gen ed with a 30 page research project…so I was pumping out like 25-30 pages a week, but I’d say that’s an extremely unusual situation. Now, I have four English courses and I only have one 5ish page paper due every other week. So, unless your a nutty English major who likes to overload on credits (which your English teacher probably was), you have nothing to worry about.</p>
<p>I’m a Biology major but I placed into the Honors Freshman Writing Seminar- and I thought it was a joke. Writing has never really been my strong point but I got an A in the class and on all but one paper (we did 5 total). The English options at my school are Eng 101 and 102 or Eng 114 (which is what I took). The kids who didn’t place into 114 complain all the time about their class, which I honestly think is more demanding than mine was. It depends on the school you go to and what level class you are taking. But I only did one research paper, which was a minimum of 6 pages/max of 10. The rest were 2-3 pages or 4-6 pages. I wouldn’t stress too much over it.</p>
<p>I’m an English major. I think I have like…3 papers per each of my two English classes. For the entire semester. And they’re all 2 or 3-5 page assignments. On reading we’ve already talked about in detail. No in-depth research required. Just analysis/comparison/etc.</p>
<p>You’re teacher is highly exaggerating. Especially if you’re not an English major. My English classes are the only two I have essays in period this semester.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the info everyone. This is a great community.
I’m glad that I’m going to be overloaded on just one or two English classes. I am decent in writing, but research papers about topics that are try, or you don’t care about really suck. I’m glad to learn some writing in college, but I’m going to learn some awesome hardcore computer stuff. I doubt my writing will change THAT much after college after all of these English classes.</p>
<p>I also highly dislike English classes that are like they on in my High School. Read a story and write papers and projects about it. You’re not really learning anything in my opinion. </p>
<p>Anyway, thanks for all the input everyone. It’s made me still feel positive about college. I’m so looking forward to it.</p>
<p>The type of writing you do will change drastically in English. You won’t have to summarize books, stories, poems, you will have to analyze them and have your own thoughts and draw your own conclusions. My Comparative Lit teacher was just complaining about how they teach students to write papers in high school this morning.</p>
<p>I’m still in high school(im a senior) but I can definitely see how your highschool english experience would make an impact. Ive been in advanced english since Freshman year. Last year i think my class wrote at least one, and up to three essays a week and this year, while we only have one essay per book, it is very in depth, not too hard though(for me anyways, i love english even though i’m going to be a bio major).</p>
<p>–“The type of writing you do will change drastically in English. You won’t have to summarize books, stories, poems, you will have to analyze them and have your own thoughts and draw your own conclusions. My Comparative Lit teacher was just complaining about how they teach students to write papers in high school this morning.” </p>
<p>…just sayin, i’ve been doing that type of writing since the 9th grade. It really depends on what type of classes your used to</p>
<p>Just saying, that’s what most people think.</p>
<p>Give me an example of a paper topic you’ve written that you think fits this.</p>
<p>Yeah it is filled with it.</p>
<p>Seriously though, consider remedial English before you jump into this **** bro this advice is for your own good.</p>
<p>Oh wait Computer Information Systems never mind you just need to speak code or howeverthe**** tech people communicate.</p>
<p>Well, I’m going into a Computer Security track. So I’ll need to take some business writing classes, but I don’t think I really need to take English classes, as in analyzing books. I don’t read that often as it is.</p>
<p>ginab – i’ve been writing those types of papers, too.
the prompts i had to do in ap eng lang all required analysis of the author’s writing techniques. in ap lit this year, all prompts require analysis of motifs or themes. no one can get away with a summary paper in his classes, no matter how well it’s written. my teacher is an expert bs detector, sadly…</p>
<p>She is lying. Maybe in grad school that’d be true, but definitely not in college. As if professors and GSIs have time to grade a set of papers a week! Geez…</p>
<p>No i dont believe anything my teachers told me when i was in HS about “college” everything they siad was to scare you, it really depends on the college itself and the teacher, every teacher is different i know some people who do write alot but my teacher doesn’t but i do have longer essays then the ones i had in HS (over 5 pages)</p>
<p>Lalilalila–No. That’s not what I’m saying. Most English classes (Not 101 or the equivalent as much) are not that guided. There is no “analyze motifs or themes” there is “write a research paper”. For most classes you are writing the equivalent of what a professional level paper would be (but of course shorter and less researched) this means you bring a new idea to the table. The professor may give you a ballpark area to work in (For example I’m in a Women’s lit course this semester, so our topic has to stay in that area) and may limit your primary texts (story, book, poem etc) but you come up with your own idea, read other academic papers and use them as your jumping off point for example Dr. XXX does this but doesn’t consider that, or Dr. XXX says this but is wrong because of whatever.
If you’re a science person think of it as a journal article. Your introduction is what others have done, the rest of the paper is your own building of an original thesis.</p>
<p>If your in a class focusing on structure or form, these things might play into what your professor wants, but you have to take the structure and use it to support your idea. Your idea can’t be that the writer uses such and such a structure and the blank is a symbol for blank. Thesis first, analysis second (though analysis leads to your thesis). A single symbol or structure may be what leads to your idea, but the idea has to be suppported everywhere else and the paper has to be unified to prove a single point.
There is no prompt.</p>
<p>Why am I taking the time to say all this? Because I’m not writing my Midterm paper for women in world literature.</p>