<p>How much can I prepare for writing the issue essay in terms of background research? I'm afraid they'll throw a topic at me that I have no idea about, but I'm not sure how I'd go about studying ahead of time.</p>
<p>The topics aren’t meant for you to have extensive background knowledge; there will be a variety of ways to answer it based on your reasoning and essay-writing skills as well as what you know from history, literature, pop culture, film, your own life experiences, etc. They’re not going to ask you something so specific that you’d need to be a physics major or ancient Japanese culture major to know.</p>
<p>Just treat it as if you were talking to a friend and he/she threw an idea at you. Write your essay as if you are responding to your buddies (albeit formally because of obvious reasons) and you will find that it becomes much more comfortable to collate your ideas!</p>
<p>Cheers!</p>
<p>You don’t need to have a background in the topic, but you can prepare for the Issue Essay by developing an example bank. I took a live online class focusing on the GRE Analytical Writing Section and the instructor advised us to review the topics by theme and come up a set of examples that could be applicable on a number of topics. This really helped me a lot. I was able to use two examples from my “bank” when I took the test last week and this saved me time and allowed me to write more.</p>