In countries like the United States, essays have become a major part of a formal education in the form of free response
questions. Secondary students in these countries are taught structured
essay formats to improve their writing skills, and essays are often used
by universities in these countries in selecting applicants (see admissions essay).
In both secondary and tertiary education, essays are used to judge the
mastery and comprehension of material. Students are asked to explain,
comment on, or assess a topic of study in the form of an essay. During
some courses, university students will often be required to complete one
or more essays that are prepared over several weeks or months. In
addition, in fields such as the humanities and social sciences,[citation needed] mid-term and end of term examinations often require students to write a short essay in two or three hours.
In these countries, so-called academic essays, which may also be called "papers", are usually more formal than literary ones.[citation needed]
They may still allow the presentation of the writer's own views, but
this is done in a logical and factual manner, with the use of the first person often discouraged. Longer academic essays (often with a word limit of between 2,000 and 5,000 words)[citation needed]
are often more discursive. They sometimes begin with a short summary
analysis of what has previously been written on a topic, which is often
called a literature review.[citation needed]
Longer essays may also contain an introductory page in which words
and phrases from the title are tightly defined. Most academic
institutions[citation needed] will require that all substantial facts, quotations, and other porting material used in an essay be referenced in a bibliography
or works cited page at the end of the text. This scholarly convention
allows others (whether teachers or fellow scholars) to understand the
basis of the facts and quotations used to support the essay's argument,
and thereby help to evaluate to what extent the argument is supported by
evidence, and to evaluate the quality of that evidence. The academic
essay tests the student's ability to present their thoughts in an
organized way and is designed to test their intellectual capabilities.
One essay guide of a US university makes the distinction between
research papers and discussion papers. The guide states that a "research
paper is intended to uncover a wide variety of sources on a given
topic". As such, research papers "tend to be longer and more inclusive
in their scope and with the amount of information they deal with." While
discussion papers "also include research, ...they tend to be shorter
and more selective in their approach...and more analytical and
critical". Whereas a research paper would typically quote "a wide
variety of sources", a discussion paper aims to integrate the material
in a broader fashion.[5]
One of the challenges facing US universities is that in some cases,
students may submit essays which have been purchased from an essay mill (or "paper mill") as their own work. An "essay mill" is a ghostwriting service that sells pre-written essays to university and college students. Since plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty or academic fraud, universities and colleges may investigate papers suspected to be from an essay mill by using Internet plagiarism detection
software, which compares essays against a database of known mill essays
and by orally testing students on the contents of their papers
