THE PARAGRAPH IN THE COLLEGE ESSAY

When transitioning from the five paragraph essay to the college essay,
breaking out of its intro, body paragraph 1, body paragraph 2, body
paragraph 3, conclusion format and its tripartite and rationale-less
thesis are not the only changes you will need to make to your writing
style.
You will also have to learn to bulk up the content of each paragraph. I
dislike giving rules or formulas to students when it comes to college
writing because nearly every rule or formula has both weaknesses and
exceptions. But a general guideline for the paragraphs in your college
essays is that they should be about 1/3 to 1/2 of a page. Any longer,
and chances are good that you have more than one main idea. In which
case, you need to find the other secondary main ideas and give them
their own paragraphs.
However, students are more concerned when they cant get their
paragraphs to be even a third of a page long. They usually think this is
because they simply have nothing more to say, which in argumentative
writing is not usually the case. Usually the inability to get paragraphs
to be long enough is the result of writing paragraphs that are missing
key components.
In the five paragraph essay, each paragraph had a topic sentence and
then a bunch of supportsupport which often consisted of a
hodgepodge of examples sort of thrown at the reader in a kind of
barrage.
In the college essay, you need to contextualize your examples for the
reader. If you are writing a good complex essay, even your topic
sentence will require more explanation than just one sentence.
Below are the five components of a college paragraph. They follow the
order in which they are most commonly found in a paragraph; however,
this is not the only possible or even successful order.

1. Topic Sentence.
Unlike the 5 paragraph essay, the topic sentence here has two main
functions, one of which it shares with the old five paragraph essay
format. First, the topic sentence summarizes the main point of the
paragraph. Think of it as a mini-thesis. What your main thesis does
for the whole paper, the topic sentence does for the paragraph. This is
because not all of the sentences in the paragraph may clearly and
directly support the thesis. But they all have to support the topic
sentence. Secondly, though, it needs to make explicit how the main
point of that paragraph supports or moves forward your main thesis.
2. Explanation and Expansion.
Again, usually, if well written, the ideas in your topic sentence will be
a bit complicated. You ought to need more than one sentence to make
all the finer points of them clear. In a few argumentative
based sentences, you can elaborate, explain, and expand upon your main
point. Sometimes you give background information or support for
argumentative points here. What this cant be is examples.
3. Examples.
Usually students do okay on this. This is something you are familiar
with from high school writing.
4. Analysis.
So what? Why? How? Why should the reader care? What does this
say about the larger society? What does this say to further the
thesis? You need to make clear to the reader what you as a writer get
from the examples. Remember the movie with a friend analogy.
5. Transitions.
Finish the paragraph up with a sentence or two that helps move the
reader into the next point. We will talk more about these later in the
semester.
Depending on how it is that you write, you may use this list in one of
two ways. Some students who are very unsure of writingin general
or without the five paragraph frameworkmay want to use this as a
guide to spur them to think about what to write next as they write the
first draft of a paragraph.
Other students may want to use it as a checklist. Once they have
written the first draft of a paper, they might compare their paragraphs to
the list, noting what is missing and rewriting the paragraphs as
appropriate.
To give you an idea of what a college paragraph looks like, below see
both a more high school-ish and a college level paragraph that use the
same examples and the same topic:

When Carol Hathway announces to the staff of the Cook County ER

that she wants to be a doctor, the doctors on staff begin treating
her differently. Instead of just having her do the kind of grunt
work nurses usually get stuck with, they have her do some of the
procedures that the med students usually do. Carol looks
uncomfortable with this, but she does well. At the end of the
episode, she and Kerri Weaver get into a fight about how to treat a
mother whose kid died, and Carol decides that she wants to be a
nurse because she loves what she does and is good at her
job. This shows how gender plays out in the workplace because
nurses are mostly women and doctors are usually men, although
women are going to med school in increasing numbers but they
dont get into the same specialties that make them a lot of money.
Hospitals divide the labor of caring for sick people among the
professions, but because the professions are still dominated by
certain genders, the division ends up being one of gender more
than job title. Although we like to think of the medical profession
as increasingly egalitarian, gender divides still run through it. The
majority of nurses are still women. And while women have made
great advances in gender equity in medical school attendance, that
professional training that women fought so hard for access to may
not allow for gender differences in treatment to trickle down into
care in the hospital. The process by which doctors are socialized
into how to be a doctor comes largely through the mentoring
process of medical school. Vocational training within the applied
sciences tends to be much more about apprenticeship than about
theoretical knowledge. When Carol Hathaway, a long time ER
nurse, decides to go back to med school and become a doctor, the
MDs in the ER treat her very differently. Dr. Kerry Weaver asks her
to perform procedures as if she were already a med
student. While Carol is uncomfortable with this, she does perform
well. Her skill at those procedures seems to make the point that
nurses who excel at their profession are as skilled as doctors in
some ways. However, later in the episode, when a mothers
young child dies, Carol insists on giving the parent time with the
child to grieve, rather than moving her out of the room to make
way for incoming patients. Dr. Weaver snaps at Carol, telling her
that if she is going to go to medical school, she has to stop thinking
like a nurse. The implication in Dr. Weavers criticism is
clear. Nurses worry about the feelings of people, while doctors
worry about seeing the next patient or about developing enough
distance emotionally so that they can move quickly from one
medical crisis to another. Nurses, a profession dominated by
women, are the ones who are supposed to soothe over any hurts
caused by a too abrupt or too uncaring doctor. This seems to be a
profession-wide phenomenon. My own experiences with hospitals
as well as the experiences of friends of mine seem unanimous on
this. Everyone told me the same thing when I asked. Nurses
were great, and if you were lucky you got a doctor with a decent
bedside manner. But for the most part, the professionals who
really looked after loved ones were nurses. Part of this is likely the
result of the different roles nurses and doctors play within the
hierarchy of the hospital.

The most obvious difference between the two paragraphs is

length. However, there are other important differences. First,
locate the topic sentence of each. What are the
differences? Then, looks for places where the writer expands
upon or explains her position. Where does he provide support
or examples, and how doe those examples differ from one
paragraph to the next? Also, where is the analysis in
each? Last of all, where do you expect each paper to go next?