Alliance For Science

By Dick Lessard,
Alliance for Science Essay Contest Director

When I’m learning a new game, I skim rapidly over the instructions until I get to the part that says “How To Win.” That part I read very carefully. So, for those of you who work the same way, here is your “How To Win” tip sheet for this essay contest. Following these tips won’t guarantee that you’ll win, since there are likely to be many strong contenders. However, if you pay attention to these guidelines, it will definitely help your essay make it to the “playoffs” – the final round of judging where the winners are decided.

Tip #1:  Get the Science Right!  This tip should be obvious – after all it’s the Alliance for Science that’s sponsoring the event. So, check your facts and make sure you don’t jumble any important concepts, names, dates, etc. Don’t panic if you say the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and the day after you submit your essay you see a science report where someone says it’s 4.59 billion years old. But if your essay says the Earth is 4.6 thousand years old, you won’t stand much chance of winning.

Tip #2:  Focus, Focus, Focus!  You can say a lot in a thousand words, but with any kind of word limit you will have to make some tough choices. It is far better to develop a few important ideas and express them well than it is to be all over the place with dozens of facts and ideas that don’t hang together. Your essay should have a point, with a few main ideas you are trying to get across. Putting in extra material that doesn’t support your main ideas will only distract and confuse the judges.

Tip #3:  Answer the Question!  Be sure your essay really deals with one of the essay topics. If you are writing about “Agriculture and Evolution,” make sure your essay says something meaningful about agriculture and something meaningful about evolution, and, most important of all – how the two interact. It’s easy to get distracted when researching an essay and go off on an interesting side-topic. If you can’t tie it back to the main theme, your essay isn’t likely to be a winner.

Tip #4:  Write Well!  This is another “no brainer.” Check your spelling, grammar, and punctuation carefully. Pay attention to sentence and paragraph construction, and use vocabulary appropriately. Don’t use overly complicated or specialized technical terms when simpler language will do the job. Avoid mixing tense for verbs (e.g. switching from present to past tense) unnecessarily. Make sure you use singular and plural forms correctly. If you use humor, do it selectively and carefully – it is easy to appear either silly or offensive. Try reading your essay aloud to a friend or parent – that will often reveal problems that aren’t obvious on paper. Also, try to finish your essay ahead of schedule, let it sit for a few days, then pick it up again. You may be surprised to find that you left out a word somewhere or have some other easy mistake that you just could not see earlier.

Tip #5:  Don’t Cheat!  Before your essay will be declared a winner, you can be sure that there will be a quite a few eyes on your work. If you rip-off a half-dozen paragraphs from a website or a book in the library, you may be surprised at how easily other people can pick up on it. Do make use of important ideas from quality sources, but be sure to cite them in your footnotes or endnotes. If you are using the exact words (not just the concepts) from some other source, enclose those words in quotation marks and indicate where you found them.

Tip #6:  Make It Personal!  An essay is not a book report or a research paper. Facts, ideas, and carefully constructed explanations are essential to a good essay, but there must be something about it that is specific to you and the way you live, think, and feel. You could tell us how some aspect of the essay topic has affected you in the past, or might affect you in the future. Maybe you have gained some new insight about the world as a result of writing this essay. This might be a simple anecdote, something you saw or thought of or talked about with friends while on a vacation or a school trip. Personalizing your essay may be difficult for some of you, but give it some thought and do your best. Also, be aware that it’s possible to go too far. Please don’t include anything that is so personal or private that you, your teacher, or your family would be upset at seeing it published on the Internet or in your local newspaper.