answers to essay questions

• PRO Courses Guides New Tech Help Pro Expert Videos About wikiHow Pro Upgrade Sign In
• EDIT Edit this Article
• EXPLORE Tech Help Pro About Us Random Article Quizzes Request a New Article Community Dashboard This Or That Game Popular Categories Arts and Entertainment Artwork Books Movies Computers and Electronics Computers Phone Skills Technology Hacks Health Men's Health Mental Health Women's Health Relationships Dating Love Relationship Issues Hobbies and Crafts Crafts Drawing Games Education & Communication Communication Skills Personal Development Studying Personal Care and Style Fashion Hair Care Personal Hygiene Youth Personal Care School Stuff Dating All Categories Arts and Entertainment Finance and Business Home and Garden Relationship Quizzes Cars & Other Vehicles Food and Entertaining Personal Care and Style Sports and Fitness Computers and Electronics Health Pets and Animals Travel Education & Communication Hobbies and Crafts Philosophy and Religion Work World Family Life Holidays and Traditions Relationships Youth
• Browse Articles
• Learn Something New
• Quizzes Hot
• This Or That Game New
• Train Your Brain
• Explore More
• Support wikiHow
• About wikiHow
• Log in / Sign up
• Education and Communications
• College University and Postgraduate
• Academic Writing

How to Write a Good Answer to Exam Essay Questions

Last Updated: March 17, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Tristen Bonacci . Tristen Bonacci is a Licensed English Teacher with more than 20 years of experience. Tristen has taught in both the United States and overseas. She specializes in teaching in a secondary education environment and sharing wisdom with others, no matter the environment. Tristen holds a BA in English Literature from The University of Colorado and an MEd from The University of Phoenix. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 643,457 times.

Answering essay questions on an exam can be difficult and stressful, which can make it hard to provide a good answer. However, you can improve your ability to answer essay questions by learning how to understand the questions, form an answer, and stay focused. Developing your ability to give excellent answers on essay exams will take time and effort, but you can learn some good essay question practices and start improving your answers.

Understanding the Question

• Analyze: Explain the what, where, who, when, why, and how. Include pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, etc.
• Compare: Discuss the similarities and differences between two or more things. Don't forget to explain why the comparison is useful.
• Contrast: Discuss how two or more things are different or distinguish between them. Don't forget to explain why the contrast is useful.
• Define: State what something means, does, achieves, etc.
• Describe: List characteristics or traits of something. You may also need to summarize something, such as an essay prompt that asks "Describe the major events that led to the American Revolution."
• Discuss: This is more analytical. You usually begin by describing something and then present arguments for or against it. You may need to analyze the advantages or disadvantages of your subject.
• Evaluate: Offer the pros and cons, positives and negatives for a subject. You may be asked to evaluate a statement for logical support, or evaluate an argument for weaknesses.
• Explain: Explain why or how something happened, or justify your position on something.
• Prove: Usually reserved for more scientific or objective essays. You may be asked to include evidence and research to build a case for a specific position or set of hypotheses.
• Summarize: Usually, this means to list the major ideas or themes of a subject. It could also ask you to present the main ideas in order to then fully discuss them. Most essay questions will not ask for pure summary without anything else.

• Raise your hand and wait for your teacher to come over to you or approach your teacher’s desk to ask your question. This way you will be less likely to disrupt other test takers.

Forming Your Response

• Take a moment to consider your organization before you start writing your answer. What information should come first, second, third, etc.?
• In many cases, the traditional 5-paragraph essay structure works well. Start with an introductory paragraph, use 3 paragraphs in the body of the article to explain different points, and finish with a concluding paragraph.
• It can also be really helpful to draft a quick outline of your essay before you start writing.

• You may want to make a list of facts and figures that you want to include in your essay answer. That way you can refer to this list as you write your answer.
• It's best to write down all the important key topics or ideas before you get started composing your answer. That way, you can check back to make sure you haven't missed anything.

• For example, imagine that your essay question asks: "Should the FIFA World Cup be awarded to countries with human rights violations? Explain and support your answer."
• You might restate this as "Countries with human rights violations should not be awarded the FIFA World Cup because this rewards a nation's poor treatment of its citizens." This will be the thesis that you support with examples and explanation.

• For example, whether you argue that the FIFA World Cup should or should not be awarded to countries with human rights violations, you will want to address the opposing side's argument. However, it needs to be clear where your essay stands about the matter.
• Often, essay questions end up saying things along the lines of "There are many similarities and differences between X and Y." This does not offer a clear position and can result in a bad grade.

• If you are required to write your answer by hand, then take care to make your writing legible and neat. Some professors may deduct points if they cannot read what you have written.

Staying Calm and Focused

• If you get to a point during the exam where you feel too anxious to focus, put down your pencil (or take your hands off of the keyboard), close your eyes, and take a deep breath. Stretch your arms and imagine that you are somewhere pleasant for a few moments. When you have completed this brief exercise, open up your eyes and resume the exam.

• For example, if the exam period is one hour long and you have to answer three questions in that time frame, then you should plan to spend no more than 20 minutes on each question.
• Look at the weight of the questions, if applicable. For example, if there are five 10-point short-answers and a 50-point essay, plan to spend more time on the essay because it is worth significantly more. Don't get stuck spending so much time on the short-answers that you don't have time to develop a complex essay.

• This strategy is even more important if the exam has multiple essay questions. If you take too much time on the first question, then you may not have enough time to answer the other questions on the exam.

• If you feel like you are straying away from the question, reread the question and review any notes that you made to help guide you. After you get refocused, then continue writing your answer.
• Try to allow yourself enough time to go back and tighten up connections between your points. A few well-placed transitions can really bump up your grade.

Community Q&A

• If you are worried about running out of time, put your watch in front of you where you can see it. Just try not to focus on it too much. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If you need more practice, make up your own questions or even look at some practice questions online! Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

Tips from our Readers

• Look up relevant quotes if your exam is open notes. Use references from books or class to back up your answers.
• Make sure your sentences flow together and that you don't repeat the same thing twice!

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.linnbenton.edu/student-services/library-tutoring-testing/learning-center/academic-coaching/documents/Strategies%20For%20Answering%20Essay%20Questions.pdf
• ↑ https://www.ius.edu/writing-center/files/answering-essay-questions.pdf
• ↑ https://success.uark.edu/get-help/student-resources/short-answer-essays.php

About This Article

To write a good answer to an exam essay question, read the question carefully to find what it's asking, and follow the instructions for the essay closely. Begin your essay by rephrasing the question into a statement with your answer in the statement. Include supplemental facts and figures if necessary, or do textual analysis from a provided piece to support your argument. Make sure your writing is clear and to the point, and don't include extra information unless it supports your argument. For tips from our academic reviewer on understanding essay questions and dealing with testing nerves, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

• Send fan mail to authors

Reader Success Stories

Kristine A.

Did this article help you?

May 29, 2017

Sundari Nandyala

Aug 5, 2016

Oct 1, 2016

Mar 24, 2017

Featured Articles

Trending Articles

Watch Articles

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell or Share My Info
• Not Selling Info

wikiHow Tech Help Pro:

Develop the tech skills you need for work and life

Places on our 2024 summer school are filling fast. Don’t miss out. Enrol now to avoid disappointment

• Focus and Precision: How to Write Essays that Answer the Question

About the Author Stephanie Allen read Classics and English at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and is currently researching a PhD in Early Modern Academic Drama at the University of Fribourg.

We’ve all been there. You’ve handed in an essay and you think it’s pretty great: it shows off all your best ideas, and contains points you’re sure no one else will have thought of.

You’re not totally convinced that what you’ve written is relevant to the title you were given – but it’s inventive, original and good. In fact, it might be better than anything that would have responded to the question. But your essay isn’t met with the lavish praise you expected. When it’s tossed back onto your desk, there are huge chunks scored through with red pen, crawling with annotations like little red fire ants: ‘IRRELEVANT’; ‘A bit of a tangent!’; ‘???’; and, right next to your best, most impressive killer point: ‘Right… so?’. The grade your teacher has scrawled at the end is nowhere near what your essay deserves. In fact, it’s pretty average. And the comment at the bottom reads something like, ‘Some good ideas, but you didn’t answer the question!’.

If this has ever happened to you (and it has happened to me, a lot), you’ll know how deeply frustrating it is – and how unfair it can seem. This might just be me, but the exhausting process of researching, having ideas, planning, writing and re-reading makes me steadily more attached to the ideas I have, and the things I’ve managed to put on the page. Each time I scroll back through what I’ve written, or planned, so far, I become steadily more convinced of its brilliance. What started off as a scribbled note in the margin, something extra to think about or to pop in if it could be made to fit the argument, sometimes comes to be backbone of a whole essay – so, when a tutor tells me my inspired paragraph about Ted Hughes’s interpretation of mythology isn’t relevant to my essay on Keats, I fail to see why. Or even if I can see why, the thought of taking it out is wrenching. Who cares if it’s a bit off-topic? It should make my essay stand out, if anything! And an examiner would probably be happy not to read yet another answer that makes exactly the same points. If you recognise yourself in the above, there are two crucial things to realise. The first is that something has to change: because doing well in high school exam or coursework essays is almost totally dependent on being able to pin down and organise lots of ideas so that an examiner can see that they convincingly answer a question. And it’s a real shame to work hard on something, have good ideas, and not get the marks you deserve. Writing a top essay is a very particular and actually quite simple challenge. It’s not actually that important how original you are, how compelling your writing is, how many ideas you get down, or how beautifully you can express yourself (though of course, all these things do have their rightful place). What you’re doing, essentially, is using a limited amount of time and knowledge to really answer a question. It sounds obvious, but a good essay should have the title or question as its focus the whole way through . It should answer it ten times over – in every single paragraph, with every fact or figure. Treat your reader (whether it’s your class teacher or an external examiner) like a child who can’t do any interpretive work of their own; imagine yourself leading them through your essay by the hand, pointing out that you’ve answered the question here , and here , and here. Now, this is all very well, I imagine you objecting, and much easier said than done. But never fear! Structuring an essay that knocks a question on the head is something you can learn to do in a couple of easy steps. In the next few hundred words, I’m going to share with you what I’ve learned through endless, mindless crossings-out, rewordings, rewritings and rethinkings.

Top tips and golden rules

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told to ‘write the question at the top of every new page’- but for some reason, that trick simply doesn’t work for me. If it doesn’t work for you either, use this three-part process to allow the question to structure your essay:

1)     Work out exactly what you’re being asked

It sounds really obvious, but lots of students have trouble answering questions because they don’t take time to figure out exactly what they’re expected to do – instead, they skim-read and then write the essay they want to write. Sussing out a question is a two-part process, and the first part is easy. It means looking at the directions the question provides as to what sort of essay you’re going to write. I call these ‘command phrases’ and will go into more detail about what they mean below. The second part involves identifying key words and phrases.

2)     Be as explicit as possible

Use forceful, persuasive language to show how the points you’ve made do answer the question. My main focus so far has been on tangential or irrelevant material – but many students lose marks even though they make great points, because they don’t quite impress how relevant those points are. Again, I’ll talk about how you can do this below.

3)     Be brutally honest with yourself about whether a point is relevant before you write it.

It doesn’t matter how impressive, original or interesting it is. It doesn’t matter if you’re panicking, and you can’t think of any points that do answer the question. If a point isn’t relevant, don’t bother with it. It’s a waste of time, and might actually work against you- if you put tangential material in an essay, your reader will struggle to follow the thread of your argument, and lose focus on your really good points.

Put it into action: Step One

Let’s imagine you’re writing an English essay about the role and importance of the three witches in Macbeth . You’re thinking about the different ways in which Shakespeare imagines and presents the witches, how they influence the action of the tragedy, and perhaps the extent to which we’re supposed to believe in them (stay with me – you don’t have to know a single thing about Shakespeare or Macbeth to understand this bit!). Now, you’ll probably have a few good ideas on this topic – and whatever essay you write, you’ll most likely use much of the same material. However, the detail of the phrasing of the question will significantly affect the way you write your essay. You would draw on similar material to address the following questions: Discuss Shakespeare’s representation of the three witches in Macbeth . How does Shakespeare figure the supernatural in Macbeth ?   To what extent are the three witches responsible for Macbeth’s tragic downfall? Evaluate the importance of the three witches in bringing about Macbeth’s ruin. Are we supposed to believe in the three witches in Macbeth ? “Within Macbeth ’s representation of the witches, there is profound ambiguity about the actual significance and power of their malevolent intervention” (Stephen Greenblatt). Discuss.   I’ve organised the examples into three groups, exemplifying the different types of questions you might have to answer in an exam. The first group are pretty open-ended: ‘discuss’- and ‘how’-questions leave you room to set the scope of the essay. You can decide what the focus should be. Beware, though – this doesn’t mean you don’t need a sturdy structure, or a clear argument, both of which should always be present in an essay. The second group are asking you to evaluate, constructing an argument that decides whether, and how far something is true. Good examples of hypotheses (which your essay would set out to prove) for these questions are:

• The witches are the most important cause of tragic action in Macbeth.
• The witches are partially, but not entirely responsible for Macbeth’s downfall, alongside Macbeth’s unbridled ambition, and that of his wife.
• We are not supposed to believe the witches: they are a product of Macbeth’s psyche, and his downfall is his own doing.
• The witches’ role in Macbeth’s downfall is deliberately unclear. Their claim to reality is shaky – finally, their ambiguity is part of an uncertain tragic universe and the great illusion of the theatre. (N.B. It’s fine to conclude that a question can’t be answered in black and white, certain terms – as long as you have a firm structure, and keep referring back to it throughout the essay).

The final question asks you to respond to a quotation. Students tend to find these sorts of questions the most difficult to answer, but once you’ve got the hang of them I think the title does most of the work for you – often implicitly providing you with a structure for your essay. The first step is breaking down the quotation into its constituent parts- the different things it says. I use brackets: ( Within Macbeth ’s representation of the witches, ) ( there is profound ambiguity ) about the ( actual significance ) ( and power ) of ( their malevolent intervention ) Examiners have a nasty habit of picking the most bewildering and terrifying-sounding quotations: but once you break them down, they’re often asking for something very simple. This quotation, for example, is asking exactly the same thing as the other questions. The trick here is making sure you respond to all the different parts. You want to make sure you discuss the following:

• Do you agree that the status of the witches’ ‘malevolent intervention’ is ambiguous?
• What is its significance?
• How powerful is it?

Step Two: Plan

Having worked out exactly what the question is asking, write out a plan (which should be very detailed in a coursework essay, but doesn’t have to be more than a few lines long in an exam context) of the material you’ll use in each paragraph. Make sure your plan contains a sentence at the end of each point about how that point will answer the question. A point from my plan for one of the topics above might look something like this:

To what extent are we supposed to believe in the three witches in Macbeth ?  Hypothesis: The witches’ role in Macbeth’s downfall is deliberately unclear. Their claim to reality is uncertain – finally, they’re part of an uncertain tragic universe and the great illusion of the theatre. Para.1: Context At the time Shakespeare wrote Macbeth , there were many examples of people being burned or drowned as witches There were also people who claimed to be able to exorcise evil demons from people who were ‘possessed’. Catholic Christianity leaves much room for the supernatural to exist This suggests that Shakespeare’s contemporary audience might, more readily than a modern one, have believed that witches were a real phenomenon and did exist.

My final sentence (highlighted in red) shows how the material discussed in the paragraph answers the question. Writing this out at the planning stage, in addition to clarifying your ideas, is a great test of whether a point is relevant: if you struggle to write the sentence, and make the connection to the question and larger argument, you might have gone off-topic.

Step Three: Paragraph beginnings and endings

The final step to making sure you pick up all the possible marks for ‘answering the question’ in an essay is ensuring that you make it explicit how your material does so. This bit relies upon getting the beginnings and endings of paragraphs just right. To reiterate what I said above, treat your reader like a child: tell them what you’re going to say; tell them how it answers the question; say it, and then tell them how you’ve answered the question. This need not feel clumsy, awkward or repetitive. The first sentence of each new paragraph or point should, without giving too much of your conclusion away, establish what you’re going to discuss, and how it answers the question. The opening sentence from the paragraph I planned above might go something like this:

Early modern political and religious contexts suggest that Shakespeare’s contemporary audience might more readily have believed in witches than his modern readers.

The sentence establishes that I’m going to discuss Jacobean religion and witch-burnings, and also what I’m going to use those contexts to show. I’d then slot in all my facts and examples in the middle of the paragraph. The final sentence (or few sentences) should be strong and decisive, making a clear connection to the question you’ve been asked:

  Contemporary suspicion that witches did exist, testified to by witch-hunts and exorcisms, is crucial to our understanding of the witches in Macbeth.  To the early modern consciousness, witches were a distinctly real and dangerous possibility – and the witches in the play would have seemed all-the-more potent and terrifying as a result.

Step Four: Practice makes perfect

The best way to get really good at making sure you always ‘answer the question’ is to write essay plans rather than whole pieces. Set aside a few hours, choose a couple of essay questions from past papers, and for each:

• Write a hypothesis
• Write a rough plan of what each paragraph will contain
• Write out the first and last sentence of each paragraph

You can get your teacher, or a friend, to look through your plans and give you feedback . If you follow this advice, fingers crossed, next time you hand in an essay, it’ll be free from red-inked comments about irrelevance, and instead showered with praise for the precision with which you handled the topic, and how intently you focused on answering the question. It can seem depressing when your perfect question is just a minor tangent from the question you were actually asked, but trust me – high praise and good marks are all found in answering the question in front of you, not the one you would have liked to see. Teachers do choose the questions they set you with some care, after all; chances are the question you were set is the more illuminating and rewarding one as well.

Image credits: banner ; Keats ; Macbeth ; James I ; witches .

Comments are closed.

How to Answer Essay Questions – The Ultimate Guide

• Posted by Brian Stocker MA
• Date November 30, 2007
• Comments 7 comments

Everyone Loves Essay Questions!

“I hate essays!” This battle cry is famous to most students. That’s because essay questions are either easy or difficult. Either way, there’s no certain formula. Even if you think you know the answer - don’t be overconfident - the critical part is how you make your essay worth reading. So how do you do it?

Audio Version of this Post

Tips for Writing an Essay

Read the question more than once. Some questions can be tricky so make sure you understand it to the letter. A lot of students commit error by simply not reading instructions very well. They read and then write a long essay, only to realize very late that they did not understand the question correctly.

Familiarize yourself with your professor or teacher’s style of organization, if you can. As students, it’s your role to know how your teachers want their essays answered.

Mentally go through your lecture notes before writing anything on your paper.

Create an outline of thoughts and related topics in connection with the essay question. By doing this you are helping yourself create a more organized answer.

Construct an idea in each paragraph. Go back to your essay outline if you think you are repeating yourself or not making sense at all.

Use the terminology of the course . Be professional in knowing what type of words to use in a particular topic or subject.

Read and go back to your previous paragraphs after you are finished with one paragraph. This will help you determine your flow of thought and if you are really making a point or giving an answer.

Don’t include ideas that are off-topic.

If there are too many ideas in your outline , cut out the least important ones. As much as possible, make your idea concrete and pointed, with arguments or statements that is easy to understand.

The body of your essay should have a summary or statement.

Support your summary or statement with adequate details and specifics. If you do not know how to add details, just expand on your generic idea.

Avoid jumping from one point to another.

Avoid vague descriptions if necessary . Include specifics to get your message across.

Review the question again and again so you will not lose your thread of thinking.

If you have time to make revisions, do so.

Use all the time you have to complete your essay. Review and re-check your answers before submitting your paper.

If you have nothing to write and don’t know what to write , don’t leave your paper blank. Write something at least.

Get the Complete Guide to Studying

Get the complete guide to taking notes, taking a test complete guide to multiple choice, essay check list.

Here is a great Checklist for answering Essay Questions from Tennessee State University:

Use the following as a guide when writing answers to discussion questions and as a checklist after you have written your answer.

1. Do I understand the question?  What am I being asked to do? 2. Do I have a plan?  What are my major points and how am I going to present them? 3. Does the reader know, just from reading the first sentence of my essay, both the question and how I will answer it? 4. Are my major points clear and do they stand out? 5. Do I support my argument with facts and examples? 6. Do I make clear and sensible transitions between major points? 7. Is my answer clear to someone who knows nothing about this? 8. Have I answered the question completely?  Have I fully covered all of the major points required to completely answer the question? 9. Is there irrelevant material? 10. Do I have a conclusion and summary statement? 11. Have I proofed my essay for common spelling and grammatical errors? 12. Is my handwriting legible?  Is there room for comments or additions?

Glossary of Essay Exam Terms

When taking an exam the first thing you should do is familiarize yourself with all instructions. At times this can be confusing especially if you do not understand the terms. Below you will find some common terms used on essay exams. Learning these terms is a key step in successful completion of most essay exams.

• Compare (also Compare with): Discuss the similarities between two or more given subjects.
• Contrast: Discuss the differences in two or more given subjects.
• Criticize: Explain the value of a finding or theory. Include both negative and positive aspects based on implementation. This could be the ease of which it is applied, examples of false findings, etc…
• Define: Describe precisely a term’s meaning as it applies specifically to a given subject.
• Describe: Use exact detail to explain a given term. This may call for the use of examples, definitions, or discussion of the term.
• Diagram: Use a visual representation of relevant information to explain implementation of a term. This usually calls for an explicit chart or graph which is thoroughly labelled. In some cases it may call for a detailed plan as well.
• Discuss: The literal meaning of discuss is talk about. To do this in an exam you must thoroughly explain your subject with words.
• Enumerate: Form a list of relevant points and explain each point. This may result in an outline like answer.
• Evaluate: Discuss the pros and cons of the application of your given subject from a professional point of view. This differs from criticize because personal opinion should be avoided unless instructions specify otherwise.
• Explain: Define the given material and give examples of how and why it is important to the subject.
• Illustrate: Use a visual aid or a clearly defined example to explain a given subject.
• Interpret: Explain the given question, include you personal feelings on the subject as well as a solution.
• Justify: Use factual information to argue you view of the situation presented in a given problem.
• List: Brief but thorough list of information that explains the given topic.
• Outline: much like writing an outline for a paper. Answer the question by creating an outline that highlights the main ideas and key points of those ideas.
• Prove: Discuss the topic in a way that readers are convinced to support or reject the idea discussed. This is done through presentation of facts or the step by step illustration of logical thinking.
• Relate: Discuss the connection between two or more events, people, problems, etc…
• Review: Close examination of a problem accompanied by brief comments that explain the main points.
• State (also Give, Specify, or Present): Explain the major points of a subject in brief for. There is typically no need for further explanation.
• Summarize: Create a brief description that highlights the major points of your subject.
• Trace: Explain the progress of the given subject from conception to current date. Highlight anything that is considered a major topic as well as the reason for any changes.

Don’t!

Last piece of advice – Don’t get your parents to edit it!

More Info on Essay Exams

How to Study for an Essay Exam How to Answer Essay Questions – The Ultimate Guide

Tag: Essay Questions

Previous post

How to Make a Study Plan

How to solve analogy questions, you may also like.

Provincial Achievement Tests

Every thing was educational. Had a good feeling on how to deliver good papers.

Please no pictures.

This is a great tool for us.

i learned a lot – – super

I still hate essays tho

I am a big fan.

Above all are logically important and desirably topics which is value for everyone,thanks.

Leave A Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Essay Exams

What this handout is about.

At some time in your undergraduate career, you’re going to have to write an essay exam. This thought can inspire a fair amount of fear: we struggle enough with essays when they aren’t timed events based on unknown questions. The goal of this handout is to give you some easy and effective strategies that will help you take control of the situation and do your best.

Why do instructors give essay exams?

Essay exams are a useful tool for finding out if you can sort through a large body of information, figure out what is important, and explain why it is important. Essay exams challenge you to come up with key course ideas and put them in your own words and to use the interpretive or analytical skills you’ve practiced in the course. Instructors want to see whether:

• You understand concepts that provide the basis for the course
• You can use those concepts to interpret specific materials
• You can make connections, see relationships, draw comparisons and contrasts
• You can synthesize diverse information in support of an original assertion
• You can justify your own evaluations based on appropriate criteria
• You can argue your own opinions with convincing evidence
• You can think critically and analytically about a subject

What essay questions require

Exam questions can reach pretty far into the course materials, so you cannot hope to do well on them if you do not keep up with the readings and assignments from the beginning of the course. The most successful essay exam takers are prepared for anything reasonable, and they probably have some intelligent guesses about the content of the exam before they take it. How can you be a prepared exam taker? Try some of the following suggestions during the semester:

• Do the reading as the syllabus dictates; keeping up with the reading while the related concepts are being discussed in class saves you double the effort later.
• Go to lectures (and put away your phone, the newspaper, and that crossword puzzle!).
• Take careful notes that you’ll understand months later. If this is not your strong suit or the conventions for a particular discipline are different from what you are used to, ask your TA or the Learning Center for advice.
• Participate in your discussion sections; this will help you absorb the material better so you don’t have to study as hard.
• Organize small study groups with classmates to explore and review course materials throughout the semester. Others will catch things you might miss even when paying attention. This is not cheating. As long as what you write on the essay is your own work, formulating ideas and sharing notes is okay. In fact, it is a big part of the learning process.
• As an exam approaches, find out what you can about the form it will take. This will help you forecast the questions that will be on the exam, and prepare for them.

These suggestions will save you lots of time and misery later. Remember that you can’t cram weeks of information into a single day or night of study. So why put yourself in that position?

Now let’s focus on studying for the exam. You’ll notice the following suggestions are all based on organizing your study materials into manageable chunks of related material. If you have a plan of attack, you’ll feel more confident and your answers will be more clear. Here are some tips: 

• Don’t just memorize aimlessly; clarify the important issues of the course and use these issues to focus your understanding of specific facts and particular readings.
• Try to organize and prioritize the information into a thematic pattern. Look at what you’ve studied and find a way to put things into related groups. Find the fundamental ideas that have been emphasized throughout the course and organize your notes into broad categories. Think about how different categories relate to each other.
• Find out what you don’t know, but need to know, by making up test questions and trying to answer them. Studying in groups helps as well.

Taking the exam

Read the exam carefully.

• If you are given the entire exam at once and can determine your approach on your own, read the entire exam before you get started.
• Look at how many points each part earns you, and find hints for how long your answers should be.
• Figure out how much time you have and how best to use it. Write down the actual clock time that you expect to take in each section, and stick to it. This will help you avoid spending all your time on only one section. One strategy is to divide the available time according to percentage worth of the question. You don’t want to spend half of your time on something that is only worth one tenth of the total points.
• As you read, make tentative choices of the questions you will answer (if you have a choice). Don’t just answer the first essay question you encounter. Instead, read through all of the options. Jot down really brief ideas for each question before deciding.
• Remember that the easiest-looking question is not always as easy as it looks. Focus your attention on questions for which you can explain your answer most thoroughly, rather than settle on questions where you know the answer but can’t say why.

Analyze the questions

• Decide what you are being asked to do. If you skim the question to find the main “topic” and then rush to grasp any related ideas you can recall, you may become flustered, lose concentration, and even go blank. Try looking closely at what the question is directing you to do, and try to understand the sort of writing that will be required.
• Focus on what you do know about the question, not on what you don’t.
• Look at the active verbs in the assignment—they tell you what you should be doing. We’ve included some of these below, with some suggestions on what they might mean. (For help with this sort of detective work, see the Writing Center handout titled Reading Assignments.)

Information words, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject. Information words may include:

• define—give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning.
• explain why/how—give reasons why or examples of how something happened.
• illustrate—give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject.
• summarize—briefly cover the important ideas you learned about the subject.
• trace—outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form.
• research—gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you’ve found.

Relation words ask you to demonstrate how things are connected. Relation words may include:

• compare—show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different).
• contrast—show how two or more things are dissimilar.
• apply—use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation.
• cause—show how one event or series of events made something else happen.
• relate—show or describe the connections between things.

Interpretation words ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Don’t see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation. Interpretation words may include:

• prove, justify—give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth.
• evaluate, respond, assess—state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons (you may want to compare your subject to something else).
• support—give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe).
• synthesize—put two or more things together that haven’t been put together before; don’t just summarize one and then the other, and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together (as opposed to compare and contrast—see above).
• analyze—look closely at the components of something to figure out how it works, what it might mean, or why it is important.
• argue—take a side and defend it (with proof) against the other side.

Plan your answers

Think about your time again. How much planning time you should take depends on how much time you have for each question and how many points each question is worth. Here are some general guidelines: 

• For short-answer definitions and identifications, just take a few seconds. Skip over any you don’t recognize fairly quickly, and come back to them when another question jogs your memory.
• For answers that require a paragraph or two, jot down several important ideas or specific examples that help to focus your thoughts.
• For longer answers, you will need to develop a much more definite strategy of organization. You only have time for one draft, so allow a reasonable amount of time—as much as a quarter of the time you’ve allotted for the question—for making notes, determining a thesis, and developing an outline.
• For questions with several parts (different requests or directions, a sequence of questions), make a list of the parts so that you do not miss or minimize one part. One way to be sure you answer them all is to number them in the question and in your outline.
• You may have to try two or three outlines or clusters before you hit on a workable plan. But be realistic—you want a plan you can develop within the limited time allotted for your answer. Your outline will have to be selective—not everything you know, but what you know that you can state clearly and keep to the point in the time available.

Again, focus on what you do know about the question, not on what you don’t.

Writing your answers

As with planning, your strategy for writing depends on the length of your answer:

• For short identifications and definitions, it is usually best to start with a general identifying statement and then move on to describe specific applications or explanations. Two sentences will almost always suffice, but make sure they are complete sentences. Find out whether the instructor wants definition alone, or definition and significance. Why is the identification term or object important?
• For longer answers, begin by stating your forecasting statement or thesis clearly and explicitly. Strive for focus, simplicity, and clarity. In stating your point and developing your answers, you may want to use important course vocabulary words from the question. For example, if the question is, “How does wisteria function as a representation of memory in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom?” you may want to use the words wisteria, representation, memory, and Faulkner) in your thesis statement and answer. Use these important words or concepts throughout the answer.
• If you have devised a promising outline for your answer, then you will be able to forecast your overall plan and its subpoints in your opening sentence. Forecasting impresses readers and has the very practical advantage of making your answer easier to read. Also, if you don’t finish writing, it tells your reader what you would have said if you had finished (and may get you partial points).
• You might want to use briefer paragraphs than you ordinarily do and signal clear relations between paragraphs with transition phrases or sentences.
• As you move ahead with the writing, you may think of new subpoints or ideas to include in the essay. Stop briefly to make a note of these on your original outline. If they are most appropriately inserted in a section you’ve already written, write them neatly in the margin, at the top of the page, or on the last page, with arrows or marks to alert the reader to where they fit in your answer. Be as neat and clear as possible.
• Don’t pad your answer with irrelevancies and repetitions just to fill up space. Within the time available, write a comprehensive, specific answer.
• Watch the clock carefully to ensure that you do not spend too much time on one answer. You must be realistic about the time constraints of an essay exam. If you write one dazzling answer on an exam with three equally-weighted required questions, you earn only 33 points—not enough to pass at most colleges. This may seem unfair, but keep in mind that instructors plan exams to be reasonably comprehensive. They want you to write about the course materials in two or three or more ways, not just one way. Hint: if you finish a half-hour essay in 10 minutes, you may need to develop some of your ideas more fully.
• If you run out of time when you are writing an answer, jot down the remaining main ideas from your outline, just to show that you know the material and with more time could have continued your exposition.
• Double-space to leave room for additions, and strike through errors or changes with one straight line (avoid erasing or scribbling over). Keep things as clean as possible. You never know what will earn you partial credit.
• Write legibly and proofread. Remember that your instructor will likely be reading a large pile of exams. The more difficult they are to read, the more exasperated the instructor might become. Your instructor also cannot give you credit for what they cannot understand. A few minutes of careful proofreading can improve your grade.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind in writing essay exams is that you have a limited amount of time and space in which to get across the knowledge you have acquired and your ability to use it. Essay exams are not the place to be subtle or vague. It’s okay to have an obvious structure, even the five-paragraph essay format you may have been taught in high school. Introduce your main idea, have several paragraphs of support—each with a single point defended by specific examples, and conclude with a restatement of your main point and its significance.

Some physiological tips

Just think—we expect athletes to practice constantly and use everything in their abilities and situations in order to achieve success. Yet, somehow many students are convinced that one day’s worth of studying, no sleep, and some well-placed compliments (“Gee, Dr. So-and-so, I really enjoyed your last lecture”) are good preparation for a test. Essay exams are like any other testing situation in life: you’ll do best if you are prepared for what is expected of you, have practiced doing it before, and have arrived in the best shape to do it. You may not want to believe this, but it’s true: a good night’s sleep and a relaxed mind and body can do as much or more for you as any last-minute cram session. Colleges abound with tales of woe about students who slept through exams because they stayed up all night, wrote an essay on the wrong topic, forgot everything they studied, or freaked out in the exam and hyperventilated. If you are rested, breathing normally, and have brought along some healthy, energy-boosting snacks that you can eat or drink quietly, you are in a much better position to do a good job on the test. You aren’t going to write a good essay on something you figured out at 4 a.m. that morning. If you prepare yourself well throughout the semester, you don’t risk your whole grade on an overloaded, undernourished brain.

If for some reason you get yourself into this situation, take a minute every once in a while during the test to breathe deeply, stretch, and clear your brain. You need to be especially aware of the likelihood of errors, so check your essays thoroughly before you hand them in to make sure they answer the right questions and don’t have big oversights or mistakes (like saying “Hitler” when you really mean “Churchill”).

If you tend to go blank during exams, try studying in the same classroom in which the test will be given. Some research suggests that people attach ideas to their surroundings, so it might jog your memory to see the same things you were looking at while you studied.

Try good luck charms. Bring in something you associate with success or the support of your loved ones, and use it as a psychological boost.

Take all of the time you’ve been allotted. Reread, rework, and rethink your answers if you have extra time at the end, rather than giving up and handing the exam in the minute you’ve written your last sentence. Use every advantage you are given.

Remember that instructors do not want to see you trip up—they want to see you do well. With this in mind, try to relax and just do the best you can. The more you panic, the more mistakes you are liable to make. Put the test in perspective: will you die from a poor performance? Will you lose all of your friends? Will your entire future be destroyed? Remember: it’s just a test.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Axelrod, Rise B., and Charles R. Cooper. 2016. The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing , 11th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Fowler, Ramsay H., and Jane E. Aaron. 2016. The Little, Brown Handbook , 13th ed. Boston: Pearson.

Gefvert, Constance J. 1988. The Confident Writer: A Norton Handbook , 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Kirszner, Laurie G. 1988. Writing: A College Rhetoric , 2nd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Woodman, Leonara, and Thomas P. Adler. 1988. The Writer’s Choices , 2nd ed. Northbrook, Illinois: Scott Foresman.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Make a Gift

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Writing Essays for Exams

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

While most OWL resources recommend a longer writing process (start early, revise often, conduct thorough research, etc.), sometimes you just have to write quickly in test situations. However, these exam essays can be no less important pieces of writing than research papers because they can influence final grades for courses, and/or they can mean the difference between getting into an academic program (GED, SAT, GRE). To that end, this resource will help you prepare and write essays for exams.

What is a well written answer to an essay question?

Well Focused

Be sure to answer the question completely, that is, answer all parts of the question. Avoid "padding." A lot of rambling and ranting is a sure sign that the writer doesn't really know what the right answer is and hopes that somehow, something in that overgrown jungle of words was the correct answer.

Well Organized

Don't write in a haphazard "think-as-you-go" manner. Do some planning and be sure that what you write has a clearly marked introduction which both states the point(s) you are going to make and also, if possible, how you are going to proceed. In addition, the essay should have a clearly indicated conclusion which summarizes the material covered and emphasizes your thesis or main point.

Well Supported

Do not just assert something is true, prove it. What facts, figures, examples, tests, etc. prove your point? In many cases, the difference between an A and a B as a grade is due to the effective use of supporting evidence.

Well Packaged

People who do not use conventions of language are thought of by their readers as less competent and less educated. If you need help with these or other writing skills, come to the Writing Lab

How do you write an effective essay exam?

• Read through all the questions carefully.
• Budget your time and decide which question(s) you will answer first.
• Underline the key word(s) which tell you what to do for each question.
• Choose an organizational pattern appropriate for each key word and plan your answers on scratch paper or in the margins.
• Write your answers as quickly and as legibly as you can; do not take the time to recopy.
• Begin each answer with one or two sentence thesis which summarizes your answer. If possible, phrase the statement so that it rephrases the question's essential terms into a statement (which therefore directly answers the essay question).
• Support your thesis with specific references to the material you have studied.
• Proofread your answer and correct errors in spelling and mechanics.

Specific organizational patterns and "key words"

Most essay questions will have one or more "key words" that indicate which organizational pattern you should use in your answer. The six most common organizational patterns for essay exams are definition, analysis, cause and effect, comparison/contrast, process analysis, and thesis-support.

Typical questions

• "Define X."
• "What is an X?"
• "Choose N terms from the following list and define them."

Q: "What is a fanzine?"

A: A fanzine is a magazine written, mimeographed, and distributed by and for science fiction or comic strip enthusiasts.

Avoid constructions such as "An encounter group is where ..." and "General semantics is when ... ."

• State the term to be defined.
• State the class of objects or concepts to which the term belongs.
• Differentiate the term from other members of the class by listing the term's distinguishing characteristics.

Tools you can use

• Details which describe the term
• Examples and incidents
• Comparisons to familiar terms
• Negation to state what the term is not
• Classification (i.e., break it down into parts)
• Examination of origins or causes
• Examination of results, effects, or uses

Analysis involves breaking something down into its components and discovering the parts that make up the whole.

• "Analyze X."
• "What are the components of X?"
• "What are the five different kinds of X?"
• "Discuss the different types of X."

Q: "Discuss the different services a junior college offers a community."

A: Thesis: A junior college offers the community at least three main types of educational services: vocational education for young people, continuing education for older people, and personal development for all individuals.

Outline for supporting details and examples. For example, if you were answering the example question, an outline might include:

• Vocational education
• Continuing education
• Personal development

Write the essay, describing each part or component and making transitions between each of your descriptions. Some useful transition words include:

• first, second, third, etc.
• in addition

Conclude the essay by emphasizing how each part you have described makes up the whole you have been asked to analyze.

Cause and Effect

Cause and effect involves tracing probable or known effects of a certain cause or examining one or more effects and discussing the reasonable or known cause(s).

Typical questions:

• "What are the causes of X?"
• "What led to X?"
• "Why did X occur?"
• "Why does X happen?"
• "What would be the effects of X?"

Q: "Define recession and discuss the probable effects a recession would have on today's society."

A: Thesis: A recession, which is a nationwide lull in business activity, would be detrimental to society in the following ways: it would .......A......., it would .......B......., and it would .......C....... .

The rest of the answer would explain, in some detail, the three effects: A, B, and C.

Useful transition words:

• consequently
• for this reason
• as a result

Comparison-Contrast

• "How does X differ from Y?"
• "Compare X and Y."
• "What are the advantages and disadvantages of X and Y?"

Q: "Which would you rather own—a compact car or a full-sized car?"

A: Thesis: I would own a compact car rather than a full-sized car for the following reasons: .......A......., .......B......., .......C......., and .......D....... .

Two patterns of development:

• Full-sized car

Disadvantages

• Compact car

Useful transition words

• on the other hand
• unlike A, B ...
• in the same way
• while both A and B are ..., only B ..
• nevertheless
• on the contrary
• while A is ..., B is ...
• "Describe how X is accomplished."
• "List the steps involved in X."
• "Explain what happened in X."
• "What is the procedure involved in X?"

Process (sometimes called process analysis)

This involves giving directions or telling the reader how to do something. It may involve discussing some complex procedure as a series of discrete steps. The organization is almost always chronological.

Q: "According to Richard Bolles' What Color Is Your Parachute?, what is the best procedure for finding a job?"

A: In What Color Is Your Parachute?, Richard Bolles lists seven steps that all job-hunters should follow: .....A....., .....B....., .....C....., .....D....., .....E....., .....F....., and .....G..... .

The remainder of the answer should discuss each of these seven steps in some detail.

• following this
• after, afterwards, after this
• subsequently
• simultaneously, concurrently

Thesis and Support

• "Discuss X."
• "A noted authority has said X. Do you agree or disagree?"
• "Defend or refute X."
• "Do you think that X is valid? Defend your position."

Thesis and support involves stating a clearly worded opinion or interpretation and then defending it with all the data, examples, facts, and so on that you can draw from the material you have studied.

Q: "Despite criticism, television is useful because it aids in the socializing process of our children."

A: Television hinders rather than helps in the socializing process of our children because .......A......., .......B......., and .......C....... .

The rest of the answer is devoted to developing arguments A, B, and C.

• it follows that

A. Which of the following two answers is the better one? Why?

Question: Discuss the contribution of William Morris to book design, using as an example his edition of the works of Chaucer.

a. William Morris's Chaucer was his masterpiece. It shows his interest in the Middle Ages. The type is based on medieval manuscript writing, and the decoration around the edges of the pages is like that used in medieval books. The large initial letters are typical of medieval design. Those letters were printed from woodcuts, which was the medieval way of printing. The illustrations were by Burn-Jones, one of the best artists in England at the time. Morris was able to get the most competent people to help him because he was so famous as a poet and a designer (the Morris chair) and wallpaper and other decorative items for the home. He designed the furnishings for his own home, which was widely admired among the sort of people he associated with. In this way he started the arts and crafts movement.

b. Morris's contribution to book design was to approach the problem as an artist or fine craftsman, rather than a mere printer who reproduced texts. He wanted to raise the standards of printing, which had fallen to a low point, by showing that truly beautiful books could be produced. His Chaucer was designed as a unified work of art or high craft. Since Chaucer lived in the Middle Ages, Morris decided to design a new type based on medieval script and to imitate the format of a medieval manuscript. This involved elaborate letters and large initials at the beginnings of verses, as well as wide borders of intertwined vines with leaves, fruit, and flowers in strong colors. The effect was so unusual that the book caused great excitement and inspired other printers to design beautiful rather than purely utilitarian books.

From James M. McCrimmon, Writing with a Purpose , 7th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980), pp. 261-263.

B. How would you plan the structure of the answers to these essay exam questions?

1. Was the X Act a continuation of earlier government policies or did it represent a departure from prior philosophies?

2. What seems to be the source of aggression in human beings? What can be done to lower the level of aggression in our society?

3. Choose one character from Novel X and, with specific references to the work, show how he or she functions as an "existential hero."

4. Define briefly the systems approach to business management. Illustrate how this differs from the traditional approach.

5. What is the cosmological argument? Does it prove that God exists?

6. Civil War historian Andy Bellum once wrote, "Blahblahblah blahed a blahblah, but of course if blahblah blahblahblahed the blah, then blahblahs are not blah but blahblah." To what extent and in what ways is the statement true? How is it false?

For more information on writing exam essays for the GED, please visit our Engagement area and go to the Community Writing and Education Station (CWEST) resources.

To answer an essay question (EQ), students must assess the purpose of the essay question: factual recall, analysis (explanation of relationships) synthesis (application/transfer of previously learned principles) opinion

How much information to include, repeat, restate (intro needed? details needed?).

The chart below outlines 4 main types of essay questions, the verbs/cues that indicate the type of essay question and its purpose, and the strategy to be used to answer it.

Read the questions very carefully at least 2 or 3 times. Circle  the main verb (= action verb/imperative) in the question and decide on the necessary rhetorical strategy for answering the question (cause-effect, comparison-contrast, definition, classification, problem-solution). Make sure you understand what type of answer the main verb calls for (a diagram a summary, details, an analysis, an evaluation). Circle all the keywords in the question. Decide if you need to write a 1-paragraph or a multi-paragraph answer. Write a brief outline of all the points you want to mention in your answer. Restate the question and answer it with a topic sentence (for a 1-paragraph answer) or a thesis statement (for a multi-paragraph answer).  Answer the question according to general rules of academic writing.  Use indentations; begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; support the topic sentence(s) with reasons and/or examples; use transition words to show logical organization; write a conclusion.  Use correct punctuation throughout. Read over your answer again and check if all the main ideas have been included. Check your answer for grammar and punctuation.

© 2005: Christine Bauer-Ramazani ; last updated: September 02, 2019

• School Search
• Guided Tour

Writing samples are an important part of your application to any college. Your responses show how well you would fit with an institution; your ability to write clearly, concisely, and develop an argument; and your ability to do the work required of you should you be accepted. Use both short answer questions and personal essays to highlight your personality and what makes you unique while also showing off your academic talents.

Short Answer Questions

Short answer questions are almost harder to write than a personal essay, since you usually have a word limit. Often, this may be as short as 150 words (a paragraph). This means that your answers must be clear and concise without being so bare bones that you don’t seem to have a personality. In fact, it’s okay if you answer the question in less than the allotted space. Provided you avoid clichés and sarcasm and answer the question wholly, less can be more. Here are some tips to help you ace your short answers:

• Don’t repeat the question.
• Don’t use unnecessarily large words.  Not only will you come off as pretentious at best and ignorant at worst, but it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to keep the same tone throughout your response. After all, wouldn’t it be easier for you to read a paragraph that addresses “how to write concisely” rather than one about “how to circumvent the superfluous use of language?” Craft your response so that your reader can easily understand your point without resorting to a thesaurus.
• Answer honestly. If you are asked to discuss one of your favorite things, don’t feel ashamed to tell the truth. Colleges want to get to know you. A “cool” answer isn’t as interesting as your honest, unique one.
• Supplement your résumé. Talk about things that aren’t mentioned anywhere else in your application to show off a different side of your personality.
• Always use details to bring even a short story to life.
• Don’t be afraid of the word limit. Write out your answer without worrying about the length and then go back and delete any unnecessary information. Underline the stand-out points and trim the rest.
• Describe your personal growth. When discussing an activity or event in your life, ask yourself what you learned or took away from it. Colleges like to understand how you’ve been changed by your experiences and see that you possess self-awareness.
• Be specific about each institution. If asked why you want to attend a particular school, make sure to reference any times you visited the campus, met with admissions counselors, or spoke with current students or alumni. Talk about programs that interest you and how you think they will benefit you in the future. Tell your readers why the idea of being a student at their institution excites you. College admissions officers can spot generic answers, so do your research if you don’t know a lot about the school. Talk about each school as if it is your top choice, even if it’s not. Under no circumstances should you say that a particular school is your “safety.”

The Personal Essay

The majority of colleges will ask you to submit at least one personal essay as part of your application. (You can find the 2019–2020 application platform personal essay prompts here , but not all schools use an application platform. In such cases, you will find essay prompts on the school’s own application.) By reading your submission, college admissions officers become familiar with your personality and writing proficiency. Your essay, along with your other application materials, helps them determine if you would be a good fit for the school and if you would be able to keep up with the rigor of the course load. A well-written, insightful essay can set you apart from other applicants with identical grades and test scores. Likewise, a poorly constructed essay can be detrimental to your application.

To ensure that your essay is the best it can be, you will need to spend some time reviewing the essay prompt to understand the question. Not only will you need time to become familiar with the directions, but you will also want to take your time when constructing your essay. No one can sit down and write the perfect essay in one shot. These things take effort, brainpower, and a significant amount of patience. Consider these steps for producing a well-written, thoughtful response to any essay prompt:

• Get moving. The best way to activate your mind is to activate your body. The act of moving forward, whether you are on foot or on a bike, can help you work through the ideas that might feel stuck. Read the prompt thoroughly, and then see what comes to you as your move through your neighborhood.
• Write down your ideas . When you get home, write down the ideas that stood out. Simply put the pen to paper or your hands to the keys and write without worrying about sentence structure or grammar. There’s plenty of time to edit later on.
• Rule out ideas that won’t work. Use the resources in the section below to decide if you are being asked to write a personal, school, or creative/intellectual statement and read through the the corresponding tips. If any of your ideas don’t fall within our guidelines, find a different approach to answering the question or rule out the topic altogether.
• Construct an outline (or two). At most, you will be able to use 650 words to respond to the question, so every statement you make must serve your overall objective. To stay on topic and build your story or argument, it’s helpful to have a map to guide you. Choose a topic or two from you list and give yourself plenty of time to outline each idea. Use bullet points and separate each section by paragraph. You may realize that one topic is too broad and you need to narrow your focus. If you make two outlines, ask a trusted adult to help you decide which one is stronger than the other. Even if you're not a fan of outlines and prefer to write organically, writing down your ideas in a consecutive list and creating a pseudo-outline can still help you maintain organization and flow between ideas when you actually fill in the blanks.
• Fill in the details with positivity. You are now ready to begin your first draft of your essay. Staying positive in your writing, even if you choose to tackle a hard subject, will endear you to admissions officers while negativity, self-pity, and resentment aren’t going to make your case. Use vivid descriptions when telling your story, but don’t stray too far from your main topic as to become dishonest or exaggerated. Admissions officers are well versed in picking out the real from the fake and aren’t going to be impressed by a made-up story.
• Walk away. When you’ve finished your first draft, walk away for a while, even a day or two, and clear your mind. You’ll be able to look at it with fresh eyes later and make edits to strengthen your argument or main idea.
• Ask for the appropriate amount of help. While it is okay to have a parent or teacher read over your essay to make sure that the points you want to make are coming through or to offer minor suggestions, it is under no circumstances acceptable to allow anyone else to make significant changes, alter the voice or message, or write the essay for you. A dishonest application will be noticed and dismissed by admissions officers.
• Edit. For the initial proofreading, read your essay out loud or backwards, sentence by sentence. Reading it in a form that you haven’t gotten used to will make it easier for you to spot grammatical and spelling errors. Then, ask for one family member or friend to read the essay out loud to you. Together, you can listen for things you missed with your eyes.

The Three Types of Essay Questions

There are three types of personal essays: the personal statement, the school statement, and the creative or intellectual statement. These are described below.

The Personal Statement

• Goal: The personal statement should be a window into your inner life. It is a chance to show schools who you are beyond your grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities. An honest, thoughtful reflection will help admissions officers understand your passions, goals, and relationships with family, friends, and other communities.
• Example: “Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.” – Common Application, 2015
• Don’t attempt to sum up your life in one statement. Instead, try to pick one significant experience to elaborate on. Use details to paint a picture for the reader. Talk about how you were affected and what changed about your perception of the world. How did the experience bring you to where you are today?
• Don’t reiterate your résumé. Let your résumé, transcripts, and test scores tell one story about you. Use your essay to tell a different one. Think of it not as a place to impress, but as a place to reflect.
• Don’t talk about an experience that isn’t unique. While almost anyone could say that they struggled with history in high school, few could describe the influence that their great-grandfather had on their understanding of U.S. history in the context of World War II. Picking an experience or topic that will set you apart from other applicants is key to catching the eye of the admissions team.
• Don’t write to impress. Schools don’t want you to write about what you think they want to hear. It’s easy for them to tell when you aren’t being genuine. Pick a topic that’s significant and meaningful to you even if it’s not “impressive.” Having personal awareness is impressive on its own.

The School Statement

• Goal: With your school statement, it should be clear that you have done your research on the school to which you are applying. Admissions counselors use the essay to assess your enthusiasm for the school and your commitment to discovering how the education will benefit you in the future. You want them to understand what you are drawn to so they can begin to envision you as a student on campus.
• Example: “Which aspects of Tufts’ curriculum or undergraduate experience prompted your application? In short: Why Tufts?” – Tufts University, 2015
• Don’t make general statements. It’s important to cite specifics instead of referencing the obvious. If a school is highly ranked and is known for its strong liberal arts curriculum, that’s dandy, but it’s common knowledge. Instead, talk about the teachers, programs, school traditions, clubs, and activities that put the school at the top of your list. If possible, reference any times you visited the campus, met with admissions counselors, or spoke with current students or alumni. Show them that you cared to do more than just a simple Google search.
• Don’t use the same essay for every school. It may be tempting to reuse the same essay for every school, but your essay should not be so general that you can sub out each school’s name as if it were a fill-in-the-blank answer. Sure, you may be able to recycle some content that applies to multiple schools on your list, but be sure to round off each essay with tangible information about the institution (references to buildings on campus, your interview, the mascot, an exciting lecture series, etc.). This proves that you aren’t applying to the school on a whim.
• Don’t overlook the facts. Verifying your statements about a school is essential. If you say that you are excited to become a theater major but the college did away with the program five years ago, admissions counselors may not take you seriously. Do yourself a favor and fact-check.

The Creative/Intellectual Statement

• Goal: Colleges ask students creative or intellectual questions to assess their ability to think critically, construct a cohesive argument, and use a nontraditional approach to solve a problem. In short, admissions counselors are looking for students who can think for themselves. They want to see that you are open to new ideas and can support your opinions with thoughtful explanations.
• Example: “What’s so odd about odd numbers?” – University of Chicago, 2014; “Design your own three-and-a-half-week course and describe what you would do.” – Colorado College, 2014
• Don’t tackle the world’s problems. There’s no need to impress colleges with your knowledge of Syria or the spread of Zika virus. Keep it simple.  Remember, colleges don’t expect you to be an expert in anything yet.
• Don’t use too many quotes . Your essay is not a collection of other people’s opinions. Back up your arguments, but be selective when using quotes. If you do paraphrase or quote someone’s work, make sure to cite your sources.
• Don’t make it abstract. In an attempt to be creative and original, it’s easy to cross over the line into absurdity, but it’s important to stay grounded.

Page last updated: 05/2019

Related topics:

Understanding application requirements, the common, coalition, and universal college applications explained, how to write your résumé for college applications, asking for letters of recommendation, gap years and college applications, the community college application, acing your college interview.

Recommended Pages:

• How to learn English
• A cool trick for memorizing sentences
• Don't just learn. Overlearn.
• The 3 biggest improvements you can make to your English writing
• The key to understanding natural spoken English
• 5 steps to achieving your New Year's resolutions
• 8 reasons why your English isn't improving
• How your brain learns English (and how it doesn't)
• Infographic: How many words do you 'need'?
• The problem with language learning "levels"
• Where do I start?
• Never tell yourself that you "know" an English word or phrase.
• How to memorize the phrases
• Why Memorize? My theory of "hook phrases"

How To Answer Essay Questions On Your English Exams

The reputation behind essay questions in English is a lot worse than their real difficulty. I remember enjoying these exam questions, but I also recall them being the bane of many students’ existence.

Why do we say that the essay answers’ reputation is overestimated? Because they’re mostly a matter of getting used to them. Paper questions require a different approach than other types of assessment methods. That’s the majority of their difficulty.

Once you know how essay questions work and why they exist, it will be noticeably easier to answer them. Essay writing sites receive countless requests for paper questions every week. There are definitely a lot of people in need of help. But how to choose the proper company? What are the criteria? How not to stumble upon scammers. Check out the best essay writing services review.

What is an essay question?

Merriam-Webster has a straightforward definition of essay questions. It defines them as an exam issue requiring developed answers: from a sentence to a short composition. These questions take much longer to answer. The reason is that they consist of analysis and opinion-making.

By answering various matters, students learn to analyze and formulate opinions and ideas. Answer selection tends to favor memorization instead of reasoning. So essay questions make up for that.

IELTS preparation teachers also point out several types of essay questions within the test. You can find them on topics like education, art, business, language, society, tourism, and communication. All of these are fields that require critical thinking and reasoning.

What are the types of essay questions?

Naturally, written statement questions come in different types. These categories depend on the structure of the question and how the student should approach answering that issue.

The State Library of Victoria has a great article introducing these kinds of essay questions.

Quotation and discussion

This type is one of the most common paper questions. It comes as a direct quotation, and it asks the student to discuss their thoughts about the said quote.

The focus of these matters is to work out arguments and express your thoughts. You’re free to agree or disagree with the argument as long as you can justify it and get to a conclusion.

Double-barrelled

These questions get their name from how they include different issues and ideas that you must address separately. Students tend to fail these queries. The reason is that they miss certain sections during the exam.

The best way to approach these questions is to break down the different ideas exposed before tackling each one. That way, you can spot different goals to research and write about. These issues also tend to require you to relate different ideas and explain their relationship.

General questions usually go for broad issues that students can apply to different topics. It can be confusing to know where to start. But you can also decide your essay’s scope and how you want to build the argument.

Once you understand what to cover, general matters allow for lots of freedom when answering them. Make sure to take advantage of that.

Specific issues are somewhat the opposite of general questions, as their name implies. They usually have longer descriptions and clear outlines detailing what your essay must cover.

While they’re stricter than general questions, they’re easier for many people. That’s because they basically tell the student what to do. However, it can be a double-edged sword because of their lack of room for error.

General exam essay writing tips

If you’re still doubting how to answer an essay question, we’ve found a great set of tips for you. The College Info Geek has a great set of “rules” to help you answer these questions. We’ll summarize them to offer the ultimate guide to paper questions.

Understanding fundamentals

Professors use essay questions to verify if you learned the entire course. That includes facts, synthesizing content, and formulating opinions. That means your written statement answer must show that you succeeded in doing just that. Make sure you take the facts and use them to formulate your own answer instead of repeating everything your course said.

Don’t start writing as soon as you read the question. Make sure you understand all the requirements and the ideas you must tackle. Formulate your argument in your head, and make sure it’s complete. Once you know exactly what to write, you can start doing so.

You should organize your ideas so that it’s easier to read and understand them. Ideally, you want to start with an intro summarizing your idea before diving into a detailed explanation. Once you’re done, write a conclusion synthesizing your main thesis. You can use different patterns if you’d like, but that’s the fundamentals.

Conciseness

It’s easy to get diverted while writing and producing a redundant essay. Make sure your sentences go straight to the point and don’t repeat themselves down the line. Your essay doesn’t have to be longing for quality, contrary to what many students seem to believe.

Proofreading

After you’re done, make sure your text shows your arguments in the right way. Read at least twice through the entire text: once in your mind and once out loud (but quietly). This strategy ensures your essay is clear and at its best.

Featured Articles

• Gambling Terminology 101: Know These Essential Terms
• When can you use "play" to talk about a sport?
• 15 ways to say "Goodbye" in English
• Casual speech

Recent Comments

Follow phrasemix.

• About PhraseMix
• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy

PhraseMix Premium

• Subscription Pricing
• Latest Lessons
• Video Lessons
• Lesson Categories
• Lesson Index

Communicate

• Discussions

Copyright © 2024 , All rights reserved.

7 Free English Lessons

d elivered to your inbox

Subscribe Below:

Want to Improve your English Fluency?

Get thousands of Premium English lessons for only $9.99!

No Subscriptions. No monthly Fees.

FREE TRAINING: How I Secured 6-Figures in Scholarships & Graduated Debt-Free

The Scholarship System

Paying for college begins here

10 Common Scholarship Essay Questions and How to Answer Them

Scholarships & Financial Aid

Updated on July 15th, 2022

When your student applies for scholarships, writing the essay often feels like the most challenging part. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be. By learning about common scholarship essay questions and how to answer them, your student can be prepared for most of the topics they’ll need to address.

Knowing how to answer common scholarship essay questions is only part of the battle. You also have to track down great scholarships to pay for college. If you and your student want to learn more about exciting scholarship opportunities,  sign up for our free college scholarship webinar ! Just head to http://thescholarshipsystem.com/freewebinar and reserve your spot today .

If your student wants to get ahead of the curve and write winning scholarship essays , here’s a look at ten common scholarship essay questions and how to tackle them.

• 1.1 1. Tell Us About Yourself
• 1.2 2. How Will This Scholarship Make a Difference for You?
• 1.3 3. Can You Tell Us About a Time You Failed? What Did You Learn from That Experience?
• 1.4 4. Tell Us About a Contribution You’ve Made to Your Community
• 1.5 5. What Are Your Academic (or Professional) Goals?
• 1.6 6. Tell Us About a Time Where You Stepped Up as a Leader
• 1.7 7. Who Has Been Your Biggest Influence (or Inspiration)?
• 1.8 8. Why Do You Want to Go to College?
• 1.9 9. How Are You Planning on Financing Your College Education?
• 1.10 10. Why Do You Deserve This Scholarship?
• 2 Using Common Scholarship Essay Questions to Prepare

1. Tell Us About Yourself

This is possibly one of the trickiest college scholarship essays to write, not because it’s complicated, but because it’s so broad. Students have a lot of freedom with this prompt, so it’s easy to become overwhelmed about how to proceed.

Typically, students shouldn’t just give an overview of their life stories. Instead, they need to provide the committee with insights about their passions and drives, events that shaped their perspective, and relevant successes or achievements.

It’s also wise to be a bit future-focused, discussing not just where they’ve been but where they hope to go. Students can touch on valuable personality traits along the way, too, as that helps the reader gauge who they are as a person.

2. How Will This Scholarship Make a Difference for You?

Generally, students have a few options for addressing this question. First, they could showcase how the scholarship helps them overcome a relevant financial hardship. This can include being able to afford tuition, get needed equipment or supplies, or access a program at a college that may otherwise be out of reach.

Second, they could concentrate on how the scholarship will help them achieve their academic or professional goals. For example, your student might want to discuss how the award would allow them to pursue their preferred field.

Students should focus on how the scholarship eliminates roadblocks, though the exact type of obstacle can vary. Additionally, they should discuss what they’ll be able to achieve if they receive the award, both in the short- and long-term.

3. Can You Tell Us About a Time You Failed? What Did You Learn from That Experience?

For many students, even figuring out how to start a scholarship essay introduction for this topic is hard, let alone writing the whole thing. It’s difficult discussing a failure with others, so many students hold back if they are given this prompt.

However, honesty is the best policy. Additionally, even when talking about a failure, it’s possible to keep the essay positive.

Students should start by outlining the scenario and giving an overview of how the failure occurred. The misstep can be academic, personal, or professional, as long as it’s clear that something went wrong along the way.

After the overview, it’s all about a quick pivot. Students should explain the lessons they learned and what they would do differently if faced with a similar situation again. That helps them demonstrate their self-awareness and growth, along with their ability to persevere.

4. Tell Us About a Contribution You’ve Made to Your Community

This scholarship essay prompt is incredibly common for volunteering scholarships or awards focused on service. Students need to share insights about their community service-oriented activities, as well as the positive impact created by their participation.

Additionally, it’s smart for students to spend some time explaining how the experience impacted them. They may also want to touch on any plans they have to continue to remain active in their community, as that can help them stand out.

5. What Are Your Academic (or Professional) Goals?

With this common scholarship essay question, students need to clearly outline what they want to achieve, either academically or professionally, depending on exactly what they are asked. Usually, it’s best to start off with the basics. Students should explain what they want to study or the career path they hope to have.

However, they shouldn’t stop there. It’s also wise to dig a bit deeper, diving into precisely what motivated them to head in this direction. Some students do this by sharing their epiphany moment, while others talk about how it’s the culmination of a life-long passion. As long as it paints a great picture, any approach is potentially a winner.

6. Tell Us About a Time Where You Stepped Up as a Leader

Leadership is a hot topic for college scholarship essays. Many committees ask questions like this one to see what applicants bring to the table. Usually, your student needs to provide a clear example of when they took on a leadership role.

There are a lot of options for approaching this. Heading up a school project counts, as well as captaining a sports team. Coordinating volunteer efforts may work, along with a wide variety of work-related activities.

Again, exactly what your student chooses is less important than how they describe it. It’s all about sharing a story, ensuring the reader can get a good gauge on what happened and how your student’s involvement made a difference.

7. Who Has Been Your Biggest Influence (or Inspiration)?

Many scholarship essay questions want students to talk about their heroes. While it may seem odd to ask students to discuss someone other than themselves, it’s actually a great way to learn more about an applicant’s passions.

As they describe why the person influenced or inspired them, they incidentally talk about how they are motivated, their priorities, and their values. It also allows the reader to learn more about what shaped your student’s goals and aspirations, which can be quite enlightening.

Ideally, students want to be story-oriented. While they can certainly discuss the person’s traits and background, the focus should largely be on moments that inspired or influenced their way of thinking. That makes the essay more meaningful.

8. Why Do You Want to Go to College?

For some students, this question is surprisingly tough. Many students saw college as a must from a relatively young age, essentially viewing it as anything as optional. However, students do have choices about how they move forward after high school.

Scholarship committees want to know that heading to college isn’t an afterthought or something a student is doing solely because they were pressured in that direction. Ideally, students should discuss personal motivations or goals that made college the right choice for them. That way, their passion can shine through.

9. How Are You Planning on Financing Your College Education?

If a scholarship is focused on financial need, your student may face questions about how they intend to fund their education. This can be a difficult topic, particularly for students who may not be able to afford school without outside support, such as scholarships or grants. It’s hard to talk about financial hardship, but this question makes it necessary.

Students should actually start their essay by giving the committee insight into their situation, particularly regarding personal or household circumstances that make affording college difficult. After the overview, students should outline all of their efforts to secure enough funding. That can include everything from applying to scholarships, exploring work-study, getting a part-time job, or anything else.

Often, scholarship committees appreciate it when students are taking every chance to find ways to pay for college. It lets them know that the student is passionate enough to go the extra mile and demonstrates that they aren’t afraid of challenges if it means achieving their goals. So, students should touch on everything they are doing to make their college dream possible.

10. Why Do You Deserve This Scholarship?

Writing an essay about why they deserve a scholarship can be hard for any student. However, it’s a topic they need to be ready to discuss. This is one of the most common scholarship essay questions around.

Previously, The Scholarship System took a deep dive into how to write an essay on “Why I deserve this scholarship,” making that a great resource for any student who wants to prepare. As an overview, it’s about showcasing their perspective without coming across as arrogant and discussing achievements (academic or otherwise) that highlight why they are a standout applicant.

Using Common Scholarship Essay Questions to Prepare

Simply knowing what the common scholarship essay questions are usually isn’t enough. Instead, students should take extra steps to prepare to write their essays.

First, it’s wise to spend a little time brainstorming about the topics. That way, students can develop several ideas that they may want to explore and see if one approach resonates more than another.

Second, checking out some scholarship essay examples that won money is an excellent idea. This helps students learn more about what scholarship committees connect with, as well as more about how to tackle certain topics.

Finally, it’s wise to learn more about essay writing techniques. Along with reviewing how to write scholarship essays , it doesn’t hurt to research college personal statements , as those can be very similar to scholarship (and college application) essays. Similarly, checking out scholarship essay formats is a smart move. It will help your student figure out how to start a scholarship essay introduction, how to end a scholarship essay, and everything in between.

By doing that additional research, they’ll have as much information as possible. And, in the end, that could increase the odds that their essay will be a winner.

Related Videos:

• 7 College Scholarship Essay Ideas to Win More Funding
• How to Reuse Scholarship Essays & Win Over and Over

• Pinterest 363

March 9, 2021 at 6:35 am

Thanks for sharing this nice piece of information i personally believe scholarships are very improtant for every student

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Subscribe via email

Popular posts, how to write winning scholarship essays, how to write an amazing scholarship resume, 75 easy ways to save money in college.

How to Answer Essay Questions

How to answer an essay question is a question every student asks themselves and one that never seems to go away. There are a few key concepts that you can undertake at the start of the essay writing process that will help you to answer your essay questions. The forward planning and thought processes that go into writing the essay are almost as important as the writing process so here we break it down for you.

Getting started

First of all, research your topic and delve into background reading; it is really important to have a sound background and a clear understanding of the subject you wish to write on. If you’re going to wing it and try to breeze through without sound knowledge, your tutor will see straight through you and you won’t be getting those top grades.

Think how you want to answer the question and what points you want to cover, go back to your lecture material as well as marking down some relevant papers and books to read on the topic. From there, you can make a list of ideas you want to cover to help answer the essay question and form something of a table of contents. This will develop as you write but even a loose idea is better than no idea.

What is the question asking me to do?

One of the most important parts of answering the essay question is the question word. The word asking the question in the title of the essay can be easy to overlook, it’s useful to get into the habit of underlining the keywords in your essay title. These words will look something like these:

• demonstrate
• to what extent
• critically evaluate

Assess the question word. Each one of these words will require you to answer the essay in a slightly different way and has been chosen specifically for your topic and the resulting answer your tutor wishes to see. For example, critical evaluation requires in depth study into existing literature and for you to critique it and evaluate how it relates to your question. You must form an opinion on the topic and then evaluate how that opinion relates to theory and concepts surrounding the subject.

Whereas a question asking you to demonstrate wants you to display your understanding of a theory, concept or practice, you must show examples and give evidence to back up your points, often in the form of existing literature on the subject. Wider reading should be demonstrated and by the end of the paper you should have demonstrated you have a thorough understanding of the topic and shown that you can put that into practice.

The key point here is to answer the question. It may seem obvious and simple, but it is one of the most common areas where marks are lost. The answers you are writing must relate to the essay question. They must contribute in some way to answering what the tutor has asked you to answer. There is no point writing a brilliant and original essay with perfect academic English and flawless referencing if it doesn’t relate to the essay question, it must stay on track.

Whilst demonstrating a wide understanding of the subject, as well as the background and areas relating to it is good and beneficial in terms of demonstrating your in-depth knowledge, you need to keep it brief and keep in mind your word count. Think whether the words you writing are a constructive use of the limited words you have to play with or whether those words could be better used explaining something else.

Self-critique

A final important stage of answering essay questions is to take time out of the writing and read through your paper from an objective viewpoint. Read each paragraph and try to imagine you haven’t written it yourself. Think about whether it helps in answering the essay question. Does it describe? Does it evaluate? Does it contribute to background knowledge? Is it relevant?

Think about whether it could fit into a different category if the question had been asked in a different way, and if it can, think about how you could rewrite it to fit into your category more. For example, if you feel your essay asks you to discuss a topic and you find you are more explaining or describing a topic, perhaps think how you could give it more of a discussive tone and what would help it to be presented as such.

The main point we want you to take away from this short guide is to READ – PLAN – ASSESS – PROOF. If you follow these, we believe you can’t go far wrong when writing answers to your essay questions.

You may also like

IELTS Preparation with Liz: Free IELTS Tips and Lessons, 2024

• Test Information FAQ
• Band Scores
• IELTS Candidate Success Tips
• Computer IELTS: Pros & Cons
• How to Prepare
• Useful Links & Resources
• Recommended Books
• Writing Task 1
• Writing Task 2
• Speaking Part 1 Topics
• Speaking Part 2 Topics
• Speaking Part 3 Topics
• 100 Essay Questions
• On The Day Tips
• Top Results
• Advanced IELTS

100 IELTS Essay Questions

Below are practice IELTS essay questions and topics for writing task 2. The 100 essay questions have been used many times over the years. The questions are organised under common topics and essay types. IELTS often use the similar topics for their essays but change the wording of the essay question.

In order to prepare well for writing task 2, you should prepare ideas for common topics and then practise applying them to the tasks given (to the essay questions). Also see model essays and tips  for writing task 2.

Below you will find:

• Essay Questions By Topic
• Essay Questions by Essay Type

Please also note that my new Grammar E-book is now available in my store along with my Ideas for Essay Topics E-book and Advanced Writing Lessons. To visit store, click here: Liz’s Store

1) Common IELTS Essay Questions

IELTS practice essay questions divided by topic. These topics have been reported by IELTS students in their tests. Essay questions have been recreated as accurately as possible.

• Art   (5 essay questions)
• Business & Money   (17 essay questions)
• Communication & Personality   (20 essay questions)
• Crime & Punishment   (12 essay questions)
• Education   (17 essay questions)
• Environment   (12 essay questions)
• Family & Children   (8 essay questions)
• Food & Diet (13 essay questions)
• Government (6 essay questions)
• Health   (9 essay questions)
• Housing, Buildings & Urban Planning (8 essay questions)
• Language (6 essay questions)
• Leisure (1 essay question)
• Media & Advertising   (12 essay questions)
• Reading  (5 essay questions)
• Society   (10 essay questions)
• Space Exploration (3 questions)
• Sport & Exercise   (6 essay questions)
• Technology  (6 essay questions)
• Tourism and Travel   (11 essay questions)
• Transport  (7 essay questions)
• Work (17 essay questions)

2) IELTS Essay Questions by Essay Type 

There are 5 main types of essay questions in IELTS writing task 2 (opinion essays, discussion essay, advantage/disadvantage essays, solution essay and direct question essays). Click on the links below to see some sample essay questions for each type.

• Opinion Essay Questions
• Discussion Essay Questions
• Solution Essay Questions
• Direct Questions Essay Titles 
• Advantage / Disadvantage Essay Questions

………………………………

FREE SUBSCRIBE : Get New Lessons & Posts by Email

Type your email…

Advanced IELTS Lessons & E-books

Recent Lessons

Ielts model essay -two questions essay type, ielts bar chart of age groups 2024, ielts topic: urban planning, ielts listening transcripts: when and how to use them, 2024 ielts speaking part 1 topics, vocabulary for government topic.

Click Below to Learn:

• IELTS Test Information

Copyright Notice

Copyright © Elizabeth Ferguson, 2014 – 2024

All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy & Disclaimer

• Click here:  Privacy Policy 
• Click here: Disclaimer

Return to top of page

Copyright © 2024 · Prose on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

311 Good Trivia Questions and Answers, from General to Niche

By Liv McConnell

If you had a reputation for being a bit of a know-it-all as a kid, you’re likely now the person who has a trusted list of trivia questions and answers already on file. Not only that, but you probably love sentences that start with “did you know,” and you don’t groan when you show up to your favorite socializing spot only to realize it’s trivia night. Hey, we didn’t make the rules!

Building up your treasure trove of the best trivia questions before busting them out later with pals is fun for a few reasons. We’d be lying if we said part of the fun wasn’t getting to flex your own trivia night muscles. But it’s also always cool to see which topics your friends specialize in, whether that’s pop culture trivia or general history. And there’s the simple joy, too, of getting to make a game out of learning new things and testing your knowledge. Let your inner (or outer) nerd rejoice!

Below, you’ll find a comprehensive list of fun trivia questions and answers for your next game night with friends , which we’ve organized according to popular trivia topics. You’ll find plenty of random and general trivia questions, plus some pop culture trivia questions we’ve curated specifically for music and movie buffs. Finally, for those in a hurry to get the quiz questions rolling, we’ve put together a quick list of easy trivia questions, followed by tougher ones for a crowd that craves a challenge. Afterward, you can keep the night going with more game ideas for you and your crew like Truth or Dare , Never Have I Ever , This or That , or 21 Questions . May the biggest know-it-all win!

In this article you’ll find:

General knowledge trivia questions and answers

Random trivia questions and answers, easy trivia questions and answers, hard trivia questions and answers, pop culture trivia questions and answers.

We love a good themed trivia night as much as the next person, but sometimes, niche trivia just isn’t the mood. (Cut to a scene of the one and only time I’ve been duped into attending an evening of The Office -focused trivia. To my sister, the duper in question, I say: never again.)

If you’re putting together a trivia night for a big group — or just looking up trivia questions and answers to pass the time — it’s probably better to go broad. Whether you’re a film buff or a science enthusiast, we guarantee there’s something for you and your trivia crew on this list of general trivia questions. But just because these facts qualify as general knowledge doesn’t mean they’re no-brainers; some you may not have heard since first being taught them in school. So prepare to learn, or re-learn, a thing or two!

1. Who, in 1903, was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize?

Answer: Marie Curie

2. What year did the Berlin Wall fall?

Answer: 1989

3. What element does the chemical symbol Au stand for?

Answer: Gold

4. What is the sign directly opposite Scorpio in the zodiac?

Answer: Taurus

5. Who wrote the classic American novel Their Eyes Were Watching God ?

Answer: Zora Neale Hurston

6. The shooting of whom, in 1914, started World War I?

Answer: Archduke Franz Ferdinand

7. What is the smallest planet in our solar system?

Answer: Mercury

8. What is the highest-grossing Broadway show of all time?

Answer: The Lion King

9. What New York City bar was the location of a 1969 uprising credited as sparking the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement?

Answer: The Stonewall Inn

10. What are the first 22 cards in a tarot deck called?

Answer: The Major Arcana

11. What was the name of the possessed hotel in Steven King’s novel (and movie) The Shining , based on the real-life Stanley Hotel in Colorado?

Answer: The Overlook Hotel

12. What is the capital of India?

Answer: New Delhi

13. Which two states in the U.S. share the most borders with other states?

Answer: Tennessee and Missouri

14. What is the more popular name for the portrait officially titled “La Gioconda,” painted in Florence in 1503?

Answer: The Mona Lisa

15. At a restaurant, you’ll see deer meat on the menu under what name?

Answer: Venison

16. The author of the best-selling, four-part book series known as the Neapolitan Novels, now an HBO series, famously publishes their works under what pseudonym?

Answer: Elana Ferante

17. Where was the hottest-ever temperature on Earth recorded, per the World Meteorological Organization?

Answer: Death Valley, California (where it hit 134 degrees Fahrenheit in July 1913)

18. Who holds the record for the most wins in the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Competition Program category?

Answer: RuPaul

19. What was the first book published by Jane Austen?

Answer: Sense and Sensibility

20. Which two countries have the longest shared international border?

Answer: Canada and the U.S.

21. What city hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics ?

Answer: Sochi, Russia

22. What is the longest running Broadway show?

Answer: The Phantom of the Opera , which finally closed in April 2023 after a record 13,981 performances

23. What is the human body’s largest organ?

Answer: Skin

24. What year was the first iPhone released?

Answer: 2007

25. What’s the (extremely metal) name for a group of crows?

Answer: A murder of crows

26. What are the first names of the four main characters in Golden Girls ?

Answer: Sophia, Dorothy, Rose, and Blanche

27. What is the longest above-water mountain range?

28. What year did Netflix, previously a DVD rental business, introduce streaming services?

29. How many feet are in a yard?

Answer: Three

30. How many bones do sharks have?

Answer: Zero!

31. What is the deadliest mammal?

By P. Claire Dodson

By Lisa Stardust

Answer: The hippo

32. What is the deadliest animal in the world?

Answer: The mosquito

33. What country was the Marxist revolutionary figure Che Guevara born in?

Answer: Argentina

34. What is the capital of Singapore?

Answer: Singapore (it’s an island city-state)

35. What is the word for the weather event also called a winter hurricane?

Answer: A bomb cyclone

36. What was the first country to give women the right to vote?

Answer: New Zealand — in 1893, all women across races and ethnicities who were “British subjects” in New Zealand won the right to vote. This included Indigenous women, like Māori women, but excluded groups who did not have citizenship in New Zealand, like Chinese women.

37. What year was the landmark civil and LGBTQ+ rights case Obergefell v. Hodges ruled on?

Answer: 2015; it’s more commonly referred to as the marriage equality case

38. What are the names of the four March sisters in Little Women ?

Answer: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy

39. What chewy dessert topping is made from tartar and egg whites and often found on pie?

Answer: Meringue

40. In Greek mythology, who was known as the messenger of the gods?

Answer: Hermes

41. What was Eleanor Roosevelt’s maiden name before marrying FDR?

Answer: Roosevelt (she and Franklin were fifth cousins once removed !)

42. What was the birth name of boxing legend Muhammad Ali?

Answer: Cassius Clay

43. In what city were the first infections of COVID-19 discovered?

Answer: Wuhan, China

44. In chess, what direction can a bishop move?

Answer: Diagonally

45. What celebrity was the world’s first cloned animal, a sheep, named after in 1996?

Answer: Dolly Parton

46. What is the name for the solar event that occurs on March 20th or 21st of each year?

Answer: The Vernal Equinox

47. What’s the shortcut for the paste function on most computers?

Answer: Ctrl+V

48. What river runs through Paris?

Answer: The Seine

49. What is the capital of Iowa?

Answer: Des Moines

50. What is the most commonly spoken language in Brazil?

Answer: Portuguese

51. To what artist is this famous quote attributed: “I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better”?

Answer: Frida Kahlo

52. How many colors will you find in a regular bag of M&Ms?

Answer: Six

53. The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the U.S. from what country?

Answer: France

54. How many wives did Henry VIII have?

55. What is the rarest blood type?

Answer: AB negative

56. Which famous art movement did Pablo Picasso co-create?

Answer: Cubism

57. Which U.S. president is featured on the $2 bill?

Answer: Thomas Jefferson

58. What phase does a moon enter into after it’s full?

Answer: Waxing Gibbous

59. Where on the food pyramid do eggplants belong?

Answer: In the fruit section

60. What alcoholic beverage is made from juniper berries?

Answer: Gin

61. For how many nights is Hanukkah celebrated?

Answer: Eight

62. What religious and political organization did Malcolm X join in 1952, helping it to grow exponentially before cutting ties with it in 1964?

Answer: The Nation of Islam

63. What country has the highest number of citizens over the age of 65?

Answer: Japan

64. Area 51 is located in which U.S. state?

Answer: Nevada

65. What U.S. fast food chain is credited with introducing the first drive-through window to the masses?

Answer: In-N-Out Burger

66. What temperature does water boil at?

Answer: 212 degrees Fahrenheit or 100 degrees Celsius

67. In what city and state is Harvard University located?

Answer: Cambridge, Massachusetts

68. Who is the actress with the longest-running TV career?

Answer: Betty White

69. What does DNA stand for?

Answer: Deoxyribonucleic Acid

70. What is celebrated on February 2 and is also a film?

Answer: Groundhog Day

71. Which is the only vowel on a standard keyboard that is not on the top line of letters?

72. What is the longest running American animated TV show?

Answer: The Simpsons

73. Where in the human body is the smallest bone located?

Answer: The ear

74. What is the capital city of Canada?

Answer: Ottawa

75. Which planet in our solar system has the most moons?

Answer: Jupiter

76. What does BMW stand for (in English)?

Answer: Bavarian Motor Works

77. In what year was the first birth control pill made available to the public in the U.S.?

Answer: 1960

78. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was written by which writer?

Answer: Arthur Conan Doyle

79. What city is built atop the ruins of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan?

Answer: Mexico City, Mexico

80. What temperature does water boil at?

81. Who holds the title of top scorer of all time in NCAA Division I basketball?

Answer: Caitlin Clark

82. Who was the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director?

Answer: Kathryn Bigelow, who won in 2010 for The Hurt Locker

83. Which country is known as the Land of the Rising Sun?

84. In what year did the first Walt Disney World park open in Florida?

Answer: 1971

85. What is the most commonly spoken language in the world?

Answer: Mandarin Chinese

86. What is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature?

87. Which famous activist was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list in 1970 after being falsely accused of conspiring to break a member of the Black Panther Party out of jail?

Answer: Angela Davis

88. What are the three water signs of the zodiac?

Answer: Pisces, Cancer, Scorpio

89. Which animal can be seen on the Porsche logo?

Answer: Horse

90. What is the slogan of Apple Inc.?

Answer: Think Different

91. How many ribs are in a human body?

Answer: Twenty-four

92. What are the two main ingredients in the classic French dish coq qu vin?

Answer: Chicken — bonus point if you specifically guessed rooster! — and red wine

93. Where did Winnie the Pooh and his crew live, serving as the setting for their adventures with Christopher Robin?

Answer: The Hundred Acre Wood

94. In what year did the Titanic sink?

Answer: 1912

95. What is the chemical symbol for oxygen?

96. What is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea?

Answer: Sicily

97. What was Princess Diana's maiden name?

Answer: Spencer

98. Who composed the "Moonlight Sonata"?

Answer: Ludwig van Beethoven

99. What dish featuring minced meat, onions, and oatmeal is the national dish of Scotland?

Answer: Haggis

100. What was director Spike Lee’s first feature-length film, later adapted as a Netflix show?

Answer: She’s Gotta Have It

101. In The Chronicles of Narnia , what does Edmund ultimately betray his family and Aslan in exchange for after meeting the White Witch?

Answer: Turkish Delight — our guy really betrayed all of his siblings and brought eternal winter on Narnia in exchange for Turkey’s equivalent to gummy worms

102. What is the process by which plants release water vapor into the air called?

Answer: Transpiration

103. What famous Texan-born singer was popularly called the "Queen of Tejano” during her too-short lifetime?

Answer: Selena Quintanilla-Pérez

104. What flagship menu item first put today’s second-largest fast food burger chain in the world on the map in 1957?

Answer: The Whopper

105. Which amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery, if only in name and not in influence?

Answer: The 13th Amendment

106. What color is opposite blue on the color wheel?

Answer: Orange

107. What is the name of the fermented cabbage dish that’s a staple in Korean cuisine?

Answer: Kimchi

108. What is the name of the ancient Greek poet who inspired the coining of the term lesbianism?

Answer: Sappho

109. What was the better-known name of the actress born Norma Jeane Mortenson?

Answer: Marilyn Monroe

110. What was the last name of the four Dominican sisters who rebelled against the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo and were assassinated for their activism in 1960, as memorialized in Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of Butterflies ?

Answer: Mirabal

111. What best-selling book and movie franchise was originally created as Twilight fanfiction under the pen name Snowqueen Icedragon?

Answer: 50 Shades of Grey

If you see trivia nights first and foremost as the chance to learn something new, you’ll probably love this roundup of some of our favorite random trivia questions and answers. (And if you’re the person who likes to fill lulls in conversation with random fun facts, you’ll definitely want to file these away, too.)

1. Which marine animals hold hands in their sleep to prevent drifting apart?

Answer: Sea otters, and my system is unable to process that level of cuteness.

2. What type of flower was once used as money?

Answer: Tulips, whose bulbs were once used as a form of currency in Holland!

3. In what country do more than half of people believe in elves?

Answer: Iceland

4. For up to how long do cicadas live underground before emerging above ground for just a few weeks?

Answer: 17 years

5. Where is the world’s tallest roller coaster?

Answer: New Jersey (at Six Flags Great Adventure — it’s the Kingda Ka roller coaster, with a height of 456 feet)

6. What is the national animal of Scotland?

Answer: The unicorn

7. What is the largest living structure on Earth?

Answer: The Great Barrier Reef, located off the coast of Queensland, Australia

8. Globe and Jerusalem are both types of what?

Answer: Artichokes

9. Which planet is the hottest in the solar system?

Answer: Venus

10. Which bone are babies born without?

Answer: Knee cap

11. Which planet has the most gravity?

12. What is the smallest country in the world?

Answer: Vatican City

13. How many Pyramids of Giza were made?

14. What is the national dish of Spain?

Answer: Paella

15. Where is the tallest building in the world located?

Answer: Dubai, where the Burj Khalifa stands at a height of 2,717 feet

16. Which mammal has no vocal cords?

Answer: Giraffe

17. According to Greek mythology, who was the first woman on earth?

Answer: Pandora

18. Fissures, vents, and plugs are all associated with which geological feature?

Answer: Volcanos

19. Which country consumes the most chocolate per capita?

Answer: Switzerland

20. What is the loudest animal on Earth?

Answer: The sperm whale

21. What was the first toy to be advertised on television?

Answer: Mr. Potato Head

22. How many eyes does a bee have?

Answer: Five

23. Which bird can fly backward?

Answer: The hummingbird

24. What is the only continent without any active volcanoes?

Answer: Australia

25. What is the tallest breed of dog in the world?

Answer: The Great Dane

26. What is the hardest naturally occurring substance in the world?

Answer: A diamond

27. What did the first message sent by telegram — basically, the first text message — say?

Answer” “What hath God wrought,” sent by Samuel Morse in 1844

28. What state in the U.S. has only two escalators?

Answer: Wyoming

29. In what one country will you find, from start to finish, the longest road?

Answer: The U.S. — Route 20 covers 3,365 miles. If looking at roads that aren’t contained within one country, the longest road is the Pan-American Highway at 19,000 miles.

30. In what country is the world’s oldest university located?

Answer: Italy — found in the city of Bologna, the University of Bologna was founded in 1088

31. What country has the longest coastline of any country in the world?

Answer: Canada, with 125,570 miles of coastline

32. In what country is the world’s highest post office located?

Answer: India — the post office of Hikkim, Himachal Pradesh, is found at an altitude of 14,567 feet

33. What is the only mammal capable of sustained flight?

Answer: The bat

34. What is the only letter that doesn't appear in any U.S. state name?

35. What musical artist today spent 13 years as a competitive gymnast, holding the title of fifth-ranked gymnast in the U.S. during their sophomore year of high school?

Answer: SZA

36. In Japan, what is the name for the edible pufferfish, notorious for its potentially lethal toxins if not prepared correctly?

Answer: Fugu

37. What is the collective noun for a pack of pug dogs?

Answer: A grumble

38. What late-19th century U.S. invention was intended to “ tackle the twin national crises of indigestion and masturbation ”?

Answer: Corn flakes

39. What actress went viral for lying about loving limes?

Answer: Dakota Johnson

40. What is the one animal species to-date that’s officially classified as “biologically immortal?”

Answer: Turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish, also known as "immortal jellyfish” (there are a small handful of other organisms with characteristics thought to be similar to biological immortality, but so far, this jellyfish species is the only one commonly agreed upon)

41. The face of what U.S. politician was used to test the intelligence of crows?

Answer: Dick Cheney — masks of the former Vice President’s face were used in a famous study

42. What is the shortest war in history?

Answer: The Anglo-Zanzibar War, which lasted 38 minutes in 1896

43. What is the only food that does not spoil?

Answer: Honey

44. What famous historical queen is today remembered for, among other things, her X-rated taste in furniture ?

Answer: Catherine the Great

45. In what country is fermented shark, which smells heavily of ammonia, treated as a national delicacy?

So, you want to host a trivia night where the questions aren’t literally impossible to answer. We hear you. The following list of easy trivia questions may not be totally free of challenges — because where would be the fun in that? — but they should work for a group of pretty much any trivia skill level!

1. Which country is both an island and a continent?

2. What is the name of the world’s longest river?

Answer: The Nile

3. How many Lord of the Rings films are there?

4. Who is the only U.S. president to serve more than two terms in office?

Answer: Franklin D. Roosevelt

5. Which Williams sister has won more Grand Slam titles?

Answer: Serena

6. What type of shark is responsible for the most attacks on humans annually?

Answer: Great white sharks — but the number of attacks is small. In 2023, seven people were attacked by a great white.

7. In the United Kingdom, what is the day after Christmas known as?

Answer: Boxing Day

8. Which artist painted "The Starry Night"?

Answer: Vincent van Gogh

9. What is the largest ocean on Earth?

Answer: The Pacific Ocean

10. Which gas makes up the majority of Earth's atmosphere?

Answer: Nitrogen

11. Which planet is known as the "Red Planet"?

Answer: Mars

12. What is the official national anthem of the United States of America?

Answer: “The Star Spangled Banner”

13. Who was the first Disney Princess?

Answer: Snow White — the movie came out in 1937! (But if you’re a diehard Disney trivia fan, you probably knew that.)

14. Which American state is the largest (by area)?

Answer: Alaska

15. How many stripes does Adidas have in its logo?

16. What natural wonder is commonly referred to as “the Lungs of the World”?

Answer: The Amazon Rainforest

17. Which country won the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2019?

Answer: The United States

18. Which iconic baseball player broke Major League Baseball’s racial segregation barrier in 1947?

Answer: Jackie Robinson

19. What song did Tom Holland famously perform for his appearance on Lip Sync Battle in 2017?

Answer: “Umbrella” by Rihanna (if you’re one of the 10 people on the planet who hasn’t seen this video, do yourself a favor and watch it now )

20. On what television show did both Ryan Gosling and Christina Aguliera get their start?

Answer: The Mickey Mouse Club

21. Which ancient civilization built the famous city of Machu Picchu in Peru?

Answer: The Inca civilization

22. What is the four-word nickname given to the titular character of the Harry Potter series?

Answer: The Boy Who Lived

23. What is the term for the fear of spiders?

Answer: Arachnophobia

24. Who is the youngest person to ever win a Nobel Prize?

Answer: Malala Yousafzai, who won at age 17!

25. What’s the most-consumed beverage in the world that is not water?

Answer: Tea

26. How many Cheetah Girls are there in the movie series of the same title?

Answer: Four

27. How many justices serve on the United States Supreme Court?

Answer: Nine

28. Which empire was ruled by Emperor Nero?

Answer: The Roman Empire

29. What’s the only vegetable that is also classified as a flower?

Answer: Broccoli

30. What is the study of fossils called?

Answer: Paleontology

31. Who painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

Answer: Michelangelo

32. What is the name of the central protagonist in J.D. Salinger’s classic book The Catcher in the Rye ?

Answer: Holden Caulfield

33. What breakfast cereal has been represented by a cartoon toucan mascot since 1963?

Answer: Froot Loops

34. Which scale are earthquakes measured on?

Answer: The Richter Scale

35. What are the last names of the warring families in Romeo and Juliet ?

Answer: The Montagues and Capulets

So, you breezed right through our list of easy, general knowledge trivia questions and now you’re ready to kick things up a notch. Whip out some of these difficult trivia questions, covering topics from technology to world history to geography, the next time you’re looking to really stump your friends. But be warned: We’re not calling these tough trivia questions for nothing!

1. How many countries are in the European Union?

2. What is the smallest unit of memory in computers?

Answer: A bit, short for binary digit

3. The Hawaiian Islands archipelago is made up of what number of major islands?

Answer: Eight major islands (plus a bunch of smaller islands and islets for a total of 137 islands!)

4. Who is considered the first female self-made millionaire in the U.S.?

Answer: Madam C.J. Walker, a Black woman and entrepreneur who built a hugely successful haircare and beauty product business in the early 1900s

5. How many colors were on the original Pride flag , flown at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade in 1978?

Answer: Eight (the flag’s pink and turquoise stripes were later dropped for production reasons)

6. What country has the national language with the longest alphabet?

Answer: Cambodia — their national language, Khmer, has 74 characters

7. What does “HTTP” stand for?

Answer: HyperText Transfer Protocol

8. How many keys are on a modern, standard-sized piano?

9. Which intercontinental city is divided into two separate parts by the Bosphorus Strait, with half of the city in Europe and half in Asia?

Answer: Istanbul, Turkey

10. What nation has the highest number of time zones in the world?

Answer: France — including its colonized territories and territorial claim in Antarctica, France represents 13 time zones

11. The Hays Code and its “morality” guidelines, used to censor Hollywood movies, were in effect until when?

Answer: 1968 — the code started in 1930

12. What movie holds the record for the most successful movie of all time at the Irish box office?

Answer: Barbie (you thought we were going to say something Irish-y, didn’t you?)

13. What element are human beings predominantly composed of?

Answer: Carbon

14. The Goo Goo Dolls wrote “Iris” for what movie?

Answer: City of Angels , which means that, yes, the lyrics of “Iris” are really about the plot of a Nicholas Cage movie

15. Name three movies that are based on rides or attractions at Walt Disney World. (Naming multiple movies in the same franchise doesn’t count.)

Answers: Tower of Terror , the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Mission to Mars , The Country Bears , The Haunted Mansion , Tomorrowland , Jungle Cruise

16. What Nobel Prize in Literature and U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient said they spent their “entire writing life trying to make sure that the white gaze was not the dominant one in any of my books”?

Answer: Toni Morrison

17. Who invented the World Wide Web?

Answer: Tim Berners-Lee

18. What is the term for the fear of being without a mobile phone or unable to use it?

Answer: Nomophobia

19. What was the working title for the movie-turned-phenomenon Everything Everywhere All At Once ?

Answer: A Woman Tries to Do Her Taxes , which, frankly, is incredible

20. Who is the youngest-ever person to win an Oscar?

Answer: Tatum O'Neal, who won Best Supporting Actress at age 10 for her role in Paper Moon

21. What modern-day country was home to the ancient civilization credited with inventing, among many things, beer some 5,000 years ago?

Answer: Iraq — the Sumerians are most commonly credited with inventing beer in ancient Mesopotamia

22. What product made for surfers in Australia eventually blew up as a global celebrity fashion staple in the early 2000s?

Answer: Uggs

23. Although Bram Stoker’s character draws inspiration from multiple sources, including folklore, who in history is thought to be the primary real-life template for Dracula?

Answer: Vlad the Impaler

24. Who was the top-earning Hollywood star of 2023?

Answer: Adam Sandler , and to that we say, how??

25. What best-selling author and TV star had an earlier career as a secret agent, during which time they contributed to the development of a still-in-use shark repellent to keep curious sharks from detonating underwater explosives?

Answer: Julia Child

26. What national park is home to the largest population of Photinus carolinus — fireflies that blink in synchronization — in the Western Hemisphere?

Answer: The Great Smoky Mountains National Park

27. What two seminal horror texts do we owe to the utter boredom of getting rained-in on vacation?

Answer: Frankenstein and The Vampyre (the precursor to Bram Stoker’s Dracula)

28. What is the world's largest flower?

Answer: Rafflesia arnoldii, also known as the “corpse flower” due to it smelling like, well, a corpse

29. Where was coffee invented, according to most researchers as well as a popular legend about a goat herder?

Answer: Ethiopia

30. Question: Which word in the English language is spelled incorrectly in every dictionary?

Answer: Incorrectly (be honest, we know we got you with this one!)

31. The poet Emily Dickinson has a sixth cousin, three times removed, who is famous for writing so-called “quill-pen songs” — who is that person?

Answer: Taylor Swift

32. What Pulitzer Prize winner is credited with coining the term “colorism” in 1982?

Answer: Alice Walker

33. What is the name of the ship that rescued Titanic passengers hours after the “unsinkable” ship went down?

Answer: The Carpathia

34. With their posthumous Grammy win in 1994, what Hollywood star joined a list of just 19 EGOT winners?

Answer: Audrey Hepburn — her Grammy was for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, and who even knew that category existed?

35. What is the deepest known part of the ocean?

Answer: The Mariana Trench, which has a maximum depth of 36,070 feet

Lovers of pop culture trivia, we see you. Though general knowledge trivia questions about music and movies have appeared throughout our list, if you’re a dedicated cinephile or have been studying up on your music history, you’re in luck. We’re dedicating our final two quiz sections to pop culture trivia questions, with entries that span several decades of music and film history — meaning, these should play well for a multi-gen trivia night group. (Helllllo, family game night!) Let’s kick things off with…

1. Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin all belong to what unfortunate group?

Answer: The 27 Club

2. Who besides Britney Spears did Madonna kiss at the 2003 VMAs?

Answer: Christina Aguilera

3. What song holds the title of the very first music video to ever premiere on MTV?

Answer: “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles

4. With what album did Beyoncé start her solo career?

Answer: Dangerously In Love

5. What is the stage name of Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta?

Answer: Lady Gaga

6. Who sang the first recorded version of “Strange Fruit,” a classic, haunting protest song against racism and violence against Black bodies?

Answer: Billie Holiday

7. Who was the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?

Answer: Aretha Franklin

8. What musical artist played a whopping 27 different instruments on their debut album, “For You”?

Answer: Prince

9. Where did the band ABBA form?

Answer: Sweden

10. Which Beatles’ single was No. 1 on the Billboard charts for the longest stretch of time?

Answer: “Hey Jude”

11. What was the Notorious BIG’s real first name?

Answer: Christopher

12. How old was Taylor Swift when she took home her first Album of the Year Grammy?

13. Starchild, Demon, Spaceman (or Space Ace), and Catman are the on-stage personas of what band?

Answer: KISS

14. How many members does BTS have?

Answer: Seven

15. What was The Beach Boys’ first No. 1 single, out of a total of four?

Answer: “I Get Around”

16. What instrument does Lizzo play?

Answer: The Flute

17. What musical artist cast themselves as every character in a 1978 televised performance of West Side Story ?

Answer: Cher

18. What is the longest-running band still featuring its original lineup?

19. What is the best-selling album of all time in the U.S.?

Answer: “Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975)” by the Eagles — we wish we were kidding

20. How did Otis Redding die?

Answer: A plane crash

21. Which famous country artist had a hit in 1957 with “Walkin’ After Midnight”?

Answer: Patsy Cline

22. In 2017, what single topped the charts in 47 countries simultaneously?

Answer: “Despacito”

23. Who did Beyoncé edge out in 2021 for the title of female artist with the most Grammys?

Answer: Alison Krauss

24. What is the name of Led Zeppelin’s fourth studio album, which includes the song “Stairway to Heaven”?

Answer: It’s untitled! Although it’s most often referred to as Led Zeppelin IV

25. Ariana Grande started her career at age 15 in what Broadway musical?

26. Who is the youngest person to ever win a Grammy Award for Album of the Year?

Answer: Billie Eilish (she was 18)

27. Who released the song "Uptown Funk," which, in 2015, spent 14 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart?

Answer: Mark Ronson — the song features Bruno Mars but was the lead single from Ronson’s fourth studio album

28. What was the first song written by Olivia Rodrigo to enter the Billboard Hot 100?

Answer: “All I Want” — Rodrigo wrote it for High School Musical: The Musical: The Series , and it entered the Billboard Hot 100 in January 2020

29. How many of the 10 top-selling albums of 2023 were Taylor Swift albums?

30. Who is the first Black woman with a sole songwriting credit on a No. 1 country hit?

Answer: Tracy Chapman, via Luke Combs’ cover of her hit song “Fast Car”

31. Who won the 2024 Grammy for Record of the Year?

Answer: Miley Cyrus for “Flowers”

32. How many solo albums has Lauryn Hill, who first rose to fame as part of hip-hop trio The Fugees, put out?

Answer: One – despite the impact of her debut solo album, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” Hill has not released another solo work

33. What’s the name of the influential punk band formed by Kathleen Hanna in the early 1990s?

Answer: Bikini Kill

34. Who are the three members of indie supergroup boygenius, a band that’s been called “the Beatles for tortured bisexuals”?

Answer: Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus

35. What are the first names of all five members of the Backstreet Boys?

Answer: Nick, AJ, Brian, Kevin, and Howie

1. What movie is the Oscar-nominated song “Journey to the Past” from?

Answer: Anastasia

2. Who plays the Fairy Godmother in the 1997 version of Cinderella , starring Brandy?

Answer: Whitney Houston

3. How many children are in the Von Trapp family in The Sound of Music ?

4. What is the highest-grossing movie of all time?

Answer: Avatar

5. What specific shade does Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly dedicate a monologue to in The Devil Wears Prada ?

Answer: Cerulean

6. What famous documentary depicts New York City’s ballroom scene at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the mid-to-late 1980s?

Answer: Paris is Burning

7. What was the first feature-length animated movie ever released?

Answer: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

8. What is the name of the character played perfectly by Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park and significantly less perfectly by Goldblum in The Lost World: Jurassic Park ?

Answer: Ian Malcolm

9. What’s the name of the iconic dance that starts with a “jump to the left” in The Rocky Horror Picture Show ?

Answer: The Time Warp

10. In what fictional town is Jaws set?

Answer: Amity Island

11. What musical group is the movie Dreamgirls purportedly based on?

Answer: Although the movie is a fictional blend of multiple Motown female-led singing groups, it’s thought to draw the most from the Supremes

12. In Titanic , where is Jack Dawson from?

Answer: Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin

13. What does the movie rating “R” stand for?

Answer: Restricted

14. What movie is Alan Rickman’s first film credit?

Answer: Die Hard

15. The costume designer for Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion also did the costumes for what other iconic 90s-fashion movie?

Answer: Clueless

16. Who is the only Disney princess to have been inspired by a real person?

Answer: Pocahontas — although given Disney’s historical inaccuracies , let’s go ahead and call this one capital-L Loosely inspired

17. How many suns does the planet Tatooine, Luke’s home, have in Star Wars ?

Answer: Two

18. What was the first — and still only — horror movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture?

Answer: Silence of the Lambs

19. What movie was the first non-English film to win the Oscar for Best Picture?

Answer: Parasite

20. What is the name of the hotel in Psycho ?

Answer: The Bates Motel

21. How many times has the movie A Star is Born been remade?

Answer: Four times

22. Why is Ally Sheedy’s character in detention in The Breakfast Club ?

Answer: She “didn’t have anything better to do”

23. Who was the first Black actress to win an Oscar?

Answer: Hattie McDaniel, who won Best Supporting Actress in 1940 for her role in Gone With the Wind

24. What three movies share the title for winner of the most Oscars?

Answer: The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King , Ben-Hur , Titanic

25. What is the name of Tom Cruise’s character in the Mission Impossible series?

Answer: Ethan Hunt

26. What iconic Old Hollywood actress is famous for saying "when I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better”?

Answer: Mae West

27. What 2000s band plays a central role in the Mary Kate and Ashley movie New York Minute ?

Answer: Simple Plan

28. What does actor Barry Keoghan dance to at the end of Saltburn , giving the song a major second life two decades after its initial release?

Answer: “Murder on the Dancefloor” by Sophie Ellis-Bextor

29. What is the name of the fictional African nation depicted in the Marvel movie Black Panther ?

Answer: Wakanda

30. What 2011 movie features Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as love interests and a dance move pulled straight out of Dirty Dancing ?

Answer: Crazy, Stupid, Love

31. What is the name of the character Michael Cera plays in the 2023 Barbie movie?

Answer: Allan

32. In the The Hunger Games , what is the name of the fictional nation where the story takes place?

Answer: Panem

33. Following The Joy Luck Club in 1993, what was the next major Hollywood feature film to star a predominantly Asian cast?

Answer: Crazy Rich Asians in 2018 — that’s 25 years after The Joy Luck Club

34. What 2019 heartfelt teen buddy-comedy movie was directed, in her directorial debut, by Olivia Wilde?

Answer: Booksmart

35. Where does Lizzie McGuire travel to in the Lizzie McGuire Movie for her junior high graduation class trip?

Answer: Rome, and real talk, what group of 14-year-olds whose parents aren’t in the 1% get to go to Italy for graduating 8th grade?

36. What is the name of the rock camp that Demi Lovato’s Mitchie Torres and Joe Jonas’ Shane Gray attend in the classic Disney Channel Original Movie Camp Rock ?

Answer: Camp Rock (sorry-not-sorry for the trick trivia question!)

37. What’s the last name of the three witch sisters in the classic Halloween movie Hocus Pocus ?

Answer: Sanderson

38. What song do Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and Bette Midler iconically dance to at the end of The First Wives Club ?

Answer: “You Don’t Own Me” by Lesley Gore

39. What does the dad of Robin Williams’ Alan Parrish do for a living in Jumanji ?

Answer: He owns a shoe factory

40. What’s the name of Andie (Molly Ringwald)’s best friend in Pretty in Pink ?

Answer: Duckie

41. What does Cady come to the Halloween party dressed up as in Mean Girls ?

Answer: Any variation of “Frankenstein’s bride,” “zombie bride,” or “scary bride” works!

42. What Shakespeare play is 10 Things I Hate About You loosely based on?

Answer: The Taming of the Shrew

43. What’s the name of the kind, caring teacher in Matilda ?

Answer: Miss Honey

44. Who wins the famous “I’ll play you for your heart” basketball game at the end of Love & Basketball ?

Answer: Monica

45. What’s the name of the magical land Tia and Tamara Mowry hail from in Twitches ?

Answer: Coventry

46. What was the first-ever Mary Kate and Ashley movie?

Answer: To Grandma’s House We Go (1992), a made-for-TV movie — their first feature film was It Takes Two (1995)

47. Who does Sarah Michelle Gellar play in the 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie?

Answer: No one — the movie came out five years before the TV show and, though it’s also written by Joss Whedon, is otherwise a totally unrelated production

48. What kind of blood is Carrie covered in after being crowned prom queen in the movie Carrie ?

Answer: Pig’s blood

49. How many letters did Lara Jean write in the breakout-hit Netflix series To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before ?

50. Out of a list of dozens of rules, what’s rule No. 1 for surviving the zombie apocalypse in the movie Zombieland ?

Answer: Cardio (the more famous “double tap” is rule No. 2)

By Kaitlyn McNab

By Nadra Nittle, The 19th

By Aiyana Ishmael

More From Forbes

15 offbeat interview questions candidates should prepare to answer.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

For job applicants, the interview process offers a vital opportunity to showcase their professional skills and suitability for a company. As such, candidates should put their best foot forward by preparing for potential interview questions.

While most job seekers have a prepared answer for standard or commonly asked questions, they may need clarification when presented with more offbeat lines of questioning. To help, the members of Forbes Human Resources Council share some unique interview questions that could come up and why it's important to have a solid response ready.

1. 'How do you de-stress?'

“What do you do to manage stress or de-stress?” There's no wrong or right answer, but it allows an opportunity for candidates to share what activities they enjoy, and also to incorporate the importance of well-being. This has been a top priority for organizations these past four years and will continue to be included as a benefit in future-forward organizations. - Teedra Bernard , TransUnion

2. 'What gives you energy?'

I ask candidates, "What gives you energy and what drains you in your current role?" The answer gives me insight into the tasks or goals of their current job they enjoy, or have an affinity for, as well as reveals their least favorite tasks or job responsibilities. If their "drainers" make up more than 25% of the job I am considering them for, they probably are not a good fit for the role. - Anne McCafferty , Hale Trailer, Brake & Wheel

3. 'When did you last acquire a new skill?'

"Tell me about the last time you acquired a new skill and how you applied it." With nearly 25% of jobs being set to be disrupted in the next five years, according to the World Economic Forum's latest "Future of Jobs" report , learning agility, the motivation and method to acquire new skills at pace is critical to maintaining relevance and increasing employability. - Catalina Schveninger , Matara Consulting

Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Of 2024

Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024, 4. 'how has a setback shaped your growth'.

"Can you share an example of a challenging experience or setback you've faced and how it shaped your professional growth?" It seems like a standard interview question, but it's important because it focuses on assessing qualities like resilience, grit and a growth mindset over technical skills, and allows employers to gauge how candidates handle adversity and learn from it. - Tia Smith , Cognizant

5. 'What did you learn from failure?'

"Talk to me about a time you have failed. What did you learn from it?" With the rise of AI and technology across all fields, organizations are looking for individuals willing to innovate and learn. With trying new things, ideas and technologies, the chance of failure also exists. Companies are looking for individuals willing to learn, fail, innovate and succeed. - Amee Parekh , Stello Technologies

Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify?

6. 'How do you learn new systems?'

"What systems and/or technology have you used, and what's one thing you do to hold yourself accountable to learning a new system? Please provide an example." As technology evolves and alternative technologies emerge, it's important that candidates not only have experience using multiple systems but that they've had to learn and adapt to new systems within an existing organization. - Jenna Hinrichsen , Advanced RPO

7. 'Are you willing to work in person?'

One question every candidate should be ready to answer, especially for a remote job, is, "Would you be willing to shift to an on-site or hybrid role if your employer required you to do so?” This question establishes expectations upfront for possible location-related situations and is a timely topic being addressed in the hiring and recruitment industries right now, with varying opinions. - Laura Spawn , Virtual Vocations, Inc.

8. 'What don't you want here?'

Candidates are also screening us, so a good question is, "What is something that you wouldn't like to find here?" Not only will you know if they heard what you were saying or if they researched about your company, but you also could understand what the person values the most (leadership, communication, benefits, training, development and so on). You can know if it's a proper fit. - Marcela Pizzi , Atlas Renewable Energy

9. 'How are you using AI currently?'

"How are you using AI?" Being ready to discuss your experience and views on AI signals that you're knowledgeable about this emerging field and its impacts on the future of work. It also shows your technology fluency and that you can apply AI to solve problems and increase productivity. This "AI readiness" question cuts to the chase in assessing a candidate's technology IQ and literacy. - Nicole Smartt Serres , Smartt Enterprises

10. 'How would you use AI in this role?'

"How would you use AI to bring more efficiency to this job?" This question would get both at how deeply the candidate understands the role and responsibilities and also how familiar they are with the uses of AI to be able to think about some practical ways they could apply it for their job. - Sanja Licina , QuestionPro

11. 'How do you handle ambiguity?'

“How do you handle ambiguity?” Change is a cornerstone of the 2024 job market, so find out how candidates will complete tasks, even with limited information or experience. Do they struggle to deal with change or can they pivot as new challenges arise? Adaptability is an essential soft skill. - Ursula Mead , InHerSight

12. 'What concerns did you have about the job?'

"What specific concern (from research) gave you pause about our company, and how did you overcome it?" The benefits: 1. It's engaging and introspective, and prompts reflection and honest dialogue, 2. It uncovers potential concerns and shows the candidate's ability to research and address them, 3. It gauges resilience and problem-solving and demonstrates the ability to overcome doubts. - Michael D. Brown , Global Recruiters of Buckhead

13. 'How do you fit into our culture?'

“How do you see yourself fitting into our organizational culture?” Recruiters are increasingly recognizing the importance of hiring candidates who align with their employer’s mission, values and culture. Any job candidate should be prepared to talk about how they would fit into the organization’s culture and how they would contribute. - Niki Jorgensen , Insperity

14. 'How do you start your day?'

One question that I've heard hiring managers use is "Tell me about how you start your day." It can catch candidates off guard. What they are looking for is whether you are intentional and structured about your time. Talking about spending time planning your day, listening to educational podcasts, reading, meditating, exercising and so on are all great responses and tell a lot about a person. - Hazel Kassu , Sudduth Search

15. 'How did you adapt to tech evolution?'

"How did you adapt to a rapidly evolving technology environment?" The question probes the candidate's adaptability, learning agility and innovation skills. - Britton Bloch , Navy Federal

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

Waiting for answer This question has not been answered yet. You can hire a professional tutor to get the answer.

This examination requires students to respond to 3 questions in an essay format. Question 1 - Describe three ways that AI can transform clinical care. Your answer must include specific examples with c

This examination requires students to respond to 3 questions in an essay format.

Question 1 - Describe three ways that AI can transform clinical care. Your answer must include specific examples with citations.

Question 2 – Describe three regulatory considerations related to artificial intelligence for healthcare that were described in module three and how they could impact adoption of AI.

Question 3 - Describe two barriers to the successful implementation AI healthcare solutions and steps a healthcare manager can take to address them that were described in module 4.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/fenomhcgbtqrcl1/MODULE+2+Challenges+to+Implementing+AI+and+Role+of+Leadership+11.6.2023+(2).pptx/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/e3ym7tdaxbterlg/MODULE_2_Artificial_Intelligence_and_Machine_Learning_and_their_applications_in_clinical_operations__11.7.2023_%25281%2529.pptx/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/00d11ce2qitolyk/MODULE_3_AI_Healthcare_Operations_Operational_Infrastructure_11.6.pptx/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/mvzu0azwsdwyg6f/Legal_implications_of_AI_revised.docx/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/fonrrk0no71rnay/Module_3_REGULATORY_CONSIDERATIONS_ON_ARTIFICIAL_INTELLIGENCE_FOR_HEALTH_11.9_%25281%2529.pptx/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/nlepy430jo1p75h/MODULE_4_ARTIFICIAL_INTELLIGENCE_PROJECTS_IN_HEALTHCARE_11.22_X.pptx/file

Please only use the powerpoints for the info because 2 and 3 are defitnealy in here 

• Each answer must be a minimum of 10 complete,
• Number the answer - do not repeat the question.
• Free of grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors
• Citation of fact and reference page according to APA7th ed

GET YOUR EXPERT ANSWER ON STUDYDADDY

Post your own question and get a custom answer

• Q: As a middle manager, you have already recommended an innovation option (incremental or discontinuous) to the organization from the course scenario. However, one of the organization’s key luxury-market
• Q: Prepare a one-two page narrative style paper to discuss the peer reviewed journal article incorporating your answers to each template prompt (found in the assignment prompt). Your completed template s
• Q: Help to explain how to get to the answer and the steps involved.
• Q: Journal Article Activity Start Assignment Activity Form: https://www.mediafire.com/file/mw4ds14goqbhg40/apa-style-research-activity.pdf/file See the instructions within the module for the Research Art
• Q: Using the South University Online Library or the Internet, research any one element. On the basis of your research, provide: An analysis of the properties of the neutral atom and its most common ion.A
• Q: case study
• Q: supply chain management.

Have a similar question?

Continue to edit or attach image(s).

• SOAP Note 2 SOAP_Note Instructions and Example... 14 minutes ago
• Marketing Plan: Part II In this unit, you will... 33 minutes ago
• For this journal, you will reflect on what you... 55 minutes ago
• 1. Demonstrated knowledge & understanding of a... 1 hour ago
• Discuss at least one of the differences between... 1 hour ago

Applied Sciences

Architecture and Design

Art & Design

Article Writing

Business & Finance

Communications

Computer Science

Engineering

Environmental Science

Foreign Languages

Health & Medical

HR Management

Information Systems

Numerical Analysis

Political Science

Precalculus

Programming

Social Science