The dissertation is the flagship exercise in the teaching of the humanities. It is a kind of course comprehension test , write my essay which will also test your thinking skills, your ability to argue and your general knowledge. It is above all a very codified exercise , the rules of which must be respected if you want to succeed. Knowing your lessons or thinking quickly will not be enough!
The goal of the essay is to encourage you to structure a coherent, written and argued reflection that responds to a problem, according to predefined rules .
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Structure => because it is necessary to follow a clear and progressive division
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Coherent => because it is necessary that all the parts answer the problem.
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Written => because it is by writing that one learns to write, whether stylistically, argumentatively or orthographically.
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Argued => because each idea must be developed, supported by an example, proven by demonstration, to convince the reader.
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Problem => because it is necessary to release an angle from the given subject.
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Predefined rules => because it is an academic exercise, and for everyone to be assessable on the same criteria, everyone must respect them. In sports, one could not rate a participant playing soccer in the middle of a basketball tournament. Here, it is identical, premium essay it is necessary to follow the rules implied by the term of “dissertation”.
We will therefore see all these essential aspects of the essay by following the chronology of a test.
Get organized
You sit in the exam room to complete your essay. First, get organized! Think about the time you have to do it, and set yourself a time allocation, which you will write down immediately in the draft. This is the best way not to get overwhelmed.
For the entrance exam to Sciences Po, you must complete your composition at around 2h30. See you soon on the sheet “Organizing your work during a time-limited event” for more information.
How to decrypt?
Now that you know the time you are going to devote to each stage of the test, the subject must be tackled. A subject can be full of things: a question, a quote, an affirmation … The important thing is to dissect it to understand the issues implied by this subject and to draw from it a tension, a question, to which your essay will respond.
Why decrypt?
What must be remembered is that a problem is an angle of attack, a particular way of approaching a subject. And it is she who will allow you to prioritize the ideas that come to you, to organize them to respond to them. The subject is not a problem and a problem is not a subject.
A subject is a general formulation, which allows several issues, and which does not necessarily underline a particular problem. Examples:
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Productivity gains and economic growth
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German workers' parties from 1875 to 1933
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What is art? …
If you deal with these subjects without problematizing them, you will probably turn your essay into a catalog, in which you will, for example, present all the German workers' parties or all the art forms that exist. But that is not at all what we are asking you!
The problem then comes into play: starting from a subject, what particular question can you ask yourself to shed light on the proposed theme?
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For the subject of economics “Productivity gains and economic growth”, it is necessary to question the relationship between the two concepts, to derive a question from it, such as “How does productivity stimulate growth and how does growth increase? encourage productivity? ” Or “What are the positive and negative effects of productivity on growth?”.
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For the historical subject “The German Workers' Parties from 1875 to 1933”, we must try to understand the tension that makes this subject interesting. It can be formulated by questioning the relationship between parties and unions: “How are German parties and unions structured?” Or by focusing on the ideological tension: “ What sets reformists against revolutionaries?” Or again on the capacity of the workers ‘movement to come together during this period: “How did the workers' movement go from unity to division?”.
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For the subject of philosophy, “What is art?”, the question is too vast and too general to be a problem. It is , therefore, necessary to orient the treatment that you are going to make of the subject by asking yourself “How is art distinguished from craftsmanship?”, which will make you reflect on the transcendent, symbolic aspect of art, or by asking yourself, for example, on the relationship between art and the beautiful “Is art only the expression of the beautiful? ”.
Structure your plan
How to do it concretely?
Did you dissect the subject well? Did you get a problem? Now put your ideas lose, in the draft. Write down everything that goes through your mind that seems related to the problem, try to mobilize your knowledge of courses that could be of use to you, think of examples that seem relevant to you.
For example, you can take a sheet horizontally and draw 3 columns: the one on the left will allow you to put all your ideas, then in the middle one you will classify your ideas in 2, 3 or 4 parts, and in front of each idea in the last column, you will include 1 or 2 examples supporting each idea.
Otherwise, you can also take one or more sheets to put down your ideas (use only the fronts, so as not to forget anything), buy essay cheap then reclassify everything and enrich with examples on another.
Write a dissertation: the problem and the plan
