Random Essay Topic Generator: 396 Prompts by Type and Level
Compare the growth of two cities founded for different reasons, such as a port and a capital.Way in: How does the founding purpose still show in the street plan?Compare and contrastCollege
Random Essay Topic Generator: 396 Prompts by Type and Level: how it works
This random essay topic generator draws one prompt from 396 each time you press New essay topic, with a way in under it: a question to ask yourself first. Two chip rows, Essay type and Level, combine: Argumentative plus College draws from 33 prompts. The page writes no essay.
Six chips, four kinds of essay
The Purdue Online Writing Lab names four essay genres: narrative, descriptive, expository and argumentative. It lists comparison and contrast and cause and effect as ways to write an expository essay, so those two chips are classroom sub-types, not extra genres. With the Argumentative chip pressed, this is a random argumentative essay topic generator holding 66 questions. This page is not affiliated with or endorsed by Purdue University or the Purdue Online Writing Lab.
What the way in does
The prompt says what to write about; the way in says where to look first. Under "Describe a pair of shoes you have worn out." it asks where the wear is and what that says about how you move. A narrative has to make a point and a description works through the senses, so those way-ins ask what changed or what you noticed.
Tips
Set the count to 3 and take the prompt you can already picture a second paragraph for.
Set both chip rows and copy the address. The part after # keeps them, so a class opens the same set-up. Count 10 plus Print makes a sheet.
For timed writing, start the clock at 10, 25, 40 or 60 minutes; the prompt stays at zero. Mark it Written and it leaves the draw on this device.
Questions and answers
Is the College chip for application essays?
No. As a random college essay topic generator, this page covers essays set in coursework: a literacy narrative for first-year writing, two translations compared, the causes of a financial bubble. None of the 198 college prompts is an admissions or scholarship question, and the page gives no advice on applications.
Does this page write the essay?
No. It gives a prompt and a question to start from: no outline, no sample paragraph, no generated text. Choosing a claim, finding evidence and giving the other side a fair paragraph stay with you. For evidence, the random fact generator draws facts with the name of their source.
Which topics did you leave out?
Anything that asks a student to write about trauma, health or family money, because a drawn prompt may be read aloud. Nothing takes a party's side or names a company, show or living person. Motions for speaking are on the debate topic page, and none of its 300 is repeated here. Story starters and journal prompts are left out: they are not essays.
Narrate a decision you made with too little information.Way in: What did you know, what did you guess, and what did you ignore?
Narrate a time a mentor let you make a mistake on purpose.Way in: When did you realize they had seen it coming?
Narrate a time you got lost and found your way back.Way in: When did you first admit to yourself that you were lost?
Recount a commute or walk you repeated so often that it began to teach you things.Way in: What did you see on the fiftieth trip that you missed on the first?
Recount a day when a plan fell apart and something better took its place.Way in: At what moment did you stop trying to rescue the plan?
Recount a journey where getting there mattered more than arriving.Way in: Which hour of the trip would you keep if you could keep only one?
Recount a long task you finished only by breaking it into pieces.Way in: What was the smallest piece, and why did you start there?
Recount a storm, blackout or snow day that changed the rules at home for a while.Way in: What did people do that they never do on a normal day?
Recount your first week living or studying somewhere with unfamiliar rules.Way in: Which unwritten rule did you break first?
Take a reader back to a performance, speech or presentation, starting one minute before it began.Way in: What were your hands doing?
Tell the story of a collaboration that produced something none of you could have made alone.Way in: Whose contribution is invisible in the finished thing?
Tell the story of a conversation with someone much older that changed how you saw their generation.Way in: Which question of yours opened them up?
Tell the story of a disagreement with a friend that ended well.Way in: What did each of you want that the other could not see at first?
Tell the story of a family or neighborhood tradition from the year you first understood it.Way in: What did you think it was for before, and what do you think now?
Tell the story of a group project where you ended up in a role you did not choose.Way in: What did the group need that nobody had signed up for?
Tell the story of a piece of feedback that stung and turned out to be right.Way in: How long was it before you could reread it calmly?
Tell the story of a promise you kept after it had become inconvenient.Way in: Who would have known if you had let it slide?
Tell the story of a time a stranger helped you, or you helped a stranger.Way in: Why did it happen when neither of you expected anything back?
Tell the story of a time you asked for help later than you should have.Way in: What finally made you ask?
Tell the story of a time you changed your major, your plan or your method partway through.Way in: What evidence finally outweighed the effort you had already spent?
Tell the story of a time you disagreed with a grade, a review or a decision and made your case.Way in: What was your best argument, and did it work?
Tell the story of a time you had to apologize and mean it.Way in: What made the words hard to say?
Tell the story of a time you had to cut something you loved from a piece of work.Way in: What did the work gain from the cut?
Tell the story of a time you had to work within a rule you thought was foolish.Way in: Did the rule look any wiser from the inside?
Tell the story of a time you kept practicing after you wanted to quit.Way in: What reason did you give yourself on the worst day?
Tell the story of a time you translated, in any sense, between two groups that did not understand each other.Way in: What got lost however carefully you worked?
Tell the story of an experiment, project or draft that failed, and what the failure showed you.Way in: What would you have concluded if it had worked?
Tell the story of learning a skill that you were bad at for a long time.Way in: Which attempt was the first one that felt different, and why?
Tell the story of learning the vocabulary of a new discipline, workplace or community.Way in: Which word did you misuse before you understood it?
Tell the story of the first time a course reading changed how you saw something ordinary.Way in: What did the ordinary thing look like the next morning?
Tell the story of the first time you were responsible for other people's work.Way in: What did you learn about giving instructions?
Tell the story of the first time you were trusted with something that mattered to someone else.Way in: What exactly was handed over, and what could have gone wrong?
Tell the story of your first day doing real work for someone outside your family.Way in: What did you get wrong before lunch?
Write a literacy narrative: the story of learning to read, write or speak the way one group expected.Way in: Which group was it, and how did you know you were not there yet?
Write about a book you abandoned and later finished.Way in: What had changed, the book or you?
Write about a chore or duty you hated at first and came to take pride in.Way in: When did "I have to" turn into "this is mine"?
Write about a competition, audition or tryout that did not go your way.Way in: What did you do in the first hour afterward?
Write about a job that taught you something no classroom had.Way in: What would a training manual for that lesson leave out?
Write about a moment when a number, chart or statistic changed your mind about something.Way in: What had you believed, and on what evidence?
Write about a moment when you realized you had outgrown something you used to love.Way in: What were you doing when you noticed?
Write about a moment when you realized you were arguing for a position you no longer held.Way in: What were you protecting by carrying on?
Write about a skill you taught yourself without a teacher.Way in: How did you know when you were doing it wrong?
Write about a small rule you broke once and what you learned from what happened next.Way in: Who noticed first, and what did their reaction teach you?
Write about a time a teacher, coach or relative said something you still think about.Way in: Why did that sentence stick when thousands of others did not?
Write about a time you changed your mind about a person after getting to know them.Way in: What was the first small thing that did not fit your first impression?
Write about a time you discovered that an expert you trusted was wrong, and how you found out.Way in: What did you check, and why did you bother?
Write about a time you had to choose between two good things.Way in: What did you give up, and do you still think about it?
Write about a time you had to explain your field of study to someone who thought it was pointless.Way in: Which of their objections was hardest to answer honestly?
Write about a time you had to learn something quickly because other people were counting on you.Way in: What did you skip, and did skipping it matter?
Write about a time you misjudged how hard something would be.Way in: What did you pack, plan or assume that turned out wrong?
Write about a time you stood up for an opinion that nobody around you shared.Way in: What would it have cost you to stay quiet?
Write about a time you were sure of a fact in front of other people and turned out to be wrong.Way in: How long was it before you could laugh about it?
Write about a time you were the least experienced person in the room.Way in: What did you do with your silence?
Write about a time you were the newcomer in a group that already knew each other.Way in: Who spoke to you first, and what did they say?
Write about a time you worked with someone whose methods were the opposite of yours.Way in: What did their way get right that yours missed?
Write about an interview or oral history you conducted, and what surprised you.Way in: Which question had you not planned to ask?
Write about an object you have carried from one home to another.Way in: What would a stranger guess about you from it, and would they be right?
Write about learning to cook, repair or organize something for yourself for the first time.Way in: What did the first failure teach you that instructions had not?
Write about learning to get around your town on your own.Way in: Which route did you learn first, and what was at the end of it?
Write about returning to a place you knew as a child and seeing it with an adult's eyes.Way in: What had shrunk, and what had grown?
Write about something you made with your hands that did not turn out as planned.Way in: Where exactly did the plan and the object part ways?
Write about the day you first went somewhere alone that you had always gone with others.Way in: What did you notice that company had always hidden?
Write about the first book, film or song that you argued about with someone.Way in: What were you really defending?
Write about the first time a primary source disagreed with what you had been taught.Way in: Which did you believe at first, and why?
Write about the first time you taught someone else how to do something.Way in: What did you have to understand better before you could explain it?
Write about the moment a subject stopped being a course you took and became a way of seeing.Way in: What were you looking at when it happened?
Descriptive 66
Describe a body of water you know across the four seasons.Way in: What stays the same in all four?
Describe a border, edge or threshold you cross regularly.Way in: How do people behave differently on each side?
Describe a bridge, tower or large building near you from directly beneath it.Way in: How does it change your sense of your own size?
Describe a building on your campus as evidence of what its builders valued.Way in: What did they spend money on, and where did they save it?
Describe a bus, train or car ride you take often, from one fixed seat.Way in: What do you pass every time and have never once visited?
Describe a checkout line or waiting room as a small society with its own rules.Way in: What happens to someone who breaks them?
Describe a city square, station or terminal as a system of flows.Way in: Where do the flows cross, and what happens there?
Describe a court, museum, archive or other formal space through the behavior it asks of visitors.Way in: How does the building tell you to lower your voice?
Describe a familiar object as if for an archaeologist who will find it in a thousand years.Way in: What would they get wrong about its use?
Describe a garden, park or patch of wild ground through one full minute of watching.Way in: What moved?
Describe a holiday morning or festival day in your home before anyone speaks.Way in: What is already prepared, and who prepared it?
Describe a laboratory, studio, workshop or kitchen in the moment before work begins.Way in: What has been laid out, and in what order?
Describe a landscape you know, first as a painter would see it and then as a geologist would.Way in: Which details does each observer ignore?
Describe a lecture hall or seminar room from the seat you never choose.Way in: Who sits there by choice, and what do they see?
Describe a library or study hall through the small noises that fill it.Way in: Who breaks the silence, and how do the others respond?
Describe a local shop, stall or market from the doorway inward.Way in: What does the person behind the counter do between customers?
Describe a machine you use daily without understanding it.Way in: Where exactly does your ability to explain it stop?
Describe a map you know well as an argument about what matters.Way in: What did the mapmaker leave off?
Describe a market or shop floor through the exchanges of a single minute.Way in: What passes between people besides goods and money?
Describe a meal as a set of decisions made by people you will never meet.Way in: How far did the furthest ingredient travel?
Describe a meal that means one particular season to you.Way in: Which smell arrives first?
Describe a neighborhood through what is posted on its walls, poles and windows.Way in: Who is speaking to whom in those notices?
Describe a pair of shoes you have worn out.Way in: Where is the wear, and what does it say about how you move?
Describe a person at work whose job most people never notice.Way in: Which of their skills would take you a year to learn?
Describe a person you know well through their hands and what they do with them.Way in: What are those hands doing when the person is thinking?
Describe a photograph taken before you were born, as a historian would read it.Way in: What in the frame was ordinary then and is strange now?
Describe a photograph you know well that you are not in.Way in: What is just outside the frame?
Describe a piece of clothing as a record of labor, materials and design.Way in: What does the label tell you, and what does it leave out?
Describe a piece of music without using any technical terms.Way in: What does it do to your sense of time?
Describe a place in your town at the hour when it is emptiest.Way in: What has been left behind that shows people were there?
Describe a place that scared you when you were small and does not now.Way in: Which detail did the fear grow from?
Describe a place where you regularly have to wait.Way in: What do people do with their eyes while they wait there?
Describe a playground, court or field from the point of view of someone standing at its edge.Way in: Who is at the center, and who is at the edge with you?
Describe a ritual of your household, team or workplace to an outsider who must take part tomorrow.Way in: What would embarrass them if nobody warned them?
Describe a room after a celebration has ended.Way in: Which object is furthest from where it belongs?
Describe a specimen, sample, artifact or document you have handled in a course.Way in: What did holding it tell you that a picture would not?
Describe a teacher's classroom without naming the subject, so that a reader can guess it.Way in: Which three objects give the subject away?
Describe a tool of your discipline to someone who has never held one.Way in: What does it let you perceive that your senses cannot?
Describe a tool or instrument you use well.Way in: What does it feel like at the moment it is working properly?
Describe a workplace you know through its sounds alone.Way in: Which sound means trouble to the people who work there?
Describe an abandoned or disused place and what it is slowly becoming.Way in: What moved in after the people moved out?
Describe an animal you have watched closely for more than a few minutes.Way in: What did it do when it seemed to think nothing was watching?
Describe an artwork you have seen in person, including the room and the other visitors.Way in: How did the setting change what you saw?
Describe silence in a place that is usually loud.Way in: What can you hear now that the noise was covering?
Describe the feeling of being underwater and of coming up for air.Way in: What happens to sound?
Describe the feeling of waiting for a result without naming the feeling.Way in: What do you do with your hands, your phone or the clock?
Describe the inside of a bag you carry every day.Way in: What has been in there longest, and why is it still there?
Describe the kitchen of someone who cooks for you, starting with every sense except sight.Way in: What would you know about the cook if you walked in blindfolded?
Describe the night sky, or the lack of one, from where you live.Way in: What is the brightest thing up there, and is it natural?
Describe the oldest and the newest parts of your town or campus in one walk between them.Way in: Where exactly does one become the other?
Describe the oldest thing in your home.Way in: Who handled it before you, and what for?
Describe the place where you do homework as evidence of how you work.Way in: What would a detective conclude?
Describe the room where you do your best thinking, and test whether the room deserves the credit.Way in: What is missing from that room that is present everywhere else?
Describe the sound of a language or accent you often hear and do not speak.Way in: What does it remind you of that is not a language?
Describe the texture of a day spent entirely offline, or entirely on screens.Way in: How did the afternoon feel different from the morning?
Describe the view from a window you have looked through hundreds of times.Way in: What in the view has changed since you first looked?
Describe the weather on a day when it changed everyone's plans.Way in: How did you first know: by sight, by sound or by smell?
Describe your school hallway in the five minutes after the last bell.Way in: What is the first sound to stop?
Describe your street at night as heard from your bed.Way in: Which sound tells you what time it is?
Let a reader feel the timing of a process you have watched an expert perform.Way in: Where does the expert slow down?
Put a reader inside the moment just before a game, race or match begins.Way in: Where does everyone look?
Show a reader a sunrise or sunset without using the name of any color.Way in: What else changes besides the light?
Show one street at two times of day as if it were two different streets.Way in: Who owns it at each hour?
Stand still in the middle of a crowded place and describe what moves around you.Way in: What patterns appear in how people pass you?
Take a reader along a walk you know by heart, in the order your feet meet it.Way in: Where does the ground change under you?
Take a reader through the experience of reading a difficult text, moment by moment.Way in: What do you do at the sentence where you first get lost?
Expository 66
Define "a good teacher" by describing what one does in the first five minutes of class.Way in: What would a visitor see, not just feel?
Define "a primary source" for your discipline, with two examples and one borderline case.Way in: What makes the borderline case hard to place?
Define "courage" using one example from history and one from ordinary life.Way in: What do the two examples share besides the word?
Define "fair play" using three examples from a sport or game you know.Way in: Which example sits right on the line?
Define "home" without using the words house, family or place.Way in: What do you miss first when you are away?
Define "opportunity cost" through three decisions you made this week.Way in: What was the best thing you did not do?
Define "sustainability" so that the definition could settle an actual dispute.Way in: What would count as failing your definition?
Explain a core concept from your major to a first-year student outside it, in under a thousand words.Way in: Which everyday example carries the idea without breaking it?
Explain how a bill becomes a law in your country, for a reader who is ten years old.Way in: Which step would a ten-year-old find least fair?
Explain how a bridge you have crossed holds up its load.Way in: Where does the weight go?
Explain how a building stays cool or warm without machines, using one traditional design.Way in: What does the design do with air, shade or mass?
Explain how a citation system works and what problem it solves.Way in: What would go wrong in a field without one?
Explain how a city decides where a new road, school or park will go.Way in: Who gets a say, and at what stage?
Explain how a language changes over a century, using one word, sound or rule as your case.Way in: Who noticed the change first, and who complained?
Explain how a museum or archive decides what to keep.Way in: What gets thrown away, and who decides?
Explain how a musical instrument you know makes its sound.Way in: What is vibrating, and what makes it louder?
Explain how a price is set in a market you have observed, from a street stall to an online auction.Way in: Who moves first, the buyer or the seller?
Explain how a recipe you know works: not only what to do, but why each step matters.Way in: What happens if you skip the step that seems pointless?
Explain how a rumor spreads through a school, step by step.Way in: What makes one rumor travel and another die?
Explain how a school club, team or band is organized and why it runs that way.Way in: Who makes the decisions, and how did they get that job?
Explain how a sound is turned into a digital file and back again.Way in: What is lost on the way, and can you hear it?
Explain how a standard method in your field produces knowledge, and what it cannot tell you.Way in: What kind of question is the method blind to?
Explain how a standard, such as a paper size, a plug or a time zone, came to be agreed.Way in: Who lost out when the standard was set?
Explain how a supply chain brings one ordinary product to your local store.Way in: How many borders did it cross?
Explain how a thermostat keeps a room at one temperature.Way in: What does it measure, and what does it switch?
Explain how a tradition in your culture or region is carried out, for a visitor arriving tomorrow.Way in: What should they bring, wear or avoid?
Explain how a translation is made, using one sentence that resists translation.Way in: What must the translator give up?
Explain how an ecosystem you have visited cycles one nutrient or resource.Way in: Where does the cycle leak?
Explain how an election is run in your town, from registration to the count.Way in: Who are the people doing each job on the day?
Explain how an electrical grid balances supply and demand from minute to minute.Way in: What happens when a large plant drops out suddenly?
Explain how compound interest works and why the starting date matters so much.Way in: What does the curve look like in year five and in year forty?
Explain how historians date an undated document or object.Way in: Which clues are inside the thing, and which are outside it?
Explain how inflation is measured and what the measure leaves out.Way in: Whose shopping basket is it?
Explain how news reaches you by tracing one story from the event to your screen.Way in: How many people handled it on the way?
Explain how one position in a team sport fits into the whole team's plan.Way in: What breaks when that player is out of place?
Explain how one word you use every day came to mean what it means.Way in: Where can you look up the history of a word?
Explain how peer review works and where it can fail.Way in: Who checks the checkers?
Explain how recycling works where you live and where the sorted material goes.Way in: Which item do people most often put in the wrong bin?
Explain how the budget of a club, lab or small organization is built and approved.Way in: Which line is always underestimated?
Explain how the highest court in your country decides which cases it will hear.Way in: What happens to the cases it turns away?
Explain how the scientific name of a species is chosen and what it encodes.Way in: What does each of the two parts of the name tell you?
Explain how to give a useful critique of a classmate's writing.Way in: What is the difference between "I liked it" and help?
Explain how to read a weather forecast, including what a 40 percent chance of rain means.Way in: What do most people think that number means?
Explain how to tell a reliable source from an unreliable one online.Way in: Which three things do you check before you trust a page?
Explain how your school day is scheduled and who decides it.Way in: Which constraint shapes the schedule most?
Explain how your town or city gets its drinking water, from source to tap.Way in: Where could you find out, and which step surprises you?
Explain the "tragedy of the commons" and test it against one real shared resource.Way in: Did the users in your case find a way around it?
Explain the difference between a theory, a law and a hypothesis as scientists use the words.Way in: Why does "just a theory" misread the word?
Explain the difference between correlation and causation using an example you found in the news.Way in: What third factor could explain both?
Explain the job of someone in your community whose work most people misunderstand.Way in: What do people assume, and what is the job really?
Explain the rules of a game you love to someone who has never seen it played.Way in: Which rule do beginners always misunderstand?
Explain the seasons to someone who thinks summer comes when Earth is closest to the Sun.Way in: If that were true, what would the two hemispheres share?
Explain what "the canon" means in literature, music or art, and how a work enters it.Way in: Who has the power to add or remove a work?
Explain what a controlled experiment controls, using one well-known study as your example.Way in: What would the result mean without the control group?
Explain what a map's scale and legend tell you, then plan a walking route with them.Way in: How many of your steps is one inch or one centimeter on the map?
Explain what a public library does besides lend books.Way in: Who is using it on a weekday morning?
Explain what makes a joke work, using one joke as your example.Way in: What does the listener have to know already?
Explain what the margin of error in a poll means, for a reader who distrusts polls.Way in: What does the margin not cover?
Explain why a low gear makes a hill easier to climb on a bicycle.Way in: What are you trading for the ease?
Explain why leap years exist.Way in: What would go wrong with the calendar if we dropped them?
Explain why the Moon seems to change shape over a month.Way in: Where is the Sun in each picture?
Give a reader a method for learning a list of facts so that it is still there in a month.Way in: What do you do on day two, day seven and day thirty?
Give an account of how a jury, panel or committee reaches a decision, and what can bias it.Way in: Who speaks first, and does it matter?
Walk a reader through planning a day trip for four people on a fixed budget.Way in: What do you decide first: where, when or how much?
Walk a reader who has never programmed through how an algorithm sorts a list.Way in: How would you sort a shuffled deck of cards by hand?
Why must every flat map distort the Earth? Explain, using two projections as examples.Way in: What can you not flatten without tearing or stretching it?
Argumentative 66
Are handwritten class notes better for learning than typed ones? Argue from evidence and experience.Way in: What do you do differently when you cannot write fast enough to copy everything?
Are movie theaters worth saving now that films can be streamed at home? Argue your position.Way in: What does a shared dark room add to a film?
Are robots a better investment than astronauts for exploring space? Argue from costs and returns.Way in: What can a person do on site that a machine cannot yet do?
Do field trips earn the class time they cost? Argue with examples from your own schooling.Way in: What do you remember from a trip, and what from the lessons that week?
Do laptops belong in lecture halls? Argue from evidence.Way in: Whose attention is affected besides the owner's?
Do rich countries still need economic growth? Argue your position with evidence.Way in: What would a good decade without growth look like?
Does extra credit belong in a fair grading system? Argue your position.Way in: Does it measure learning or persistence?
Does reading fiction make people more understanding of others? Argue your view with evidence.Way in: How could anyone test that claim?
Does required summer reading do more good than harm? Argue with examples.Way in: What happens to a book when it becomes homework?
Is a crowd-edited online encyclopedia an acceptable source in academic work? Argue your view.Way in: What do you check before you trust any reference work?
Is a faithful replica good enough for a museum when the original is fragile? Make the case.Way in: What does a visitor come for: the object or the information?
Is a gap year between high school and further study a wise choice? Argue your view with examples.Way in: What would the year need to contain to be worth it?
Is a grade penalty for late work fair? Take a side and defend it.Way in: What is a deadline meant to teach?
Is a single common language good for science? Argue your position.Way in: Who pays the cost of a single language, and who collects the benefit?
Is it better for a young athlete to specialize in one sport early or to play several? Argue from evidence.Way in: What do late starters gain that early specialists miss?
Is it fair to grade class participation? Argue for or against.Way in: Who is helped and who is hurt when talk is graded?
Is memorizing poems, dates or formulas still worth a student's time? Take a position.Way in: What can you do with knowledge in your head that you cannot do with a search?
Is public art a fair use of a city budget? Argue for or against.Way in: Who decides what goes up, and who lives with it?
Is the essay still the best way to assess students in the humanities? Take a position.Way in: What does writing an essay prove that a test cannot?
Should a coastal town build sea walls or plan a retreat from the shore? Take a side for one real place.Way in: Who pays for the wall, and who pays for the move?
Should a computer programming course count as a foreign language credit? Argue for or against.Way in: What is a language class for?
Should a national statistics office be independent of the government of the day? Defend your view.Way in: What happens to trust when an official number is doubted?
Should a public speaking course be required for graduation? Make your case.Way in: When did you last need to speak well, and were you ready?
Should a second language be required for every university degree? Take a side.Way in: What does struggling in another language teach?
Should a town set a nighttime curfew for teenagers? Argue your position.Way in: What problem is a curfew meant to solve, and does it solve it?
Should a town spend public money to keep its local newspaper alive? Make the case either way.Way in: Who reports on the council meeting if the paper closes?
Should academic journals pay their reviewers? Argue for or against.Way in: Who profits from unpaid review now?
Should architects favor reusing old buildings over constructing new ones? Make the case.Way in: Where is most of the carbon: in running a building or in building it?
Should attendance count toward the grade in a lecture course? Take a position and answer the best objection.Way in: What is a lecture for if the notes are online?
Should calculators be allowed on every math test? Argue for or against.Way in: Which skills fade when the machine does the work, and do they matter?
Should cities pay residents to replace lawns with native plants? Defend a position.Way in: What does a lawn cost in water, time and habitat?
Should college athletes be paid as employees? Defend a position.Way in: Who earns from the games now?
Should dog owners have to pass a short training course? Argue for or against.Way in: What goes wrong now that a course would prevent?
Should electric scooters be allowed on sidewalks? Argue your case.Way in: Who shares that space, and who is most at risk in it?
Should engineering and computing degrees require an ethics course? Make your case.Way in: Which decision in your field cannot be settled by calculation?
Should English classes teach mostly older classics or mostly recent books? Defend one balance.Way in: What should a book do for a reader your age?
Should every bachelor's degree require a thesis or capstone project? Argue your view.Way in: What can a long project show that exams cannot?
Should every student have to learn to swim before leaving school? Argue for or against.Way in: Whose job is it to teach a life skill?
Should every undergraduate be required to take part in research? Make your case.Way in: What does a student learn from a project that might fail?
Should feeding wild animals in public parks be banned? Take a position.Way in: What happens to the animals when the feeding stops?
Should fishing rights be sold as tradable quotas? Defend a position using one fishery.Way in: What happened to small boats where quotas were tried?
Should governments replace gross domestic product as their main measure of progress? Argue your view.Way in: What does it count that you would not, and miss that you would?
Should historic buildings be protected when a town is short of housing? Defend a position.Way in: What does a town lose with an old building that it cannot rebuild?
Should large predators be reintroduced to landscapes where they once lived? Take a position.Way in: Who lives next to the wolves, and who only visits?
Should museums allow visitors to take photographs? Argue your view.Way in: Does a camera help people look, or stop them looking?
Should national elections allow online voting? Argue for or against.Way in: What must a voting system prove, and to whom?
Should old dams be removed to restore rivers? Argue from one real case.Way in: Who depends on the dam, and who depends on the river?
Should peer reviewers sign their reviews? Argue for or against.Way in: What does anonymity protect, and what does it excuse?
Should people have a legal right to repair the devices they own? Take a side.Way in: Who gains when a device cannot be opened?
Should public research money favor basic science over applied projects? Defend a balance.Way in: Which past discovery looked useless when it was made?
Should replication studies count as much as original findings in hiring and promotion? Argue your case.Way in: What happens to a field where nobody checks?
Should students be allowed to skip a grade? Argue for or against.Way in: What does a student gain in speed and lose in company?
Should students be sorted into classes by ability? Take a side and support it with evidence.Way in: What happens to the students placed in the lowest group?
Should students choose their own books for English class? Make your case.Way in: What would the class still have in common?
Should students hold a part-time job during the school year? Take a position and answer the strongest objection.Way in: What does a job teach that school cannot, and what does it cost?
Should teachers grade on a curve? Make your case.Way in: What does a curve reward besides learning?
Should the first year of university be graded pass or fail? Argue for or against.Way in: What do first-year grades measure besides preparation?
Should the p below 0.05 threshold for statistical significance be abandoned? Argue your view.Way in: What would replace it, and would researchers game that too?
Should towns switch off some streetlights late at night to cut light pollution? Defend your view.Way in: Who needs the dark, and who needs the light?
Should universities cap the share of top grades in a course? Take a side.Way in: What is a grade supposed to tell an outsider?
Should universities release recorded lectures to the public for free? Argue your case.Way in: What is a student paying for if the lectures are free?
Should universities replace commercial textbooks with open educational resources? Make your case.Way in: Who writes and updates a free textbook, and why would they?
Should video game design count as an art class? Defend your answer.Way in: What would a student make, and how would it be judged?
When a school budget is cut, should sports or arts lose money first, or neither? Defend a plan.Way in: What would you measure to decide what matters most?
Would classrooms work better if students called teachers by their first names? Take a position.Way in: What work does a title do in a classroom?
Would panels of professional judges decide trials better than juries? Defend your answer.Way in: What does a jury bring that training cannot?
Compare and contrast 66
Compare a character's public self and private self in a play you have studied.Way in: In which scene do the two selves meet?
Compare a first draft of something you wrote with its final version.Way in: What did you cut, and what took its place?
Compare a lecture course with a seminar by how much you retained a semester later.Way in: What did you do with the material in each?
Compare a map and a written itinerary as ways of knowing a route.Way in: What can you do with one that you cannot do with the other?
Compare a meal cooked at home with the same dish bought ready-made.Way in: What are you paying for in each case?
Compare a poem and a song lyric on the same subject.Way in: What can the song rely on that the poem cannot?
Compare a poem on the page with the same poem performed aloud or set to music.Way in: What did the voice add, and what did it decide for you?
Compare a primary source with a textbook account of the same event.Way in: What did the textbook smooth over?
Compare a qualitative and a quantitative study of the same question.Way in: What did each method see that the other could not?
Compare a team sport with an individual sport you have tried.Way in: Where does the pressure come from in each?
Compare a weekday evening of yours with one your parent or guardian spent at your age.Way in: What could you ask them tonight?
Compare a wild animal with its domesticated relative.Way in: What did people breed in, and what did they breed out?
Compare an ancient epic and a modern novel on what makes a hero.Way in: What is the hero allowed to want?
Compare an apprenticeship with a degree as routes into one trade or profession.Way in: What does each route certify?
Compare how a statistician and a storyteller would present the same set of facts.Way in: Which audience does each reach, and what does each risk?
Compare how two cultures you know mark the same life event.Way in: What does each ceremony say the event is for?
Compare how two disciplines you have studied define "evidence".Way in: What would convince one and leave the other unmoved?
Compare how two economic systems handle one good, such as housing, bread or electricity.Way in: Who bears the cost of a shortage in each?
Compare how two generations you know define "a good job".Way in: What was working life like when each definition was formed?
Compare how two news outlets reported the same event on the same day.Way in: Which facts appear in both reports, and which in only one?
Compare how two philosophical or ethical traditions answer one question.Way in: Where do they agree before they part ways?
Compare learning a skill from a video with learning it from a person in the room.Way in: Which mistakes did each teacher catch?
Compare practice with performance, or training with game day, in something you do.Way in: What do you do in one that you would never do in the other?
Compare studying alone with studying in a group for the same test.Way in: What did you learn in each that you could not have learned in the other?
Compare the design of two everyday objects that do the same job.Way in: What did each designer assume about the user?
Compare the first and last works of one artist, composer or author.Way in: What stayed constant under the change?
Compare the first chapter and the last chapter of a novel you have read for school.Way in: What has changed in the narrator's voice?
Compare the founding documents of two countries on one specific power.Way in: Who can say no, and to whom?
Compare the growth of two cities founded for different reasons, such as a port and a capital.Way in: How does the founding purpose still show in the street plan?
Compare the hero and the villain of a story you know well.Way in: What do they both want?
Compare the opening minutes of two films in the same genre.Way in: What does each opening promise the viewer?
Compare the rules of two games that look alike and play very differently.Way in: Which single rule makes the biggest difference?
Compare the way a scientist and a poet might describe the same storm.Way in: What does each description let you do?
Compare the working day of two people in the same profession a century apart.Way in: Which tool made the biggest difference?
Compare two cities' answers to the same problem, such as traffic, housing or flooding.Way in: What did each city have that made its answer possible?
Compare two ecosystems at the same latitude.Way in: What single factor explains most of the difference?
Compare two energy sources on land use, reliability and cost over a full life cycle.Way in: Which number is hardest to find, and why?
Compare two experimental designs for answering the same question.Way in: Which threat to validity does each leave open?
Compare two famous bridges, towers or buildings as solutions to different constraints.Way in: What was scarce for each builder: money, material, space or time?
Compare two films, plays or novels adapted from the same source.Way in: What did each adapter decide the story was about?
Compare two historians' accounts of one event.Way in: What sources did each have, and what question was each asking?
Compare two historical figures who faced the same problem and chose differently.Way in: What did each one know at the moment of choosing?
Compare two jobs you have watched people do: one you would like and one you would not.Way in: What is the hardest hour of each?
Compare two languages you know, or one you know and one you are learning, through a single sentence.Way in: What does one language force you to say that the other lets you skip?
Compare two legal systems on how they treat one kind of dispute.Way in: Who has to prove what?
Compare two maps of the same place made in different centuries.Way in: What did each mapmaker think was worth drawing?
Compare two musical instruments from the same family.Way in: Which piece of music suits one and defeats the other?
Compare two paintings or photographs of the same subject.Way in: Where does each artist want your eye to go first?
Compare two planets, two elements or two animals that are often confused.Way in: What one test would tell them apart?
Compare two programming languages, notations or formal systems on the same small problem.Way in: What does each make easy, and what does each hide?
Compare two revolutions, reforms or movements from your history course.Way in: Did they succeed or fail for the same reasons?
Compare two seasons in the place where you live through what people do outdoors.Way in: What disappears, and what takes its place?
Compare two solutions to the same math or engineering problem.Way in: Which is faster, and which is easier to explain?
Compare two speeches that tried to persuade people of the same thing.Way in: Which one would work on you, and why?
Compare two teachers' ways of running a discussion and what each produced.Way in: Who spoke in one room and stayed silent in the other?
Compare two theories that explain the same phenomenon in your field.Way in: What observation would embarrass one and not the other?
Compare two translations of the same short passage.Way in: Where did the translators disagree about what the author meant?
Compare two ways of getting to school and what each one shows you about your town.Way in: What do you see on one route that the other hides?
Compare your first college essay with your most recent one.Way in: What do you now do without thinking that you once had to be told?
Compare your school with a school in another country that you can research.Way in: What does each system assume a teenager can handle?
Contrast a school rule as it is written with the same rule as it is enforced.Way in: Who benefits from the gap?
Contrast paper archives with digital archives as things a future historian will inherit.Way in: Which will still be readable in two hundred years?
Contrast remote collaboration with working side by side on the same kind of task.Way in: Which conversations never happen at a distance?
Contrast walking through a place with seeing it on a screen.Way in: What did your feet learn that your eyes could not?
How does a friendship you had at age eight differ from one you have now? Compare the two.Way in: What did each friendship run on?
Set a scientific paper beside a news story written about it and compare what each one claims.Way in: Which caveats vanished on the way?
Cause and effect 66
Trace how one decision you made this year led to results you did not expect.Way in: What was the first effect you had not planned for?
Trace the causes and effects of one species' recovery from near extinction.Way in: What stopped the decline: a law, a habitat or a change in demand?
Trace the causes of one financial bubble and the effects of its collapse.Way in: What did buyers believe that turned out to be false?
Trace the effects of air conditioning on where people live and how buildings are designed.Way in: What did houses in hot places look like before it?
Trace the effects of one invention on daily life in the fifty years after it appeared.Way in: What did people stop doing once they had it?
Trace the effects of one new technology on one profession over twenty years.Way in: Which tasks vanished, and which new ones appeared?
Trace the effects of refrigeration on diets, farming and cities.Way in: What could not be shipped before it?
Trace the effects of standard time on railroads, work and daily life.Way in: How did towns set their clocks before it?
Trace the effects of the shipping container on port cities and on the people who worked the docks.Way in: What work disappeared, and where did the ports move?
Trace what happens to a forest in the years after a fire.Way in: What comes back first, and what needed the fire in order to grow?
What are the effects of a drought on a farming region? Follow them from the field to the store shelf.Way in: How long is it before a shopper notices?
What are the effects of a long power outage on a town? Follow them hour by hour.Way in: What fails first, and what fails by day three?
What are the effects of a price floor, a price ceiling or a quota on one market? Use a real example.Way in: Who waits in line, who gains and who leaves the market?
What are the effects of a published university ranking on how universities behave?Way in: What gets measured, and what gets neglected?
What are the effects of a snow day, heat day or flood day on a school's week?Way in: What gets squeezed when a day vanishes?
What are the effects of an aging population on a country's workforce and public services?Way in: Who works, who retires and who pays?
What are the effects of learning a second language on how you use your first?Way in: Which words do you notice now that you never noticed before?
What are the effects of light pollution on wildlife and on people?Way in: Which animals navigate by the night sky?
What are the effects of praise on how hard someone tries the next time?Way in: Does it matter what exactly is praised?
What are the effects of remote work on the city centers that office workers used to fill?Way in: Which businesses lived on the lunch hour?
What are the effects of social media on how news is written, not only on how it is read?Way in: What does a headline have to do now that it did not before?
What are the effects of tourism on a small town that becomes famous?Way in: Who can still afford to live there ten years on?
What are the effects on a town when a large employer arrives or leaves?Way in: Which other businesses depend on those paychecks?
What caused a rule change in a sport you follow, and what did the change do to the game?Way in: What were players doing that the old rule allowed?
What caused the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and what changed in farming because of it?Way in: How much was the weather, and how much was the plow?
What caused the fall in the cost of solar panels, and what has cheap solar power changed?Way in: Which came first: subsidies, scale or better cells?
What causes a traffic jam when there has been no accident?Way in: What happens behind one driver who taps the brakes?
What happens to a friendship when one friend moves away?Way in: What did the friendship depend on that distance removed?
What happens to a habit when you change one thing about where or when you do it?Way in: What cue starts the habit?
What happens to a lake, pond or reef when one species is removed?Way in: Who ate it, and what did it eat?
What happens to a language when its speakers move to a new country?Way in: What do the grandchildren speak?
What happens to a neighborhood when its only grocery store closes? Trace the effects.Way in: Who is affected in the first week, and who in the first year?
What happens to a river downstream when a town grows beside it?Way in: What goes into the water that was not there before?
What happens to a team when its best player leaves? Trace the effects over one season.Way in: Who steps up, and what changes in how the team plays?
What happens to a town when a new road, bridge or transit line opens?Way in: Who can now reach something they could not reach before?
What happens to an island ecosystem when a new predator arrives? Use a documented case.Way in: What had the native species never needed to fear?
What happens to wages, prices and migration when a region discovers a valuable resource?Way in: Who arrives first, and who is left when the boom ends?
What were the causes of one event you have studied in history this year? Rank them.Way in: Which cause could you remove and still get the event?
What were the effects of the invention of writing on memory, law and trade?Way in: What can a society do with records that it cannot do with memory alone?
What were the effects of the railroad on the towns it reached and the towns it skipped?Way in: What happened to a town ten miles from the line?
What were the effects of the telegraph on news, markets or diplomacy?Way in: What used to take weeks, and what changed when it took minutes?
Why are standards so hard to change once set? Use one example, such as a keyboard layout or a rail gauge.Way in: What would everyone have to do on the same day?
Why did a fashion, slang word or game spread through your school, and why did it fade?Way in: Who had it first, and who had it last?
Why did coffeehouses, salons or clubs matter to the spread of ideas in one period?Way in: Who could walk in, and who could not?
Why did farming arise in some regions thousands of years before others?Way in: Which plants and animals were there to be domesticated?
Why did one reform movement you have studied succeed where an earlier one failed?Way in: What had changed: the leaders, the public or the law?
Why did Roman roads, or another ancient network, outlast the state that built them?Way in: What made the network useful to the people who came after?
Why did some cities bury their rivers, and what has happened where a river was uncovered again?Way in: What was the river being used for by the time it was covered?
Why did the printing press spread across Europe within a few decades? Weigh the causes.Way in: What had to exist already: paper, readers, money or trade routes?
Why do bystanders sometimes fail to help in an emergency? Examine the causes researchers propose.Way in: Does a larger crowd make help less likely or more, and what do newer studies say?
Why do cities grow where they do? Test the usual causes against one city you know.Way in: What was there before the city: a harbor, a ford, a mine or a crossroads?
Why do languages die? Trace the causes in one documented case.Way in: What did parents decide, and why?
Why do large infrastructure projects so often run over budget and schedule? Trace the causes in one case.Way in: What was known at the start, and what was only hoped?
Why do people behave differently in a crowd than they do alone?Way in: When did you last do something in a group that you would not do alone?
Why do people cheer for a team that keeps losing?Way in: What are they getting besides wins?
Why do people keep making choices that work against their own long-term goals? Examine the causes researchers offer.Way in: What does the future self lose that the present self cannot feel?
Why do people remember some lessons for life and forget others within a week?Way in: What was different about a lesson you still remember?
Why do pollinators such as bees and bats matter to the food on your plate? Trace the chain.Way in: Which foods would become scarce first?
Why do prices rise before a holiday and fall after it?Way in: Who knows that you are in a hurry?
Why do some neighborhoods have more trees than others, and what difference do the trees make?Way in: Who planted them, and when?
Why do some public places collect litter while others stay clean?Way in: What is different: the trash cans, the people or the place?
Why do some published findings fail to replicate? Trace the causes inside one field.Way in: What were researchers rewarded for?
Why do some school rules get followed while others get ignored?Way in: What is different about how the two kinds of rule are made or enforced?
Why do some songs get stuck in your head? Explain the causes as far as you can research them.Way in: What do the songs that stick have in common?
Why do students put off work they know is due? Trace the causes.Way in: What happened the last time you did it?
Why has the population of your town grown, shrunk or stayed the same over the last fifty years?Way in: Where could you find the numbers?
How this list was compiled: All 396 essay prompts and their way-in questions were written for this page by the Random Generator HQ editors; none is copied from a textbook, a syllabus, an exam paper or another list. The essay types were checked on 2026-09-19 against the Purdue Online Writing Lab's Essay Writing section at https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/index.html : it names four genres (description, narration, exposition and argumentation), which are our Descriptive, Narrative, Expository and Argumentative groups. Its page on the expository essay, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/expository_essays.html , lists comparison and contrast and the analysis of cause and effect among the ways an expository essay can be carried out, so our Compare and contrast and Cause and effect groups are labelled as classroom sub-types of the expository essay, not as a fifth and sixth genre. Three points in the page copy come from the same section and were checked the same day: a narrative essay has to make a point (https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/narrative_essays.html ), a descriptive essay works through the senses (https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/descriptive_essays.html ), and an argumentative essay gives room to the opposing view (https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/argumentative_essays.html ). Nothing from those pages is reproduced beyond the names of the four genres. This page is not affiliated with or endorsed by Purdue University or the Purdue Online Writing Lab. Each prompt was read against four house rules: a student can start on it with what they know or can look up in a library; it never asks the writer to disclose trauma, health or family money; it takes no party's side and names no company, product, show or living person; and narrative and descriptive prompts ask for something the writer lived or saw, never for fiction. College means essays set in coursework: no prompt is an application or admissions essay, and no exam is named. Every prompt sits in one type group (66 in each of the six) and one level group, High school (198) or College (198), so each pairing of a type and a level holds 33. A few prompts presuppose a fact, and each was checked on 2026-09-19: printing presses in 236 European towns by 1500 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_spread_of_the_printing_press ); drought together with the plowing up of Plains grassland behind the Dust Bowl, and the soil conservation that followed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl ); city streams buried and later uncovered, as in Seoul in 2005 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylighting_(streams) ); the bystander effect, first tested by Darley and Latané in 1968 and questioned by a 2019 study of street camera footage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect ), which is why that way-in line asks what newer studies say; the seasons coming from the tilt of Earth's axis, with Earth closest to the Sun in early January (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Season ); traffic waves that form with no accident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave ); cones that open after fire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotiny ); and railroads adopting standard time in Great Britain in 1847 and in North America in 1883 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_time ). The way-in lines are questions to ask yourself, not findings, so check any fact before it goes into an essay. Spelling is American. First written 2026-09-19. Second pass 2026-09-19 by the Random Generator HQ review desk: every prompt and way-in line was read again for sense, the house rules, American usage and repeated ideas, and 58 of the 396 lines were reworded. Licence: own work