Most students and teachers, whether at the undergraduate or graduate level, would probably have at least heard of custom essay services before. You know, those services that students run to when they need their assignments completed for them. At least, that’s what usually comes to mind when you talk about these sort of services.

But just because it is a common perception does not make it a correct one. Custom essay services actually create model essays for their clients - not do their clients’ homework. They draw up an essay plan, do the research, aggregate and arrange the information found, and then, write a solid essay that can be used as an example for students to write their own.

They are just like tuition teachers. For one, they help you in your efforts to improve your essay writing skills, and thus, score in your assignments. Imagine if you were stuck with a sub-par college tutor. Who is going to help you improve your essays? You’ll definitely have a hard time producing good essays simply because you’ll never have the chance to actually read one.

Or, they could just help you save time. Heck, not everybody has the luxury of tens of hours to delve into 1000-page reference books just to find some examples. What if you had to prep for an athletics meet the whole week before your assignment deadline? Surely it would help if you had a well-researched essay to refer to.

Of course, the temptation of submitting the model essay as your own is extremely great. After all, the custom essays produced by these services are supposed to be completely original, and will never be given out to another client. Your teachers would probably never find out, especially since custom essay services rarely ask for your personal information to ensure their clients’ anonymity.

So, clearly custom essay services can either be a great help or a mere crutch, depending on the character of the student involved. If you are a responsible student who merely needs good help, then these services will surely be a boon. Of course, you would have to be pretty loaded as well. They aren’t cheap after all.

These days, getting a scholarship can be a seriously tough ordeal. Competition for even the least lucrative scholarships have increased by leaps and bounds, as average scores for standardized tests improve and the number of students entering private schools increase.

So, what must you have to really stand out? Excellent extracurricular participation? Advanced classes? Well, all of these would definitely help, but one of the most important would be essay writing skills. In fact, for large-scale scholarship competitions, good essay writing skills are of equal, if not of greater importance to good interviewing skills.

This is because judges read your essays before they actually get to meet you. Your essays provide scholarship judges the first means of ascertaining your character. You might be the most reponsible, dynamic and flexible individual out there, but if you can’t convey these qualities to the judges through your essays, you might not get a chance to even meet them during the final interviews. After all, good essay writing skills tend to be the key determinant in the preliminary rounds of the scholarship application process.

This means that you’ll have to ensure that as much effort as possible is put into writing any essays asked for by the scholarship application committee. You might be tired and weary after school examinations or prior scholarship applications, but if you think you can get yourself into the final interviews without well-written essays, dream on. Sharpening your essay writing skills will also be critical. Most often, you’ll see students practicing their interviewing skills with their teachers, friends, and paid councillors, but how many people actually practice their essay writing skills? Remember, there’s no use practicing your interviewing skills if you can’t even get pass the preliminary stages.

So, it should be clear to you that essay writing skills are highly important in applying for scholarships - especially the more lucrative ones. Like good interview skills, good essay writing skills can easily separate the very best students from a pack of good ones.

The rather simple and pristine realm of essays and essay writing is actually not devoid of disturbing trends. One such trend is the use of advanced computer software to grade typed essays - a trend that is set to continue given the Graduate Management Admision Council’s recent decision to use Vantage Learning’s computer-based essay scoring system to grade the Analytical Writing Assessment portion of the GMAT.

Although GMAC stresses that results given out through this system are comparable to results before the system was introduced, I’m not too sure about the ability of a computer to judge style and content. Understandably, the Analytical Writing Assessment component of the GMAT is compartmentalized enough that an advanced computer software package should be able to grasp the main ideas of a student’s essay and style. But errors in judgment can and will occur, and the worst part is that we will not be told anything about it. Heck, I’m not sure if the administrators would know anything about it either.

Of course, you could argue that grades given out by human essay scorers are not error-free either. Human essay scorers could very well take the easy way out when their individual workloads number in the thousands. That would mean giving high marks to long essays, multiple examples, and bombastic words, even if the overall package ends up mediocre. Computers, on the other hand, do not get tired, and will mark all essays based on the exact same criteria - ensuring that there’s no impartiality from different examiners.

So, it does seem that a computerized essay scoring system has its benefits. But whether the advantages from such a system outweigh the disadvantages, or whether the move is a profit-motivated or resulted-oriented one is unknown.

Most of us would have at least some experience in having to write good essays quickly. As such, I doubt there is any need for me to say that writing essays at high speed is a difficult task. Whether during examinations or competitions, writing essays quickly requires you to not only compose the content and style of the essay, but also manage your writing pace and the essay’s length.

In normal conditions, you have all the time in the world to plan the essay, research for examples, compose the content and tweak the style of the essay. But when it comes to limited-time conditions, e.g. 90 minutes for a 1000+ word non-fiction essay, you have only a set amount of time to plan and compose the content. You have no time (or rather, are not allowed) to do any research. And I’ll even go so far to say that only a fool (or a professional) would allocate time to style.

So, this means that you have to adjust the principles and techniques used in normal essay writing to high speed essay writing. Instead of taking half an hour (or even one hour) to create a detailed essay plan, you’ll have to make a concise essay plan in ten to fifteen minutes. You do not have the luxury of brainstorming for very long or writing out every idea that comes to mind. Short forms and symbols will have to be used, with any variant of shorthand a bonus (if you are sufficiently good at it).

Most importantly, you will have to think as you write. Many of the best high speed essay writers are able to write non-stop, fleshing out the elaborations and examples in their heads. Students weak at writing essays quickly are known to pause very often between sentences and paragraphs, and this weakness alone drains most of the time they have. Admittedly, writing non-stop is a skill in a class of its own, but there are ways to train yourself towards achieving it.

How? Seemingly simple really. On the content side, examples and details have to be learned in-depth, with most basic facts committed to memory. On the stylistic side, an oft-used vocabulary coupled with memorised idioms and quotes are necessary. Last but not least, practice, practice and practice. The more often you write quickly, the better you get at high speed essay writing. Therefore, if you stop writing essays quickly for weeks, expect your essay writing speed to fall.

Overall, writing essays quickly might seem to be something all too impossible. But like any other skill, it is one that can be tamed through consistent practice and review. And given that almost all examinations these days come with essay writing papers (e.g. General Paper for A-Levels, English Language for O-Levels, and university examinations), there will never be a shortage of avenues to both practice and display your prowess.