Are Essay Writing Services Worth It?

School work can be overwhelming. According to a study by the International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, students experience academic stress that results from the pressure to achieve excellent grades.

When coupled with the need to write detailed, complex and informative essays, stress levels can quickly increase.

It is no wonder that essay writing related searches like ‘write my essays for me’ have become a significantly consistent trend on Google as shown in the following data from Google Trends:

In fact, essay-related keywords even have a breakout (where the searches have increased by at least 5000% over a given time period).

Students need the help of essay writing professionals in order to more adequately spread their energies while in school.

Whether you are trying to generate research ideas for your essay, or are trying to get better at writing different essay types like argumentative essays, narrative essays, or expository essays, essay writing services come in handy.

If you have never used essay writing services before, you might wonder whether they are a worthwhile investment. This article further explores this.

How Students Use Online Essay Writing Services

Whether it is to write essays for a college application or to refine their papers, there are several ways in which students use online essay writing services. Let’s explore them below.

College Application Essays

High school seniors need to write essays when making their college applications. Getting into your dream college is a competitive affair. For example, the University of California only accepts 9,600 freshman students out of the 16,000 that apply.

In 2020, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, SAT or ACT college admission tests became optional in many colleges and universities. In some cases, they were not even considered during college applications. This is likely to continue in 2021.

Moreover, some colleges have court cases, where there is an appeal to remove the use of SAT or ACT as part of college admission considerations. There have also been rare cases of students bribing proctors to alter their SAT and ACT scores.

What this means for students is that the essays are becoming even more important when it comes to getting a place at their favorite college.

College Level Writing Academic Assignments

As aforementioned, there are several types of writing assignments that students at the college and university level need to do. Some of these actually contribute to your GPA, meaning that you need to score superb grades.

Let’s face it. As a first-year student, you may not have written essays much. Even where you have guidelines on how to write an essay, your writing is highly likely to be laborious.

Worse still, different essay types require unique structure and tone. Reflective papers use the first person point of view, while other kinds are usually written in the third person point of view. On the other hand, research papers need you to come up with a hypothesis and then support it.

Coming up with exceptional essays can be difficult, and professional essay writing can make it easier for the students to come up with written pieces that not only have the required structure but with skillfully crafted content and arguments.

Why Hire Essay Writing Services?

We have already come across several reasons students need to hire the services of professional essay writers.

By all means, students are intelligent and capable enough of writing impeccable and impressive essays. Why then bother to invest your money in hiring someone else to write your essay for you?

Your Written English Is Subpar

You might be an English as a Second Language speaker (ESL) or an international student, and English is not your native language. Expressing yourself in written English may be an arduous task.

While you might even be taking English classes to improve writing a captivating essay will still be an uphill task. There are grammar rules to follow, formats like MLA (Modern Language Association) and APA, and the particular lecturer’s guidelines.

Hiring a professional writer will take away this headache. It will give you time to handle less work as you work on improving your written English.

It’s important to note that even native speakers of the English Language may still be susceptible to improper use. There is no shame in hiring essay writing services, even if you are a native speaker.

As previously mentioned, grammar rules can be onerous, especially when mingled with other essay writing rules.

You Are Not a Great Editor

Closely related to writing deftly is ruthless editing. A rule of thumb in writing circles is that you cannot edit your own work (even when you are an adept writer). This is why you need a mirror to see your own face!

Trying to edit your own work could result in you submitting an essay full of errors and typos that you might have missed. It is always best to have someone else edit your work for you.

But, if none of your schoolmates are great at it, or are inundated with their own schoolwork, then hiring the services of a professional essay writer is definitely a good idea.

You Have a Tight Schedule

There are many reasons why you may have a tight schedule. You might be working and studying at the same time, or are a parent or guardian and still have to do school work. Whatever the reason for your tight schedule, the last thing that you need is missing deadlines.

As you can see from the above image, at least 58% of people do not have time to do assignments.

Professional writers dedicate ample time to help you with your essays, leaving you to do much less regarding getting your essays done on time.

You Are Looking to Write Plagiarism Free Essays

Plagiarism occurs frequently. Many times, it is accidental. Have you ever written something only to check for plagiarism and discover that you somehow wrote the same way someone else did?

Or you showed a fellow student how to write an essay and ended up writing what you used to explain something? Or worse still, shared the same reference materials and ended up with essays that look like duplicates of each other?

Professional writing services can save you the pain of trying to stay away from plagiarism when writing your essays. The writers use plagiarism checker tools to ensure that your essay is distinctive. They also, from their proficiency in essay writing, know how to keep the plagiarism monster at bay.

You Need to Do Detailed Research

A copious amount of time is spent doing research. If you are doing research for relatively large writing projects like dissertations, or essays where you need to come up with unique topics, then professional essay writers would help a great deal.

Essay writers not only have the time and expertise but have worked on countless papers. They know the art of what it takes to do rigorous research within the shortest time possible. They can also offer guidelines and best practices in the same.

You Want to Learn What It Takes to Write a Great an Exemplary Essay

Sometimes all you want to do is learn the ropes. If this is the case, then you are better off learning from the best. You may be enrolled for an essay writing course or learning how to write essays in school, but nothing beats learning from real world experts with real-world examples, and who can borrow from their expertise and adroitness in essay writing.

Where the Stakes Are Too High

Sometimes failing in your school work or failure to achieve particular grades is punitive, even financially. For example, if you fail some tests (depending on the course you are undertaking), you are required to pay in order to re-take them. When you weigh your options - paying for the course (where there is a high probability of failure) or paying to get help with your essay, the latter prevails.

How to Stay Safe When Paying for Essay Writing Services

There have been concerns around ‘contract cheating’, where students hire other people to do their assignments, essays, and papers for them.

Members of the ICAI (International Center for Academic Integrity) have expressed concerns about contract cheating. In the ICAI 2021 conference, one of the sessions was actually titled “Detecting Contract Cheating Using Investigative Linguistics”

Where do we draw the line?

Online essay writing services can lead to some problems in the classroom. Let’s look at how you can use these services prudently:

Customization

There are many aspects of testing in schools. Sometimes, you are required to sit for short answer tests. Your lecturer has a clue about how well you can write from such sources. Presenting a faultless essay when your short answer tests for example are full of typos, may result in your lecturers accusing you of contract cheating, which may have consequences.

The best thing to do is to talk with the professional writer assigned to you and share samples of your writing with them. This way, they are able to match your writing with theirs.

Better still, it is only sensible to use the essay that you get from your professional writer as a reference to polish up your own.

Due Diligence

Finding an essay writing service with knowledgeable writers, a good customer service team and a satisfaction guarantee can take time. Go for essay writing services that offer more than just a quick paper. Here is a list of criteria to help you out:

Value for your money

Cheap is expensive. Stay away from sites that offer 'best free essays.' Writing a good essay is a hard task, and it requires time and effort. If this was not the case, then you could have done it by yourself. If you need a good original essay, you have to be prepared to spend a reasonable amount of cash.

Open and transparent communication

You need to ascertain there is constant communication between you and the custom essay writer. If the easy writing site has live chats or instant messaging, this is ideal. However, check upfront to confirm whether this level of communication is possible.

Make sure that they can match your style of writing

Every person has a writing style that most professors can tell because they have marked your work for a long time. The writer that you settle for must be able to match the essay with your writing style. This includes the general mistakes that you make, especially as an ESL speaker. Your writer also needs to be aware of the books and materials you have used in your class. They can use them as referrals when handling your essay.

Ensure they have a 24/7 customer service

Check whether you can access their customer service at any time. This is crucial because you do not want to entrust something crucial to your education to someone without knowing what is going on with the assignment.

Check whether the writers are specialists

Ascertain that the essay writer assigned to you has the relevant knowledge that pertains to what you are dealing with in the assignment.

Other things to look out for:

• Do they offer revisions?
• Do they have an on-time delivery guarantee?
• Do they use up-to-date sources?
• Do they guarantee confidentiality or that they will not resell your paper?
• Do they offer plagiarism reports?
• Use technology to your advantage - find software you can use to check for plagiarism. Use technology like Authorship Investigate before you submit your work.

In Conclusion

In this article we have answered the question: are essay writing services worth it? By all means yes, if you are looking to learn how to write better essays, are too busy to write an impeccable paper, or where you cannot express yourself clearly through writing.

This was initially published on the Grade Expert Blog