A brilliant college essay topic doesn’t just showcase intelligence — it reveals personality, curiosity, humor, resilience, or the wonderfully weird way someone sees the world. Over the years, certain ...

Poetically, Tolkien’s long struggle to realize his vision — the self-doubt that led to long pauses in composition, his frustrations with publishers and his general inability to be satisfied enough ...

The absence of humility, integrity, and open-mindedness isn’t just a moral failure. It’s a methodological one.

Good faith and fair dealing—adherence to what we might call “norms”—is essential to the functioning of American government.

Being well-read transforms you into a pattern-recognizing, empathy-wielding intellectual force—but it also means suffering ...

To be a respectable black man in America is to be a perpetual Bruce Banner, struggling not to let out your inner rage for ...

The federal government has flagged “cues” such as personal essays, along with narratives about “overcoming obstacles” and ...

Cast Away turns 25 this year. In celebration, a look at how it feels to share a name with one of its most iconic characters.

A University of Oklahoma student received a zero on a psychology essay after using her religious beliefs to discuss gender norms. The graduate student instructor said the grade was for not properly ...

The essay, written for a psychology class by a University of Oklahoma student, called the idea of multiple genders “demonic.” The instructor said it did not answer the assignment. By Mark Arsenault A ...

Conservative activists and politicians have rallied around a college student who received a zero on an essay. Some grad ...

For years, high-schoolers have boasted in college applications about learning Latin, leading the chess club or acing Advanced Placement Physics. Now there is a new way to get a leg up: Show how well ...