focus on ONE problem, in depth, for the whole essay.
Your writing is clear, and you have good focus on each paragraph. But you rely a lot on transitions of addition, and you never have any actual EVIDENCE, just experts you reference in a general way. What is YOUR contribution, beyond collecting all these experts ? You want one focused argument – in your first paragraph, it would seem to be something about how the high cost of education disenfranchises those with low incomes – but you never really develop this point, settling instead for a whole bunch of different points about benefits of lower tuition, cost of higher tuition, ways to lower tuition. That overall order seems strange, to start with. Why talk about the benefits of a solution we don’t yet know about ? Why discuss a solution before you’ve discussed the problem ?
Even better, you do not want a collection of separate points. You want to explore one point in-depth. And you want to bring your sources into conversation ! Remember, your essay is like a party: your sources should converse (and you should converse with them, bouncing your own ideas off them, using them as “points of departure” rather than just a source to drop into your essay one time and then move on, ignore, never use again.
So for your revision, you must
1. focus on ONE problem, in depth, for the whole essay.
2. Not use “should.” Easy to not use should, etc if you focus on the problem.
3. includes lots of evidence – FACTS. Things that can be touched, counted, seen, heard. Stating someone else’s claims in support of your own claims doesn’t count as evidence. You can certainly cite other’s claims, but those alone are not enough.
4. Include NOTHING obvious. If you already know it, if your roommate already know it – it doesn’t belong in this essay.
5. Not use ANY transitions of addition (see the list in TSIS ch 8, plus the extra transitions I listed that you’re supposed to avoid) unless you are desperate. So no counting ! No laundry lists here. Avoid above all “tips of icebergs,” where you just offer obvious overviews. That’s not what writers do.
