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Essay on Constituonal Law

They wrote my constitutional law essay of 2500 words with OSCOLA references recently and I am totally pleased with the service. Plagiarism was under 2% and the person who wrote it was clearly a law expert.

Date of experience : February 20, 2022

Excellent Service

I have been using phd-essays.com for more than 3 years now and have been pleased with the experience. The assignments (mostly essays) were done on time and the revisions were free and fast. I wish all such services were as good as this one.

Date of experience : February 15, 2022

  • Best Essay Writing Services

PHDEssay review

Short overview

Writing PhdEssay review took extensive research because this company has almost no presence online. People don’t review it; it has few ads despite existing for six years. Frankly, I’m surprised my readers found it at all, but you wanted me to explore it, so here I go. PhdEssay has an odd-looking website and detailed policies describing what clients should expect. It has a huge collection of samples and a chatbot named James, who makes ordering an essay a piece of cake. A bidding system means that there are no stable prices and writers decide how much to charge. So, is this company worth hiring? Stay tuned, and you’ll get your answer.

  • Bidding system that gives clients more freedom
  • Useful chatbot
  • Quality is below satisfactory level
  • Writers don’t seem professional
  • No online PhdEssay reviews
  • Revisions are useless

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What Website Reveals About This Company

When I first accessed the website of PhdEssay, I thought that it looks cool, even if somewhat generic. Black design and an image of someone working on a project create an impression of elegance. But as I scrolled down, I saw a sudden shift in the color palette. There is a bright white that changes into a pale green. It appears badly fitting: it looks like someone just mashed random color and design combinations together. It’s a fact that the best websites that write essays for you try to look as appealing as possible to attract more clients, and I think PhdEssay failed in this regard. Then there is an issue of too much text stuffed everywhere. A message from chat box, the chat window itself popping up from the other side, is an offer to read samples and hire a writer. This creates an overwhelming sensation.

Is PhdEssay good at explaining everything its site does? Partly. It offers limited information, and students need to start placing orders to find relevant details. This is the only way to understand what services the company focuses on and how much they are worth. From better news, samples and plagiarism checker are readily available. And finally, there is content. This website has very small volumes of texts, and I can see why: they have language mistakes, especially with punctuation. Whoever wrote them has a weakness for using dashes everywhere. Some editing wouldn’t hurt.

phdessay overview

Available Academic Services and Sample Collection

Since I found no PhdEssay reviews online, I couldn’t see how many various disciplines students describe. The website poses a problem, too, because it doesn’t mention which services clients could order from it. To find out, you must place your order. I didn’t like this, and I think no best essay editing service would ever use this approach. It looks scammy: you tell these guys what you want, and they instantly provide experts who specialize in this area. What if your topic is rare? What stops the company from offering writers who have no knowledge in your field just to make money? They respond to what you need, they don’t offer a list of services they definitely provide. In theory, you can find help with anything here, from dissertations to projects, essays, research, and other tasks.

In the course of my PhdEssay.com review, I was curious about samples. They entail free papers on different academic topics that students could use as a guide for their assignments. While this company is relatively young, it acquired a huge collection that surprised me. I was impressed. Numerous categories are present, with about 100K samples available altogether. I selected one at random for my review.

Title: The Positive and Negative Impacts of Technology on Family Life

Length: 5 pages

Analysis: This term paper has a low level of quality. It starts with a direct quote with no citation, which counts as plagiarism. It’s shocking that the company posted something like this as an example of its writers’ work. Paragraphs are too short: they have less than three sentences, which is essential in academic essays. Mistakes with grammar are present, the style is overly simplistic, and the writer used mostly non-academic sources.

Quality: Low

phdessay sample

Exploring Policies for PhdEssay Review

Understanding what policies a company has is crucial. Only the best dissertation writing services reviews are going to pay attention to them since most people find the idea of reading numerous pages of boring text repelling. I’m used to this after all the reviews I’ve written, so I tackled this challenge easily. Let’s start with privacy. The company lists all types of information it collects from its customers. It’s a good thing, but the diversity of this info made me shudder. They’re going to learn everything they can about it by relying on any sources you willingly and unwittingly provide them with. With no reviews of PhdEssay, I couldn’t say what students think about it and whether they even realized it.

The agency also admits that it distributes its clients' personal data to third parties. Technically, these parties are all connected. They share one line of business, meaning that this could be marketers or focus group researchers. Still, knowing that your data could be in anyone’s hands is disturbing and unsafe. Revisions are unlimited, and refunds are available. Seems great, doesn’t it? In theory, yes, but practice shows that everything is not that simple. The company dislikes returning money, and if a student received a paper and automatically agreed to release payment to writer, that’s it. Your chances of getting a refund are minuscule. PhdEssay should really improve how it approaches its clients.

How PhdEssay Operators Operate

PhdEssay offers several ways of contacting its employees. You could rely strictly on a bot called James to place your order and review the number of bids writers placed on it. He’s a lovely guy who will always understand you and who’ll dutifully pass your words to relevant experts. I loved him because interactions with him were quick and simple. Speaking with human operators turned out to be much harder. While the company shares email and phone numbers, it’s reluctant to reply to students’ requests. I felt like it wants to save time, which is why it relies on James.

If there were more PhdEssay.com reviews around, I’m sure they would have shared my experience. I tried to contact human operators several times, and it was never successful. They didn’t reply when I needed them, and when I got a reply, it was hours or even days later. More than that, they sounded cross, and like they were wishing to be anywhere but here, speaking to me. I disliked this with passion since operators’ job is to make clients feel comfortable.

phdessay contact

Analyzing Essay Quality for My Readers

I know what students want to see in reviews of PhdEssay most: information about quality. How reliable is a company? Can its experts really fulfill academic instructions? I placed a Sociology order, asking for 5 pages to arrive in 2 weeks. Immediately after that, I got tens of messages from writers who expressed their desire to work on my paper. Alas, most of them sounded unprofessional and eager to earn at least something. They swore they understood my assignment and would do their best on it. Everyone offered their prices, and I randomly selected one of the candidates. I paid $75, which is the average-on-the-expensive-side of market prices. There were lower bids, but I ended up with this one.

My review of PhdEssay showed that my worries were justified. The writer didn’t submit my essay by my deadline. They contacted me three hours before it ran out, asking for more time and citing an emergency. Is it possible that they really faced a delay because of unpredictable circumstances? Sure. It happens sometimes. But it happened too much with me during my contacts with various academic services. I couldn’t do anything except tell my writer to hurry up. I didn’t give a new specific deadline, and the paper didn’t arrive that day. It arrived almost two days later, and by that time, I was furious. When I started reading, I felt shocked. Undoubtedly, this was one of the worst papers I’ve had the misfortune of seeing. Grammar mistakes, complete disregard for academic rules, random discussions, and unfinished thoughts were throughout. I demanded revision instantly.

phdessay quality

Placing Your Order: How It Happens

Order placement seems easy at PhdEssay.com. It still has drawbacks. You need to submit an order form via James, the bot.

  • Describe your project briefly. Click on a window with James’ name. He starts asking questions: choose whatever subject or topic you want; point out your deadline and the size of your task.
  • Upload files. If you have instructions ready, share them. Upload your files. You could also choose to do it later.
  • Select a writer. You’re the one deciding. Multiple writers will contact you, and how they do, this is my main issue. They sound starving, and most of their messages have mistakes, which doesn’t inspire trust.
  • Fill the account with money. Add the required sum to your account.
  • After reading an essay, release the remaining sum. If you like your order, pay the rest to your expert. If you don’t like it, you might ask for a revision, but you won’t be able to transfer money back to your card.

phdessay customer support

Is Academic Writing Here Expensive?

Another reason why lots of students would be interested in Phd Essay reviews is prices. How much should they pay this company for its services? Since it has a bidding system, there is no set system. Writers might ask what they want, from outrageously big to suspiciously small sums. I wasn’t thrilled with my initial options, they were too expensive. It got better only after more bids appeared.

phdessay writers

Real Expert or Underqualified Wanna Be?

I felt sorry for my writer after I read their message, which is not a professional approach. They didn’t strike me as proficient in English or my ordered subject. As you already know, my detailed PhdEssay review, let me down completely.

Can Revisions Improve the Situation?

As you see from the score I gave in this section, revisions aren’t efficient. You have 14 days to place them, but then you need to give at least 12 hours on top of your old deadline to a writer. This stretches your time enormously. Worse, my revision resulted in nothing. If some mistakes disappeared, I didn’t notice — everything looked as terrible as I remembered.

Free Tools for Students

I love when companies have efficient plagiarism checkers and offer them at no charge. PhdEssay also has this option, but what I disliked is its lack of efficiency and the company is misleading. The more academic tools the site has, the better. PhdEssay seems to have at least 4 of them, but upon closer look, it’s clear that they are one and the same. There is an “originality checker,” “plagiarism finder,” “plagiarism scanner” and “copyright detector.” Different names for one plag checker, and it doesn’t work effectively. I used a plagiarized essay, and it didn’t realize it.

Reading Phd Essay Reviews — Or Trying To

I found no reviews on any common platforms. This astonished me since PhdEssay has been around for several years. It only has comments on its website, but they’re fake.

No reviews.

phdessay student reviews

Look at this circus. Do you believe that students who wrote PhdEssay reviews openly used their names and pics? Yeah, I don’t trust it, either.

Social Media

The company has Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram profiles, but they are outdated and have no engagement with students.

Is PhdEssay legit?

While this company has next to no online reviews, it is legit. It provides real academic services to students of all levels.

Is PhdEssay safe?

No. Its policies are too general. This agency collects a huge volume of information and admits to sharing it with various other parties.

Is PhdEssay reliable?

Sadly, no, it isn’t. Writers are hungry for orders, but only some of them are capable of providing great quality on time.

Is PhdEssay scam?

This is a real company that has real people working for it. There is a chance that you’ll be able to find the expert you’re looking for.

Additional Features

Payment methods.

Some writers choose to do as they please, while others disregard the given instructions.

I can't even begin to describe the horror. The essay they sent me looked like some kind of jumble. It was as if they had put all the words in a blender and pressed the "puree" button. The sentences didn't make any sense, and the spelling? Don't even get me started. It looked like they were trying to break the world record for the most spelling mistakes in one document. Stay away, stay away from this place!

This essay writing service is a complete disaster, I swear!

The reason their website showcases 5-star writers is that, by the time you receive your school supervisor's feedback, the 30-day window has elapsed, preventing you from updating or leaving feedback about your writer.

I have been fortunate to come across some talented writers, but unfortunately, a few of them possess only basic skills and their work has significantly impacted my grades.

The quality of the essays provided by this service was poor at best. They lacked depth and originality, and it was obvious that the writers lacked experience in the field.

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  • A Guide to Writing a PhD Thesis

Written by Ben Taylor

A PhD thesis is a work of original research all students are requiured to submit in order to succesfully complete their PhD. The thesis details the research that you carried out during the course of your doctoral degree and highlights the outcomes and conclusions reached.

The PhD thesis is the most important part of a doctoral research degree: the culmination of three or four years of full-time work towards producing an original contribution to your academic field.

Your PhD dissertation can therefore seem like quite a daunting possibility, with a hefty word count, the pressure of writing something new and, of course, the prospect of defending it at a viva once you’ve finished.

This page will give you an introduction to what you need to know about the doctoral thesis, with advice on structure, feedback, submission and more.

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Beginning your phd thesis.

The first stage of your PhD thesis will usually be the literature review . We’ve already written a detailed guide to what the PhD literature review involves , but here’s what you need to know about this stage of your PhD:

  • The literature review is a chance for you to display your knowledge and understanding of what’s already been written about your research area – this could consist of papers, articles, books, data and more
  • Rather than simply summarising what other scholars have said about your subject, you should aim to assess and analyse their arguments
  • The literature review is usually the first task of your PhD – and typically forms the first part or chapter of your dissertation

After finishing your literature review, you’ll move onto the bulk of your doctoral thesis. Of course, you’ll eventually return to the lit review to make sure it’s up-to-date and contains any additional material you may have come across during the course of your research.

PhD thesis research

What sets your PhD thesis apart from previous university work you’ve done is the fact that it should represent an original contribution to academic knowledge . The form that this original contribution takes will largely depend on your discipline.

  • Arts and Humanities dissertations usually involve investigating different texts, sources and theoretical frameworks
  • Social Sciences are more likely to focus on qualitive or quantitative surveys and case studies
  • STEM subjects involve designing, recording and analysing experiments, using their data to prove or disprove a set theory

Depending on the nature of your research, you may ‘write up’ your findings as you go, or leave it until the dedicated ‘writing-up’ period, usually in the third year of your PhD. Whatever your approach, it’s vital to keep detailed notes of your sources and methods – it’ll make your life a lot easier when it comes to using references in your dissertation further down the line.

PhD thesis vs dissertation

It’s common to use the terms ‘thesis’ and ‘dissertation’ interchangeably, but strictly speaking there is a difference in meaning between them:

  • Your thesis is your argument. It’s the conclusions you’ve arrived at through surveying existing scholarship in your literature review and combining this with the results of your own original research.
  • Your dissertation is the written statement of your thesis. This is where you lay out your findings in a way that systematically demonstrates and proves your conclusion.

Put simply, you submit a dissertation, but it’s the thesis it attempts to prove that will form the basis of your PhD.

What this also means is that the writing up of your dissertation generally follows the formulation of your doctoral thesis (it’s fairly difficult to write up a PhD before you know what you want to say!).

However, it’s normal for universities and academics to use either (or both) terms when describing PhD research – indeed, we use both ‘thesis’ and ‘dissertation’ across our website.

Can I use my Masters research in my PhD thesis?

If you’re studying an MPhil, it’s normal to ‘ upgrade ’ it into a PhD. Find mroe information on our guide.

PhD thesis structure

Having completed your initial literature review and conducted your original research, you’ll move onto the next phase of your doctoral dissertation, beginning to sketch out a plan that your thesis will follow.

The exact structure and make-up of your doctoral thesis will vary between fields, but this is the general template that many dissertations follow:

  • Introduction – This sets out the key objectives of your project, why the work is significant and what its original contribution to knowledge is. At this point you may also summarise the remaining chapters, offering an abstract of the argument you will go on to develop.
  • Literature review – The introduction will generally lead into a write-up of your literature review. Here you’ll outline the scholarly context for your project. You’ll acknowledge where existing research has shaped your PhD, but emphasise the unique nature of your work.
  • Chapters – After you’ve finished introducing your research, you’ll begin the bulk of the dissertation. This will summarise your results and begin explaining the argument you have based on them. Some PhDs will also include specific chapters on methodology and / or a recreation of the data you have developed. Others will develop your argument over a series of stages, drawing on sources and results as relevant.
  • Conclusion – The dissertation will end with a final chapter that pulls together the different elements of your argument and the evidence you have provided for it. You’ll restate the significance of your project (and its all-important original contribution to knowledge). You may also take the opportunity to acknowledge the potential for further work or opportunities to apply your findings outside academia.
  • Bibliography and appendices – At the end of your thesis, you’ll need to include a full list of the books, articles and data you’ve referenced in a bibliography. You may also need to provide additional information in the form of an appendix.

How long is a PhD thesis?

The length of a PhD thesis varies from subject to subject, but all are far longer than those for undergraduate or Masters degrees. Your university will usually set an upper limit – typically between 70,000 and 100,000 words, with most dissertations coming in at around 80,000 words.

Generally speaking, STEM-based theses will be a little shorter than those in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Different universities (and departments) will have different policies regarding what counts towards the PhD thesis word count, so make sure you’re aware what is expected of you. Check with your supervisor whether references, the bibliography or appendices are included in the word count for your dissertation.

How many chapters should a PhD thesis have?

There’s no hard and fast rule for the numbers of chapters in a PhD thesis, but most will have four or five chapters (in addition to the introduction and conclusion). This is the sort of thing you’ll discuss with your supervisor when planning out your research.

Writing up your PhD thesis

Once you’ve conducted your research and settled upon your thesis, there’s only one thing left to do: get it down on paper. Appropriately enough, this final part of a PhD is often referred to as the ‘ writing up period ’.

This is when you produce the final dissertation, which will be submitted as the basis for your viva voce exam. The nature of this task can vary from PhD to PhD.

In some cases you may already have a large amount of chapter drafts and other material. ‘Writing up’ therefore becomes a process of re-drafting and assembling this work into a final dissertation. This approach is common in Arts and Humanities subjects where PhD students tend to work through stages of a project, writing as they go.

Alternatively, you may have spent most of your PhD collecting and analysing data. If so, you’ll now ‘write up’ your findings and conclusions in order to produce your final dissertation. This approach is more common in STEM subjects, where experiment design and data collection are much more resource intensive.

Whatever process you adopt, you’ll now produce a persuasive and coherent statement of your argument, ready to submit for examination.

PhD thesis feedback

Your supervisor will usually give you feedback on each chapter draft, and then feedback on the overall completed dissertation draft before you submit it for examination. When the thesis is a work-in-progress, their comments will be a chance for them to make sure your research is going in the right direction and for you to ask their advice on anything you’re concerned about. This feedback will normally be given in the form of a supervisory meeting.

Although your PhD supervisor will be happy to give you advice on your work, you shouldn’t expect them to be an editor – it’s not their responsibility to correct grammatical or spelling mistakes, and you should make sure any drafts you submit to them are as error-free as possible. Similarly, they won’t be willing to edit your work down to fit a particular word count.

Finishing your PhD thesis

When you’ve finished the final draft of your doctoral thesis and it’s been approved by your supervisor, you’ll submit it for examination. This is when it’s sent to the examiners who will conduct your viva.

Submitting your thesis involves printing enough copies for your examiners and the university’s repository. Don’t leave this until the last minute – printing multiple copies of a 300-page document is a substantial undertaking and you should always allow enough time to account for any possible glitches or issues with the printing process.

Your viva will usually take place within three months of submitting your thesis. You can find out more in our dedicated guide to the PhD viva . After your viva, your examiners will give you a report that confirms whether or not you need to make any changes to your thesis, with several different potential outcomes:

  • Pass – You’ve received your doctoral qualification!
  • Minor corrections – These are usually fairly small edits, tweaks and improvements to your thesis, which you’ll be given three months to implement
  • Major corrections – For these substantial changes, you may have to rewrite part of your dissertation or complete extra research, with a six-month deadline

Most PhD students will need to fix some corrections with their thesis (hopefully not major ones). It’s very rare for a dissertation to be failed.

Once you’ve made any necessary changes to your thesis, you’ll submit it one last time (usually electronically).

If you have plans to publish all or part of your work, you may want to request an embargo so that it won’t be visible to the public for a certain time. 12 months is a fairly standard time period for this, although you may want to ask for a longer embargo if you know that you want to turn your thesis into a book or monograph.

Take a look at our programme listings and find the perfect PhD for you.

Our postgrad newsletter shares courses, funding news, stories and advice

Ben worked in the FindAPhD content team from 2017 to 2022, starting as an Assistant Content Writer and leaving as Student Content Manager. He focused on producing well-researched advice across a range of topics related to postgraduate study. Ben has a Bachelors degree in English Literature from the University of Sheffield and a Masters from the University of Amsterdam. Having also spent a semester at the University of Helsinki through the Erasmus programme, he’s no stranger to study abroad (or cold weather!).

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Integrated PhD programmes consist of a one-year Masters followed by three years of PhD research. Find out more about what it's like to study an integrated PhD, how to apply and the funding options available.

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  • 14 Best College Essay Services for 2024 (40 Services Reviewed)

Research conducted by Emily Kierkegaard , PhD, and expert-reviewed by Kevin Wong, PrepMaven Co-founder

Not sure which college application essay coaching and editing service is the best? We compared the top 40 services, created in-depth reviews for 14 of them, and narrowed it down to the 4 best that will help guide you through the process of writing amazing college application essays.

What is the Best College Essay Service?

  • PrepMaven  – best college application essay service overall
  • College Essay Mentor  – best for individual consultants
  • The College Essay Guy  – best for unlimited essay assistance
  • College Vine  – best of the big platforms

The best of the rest:

Individual essay consultants:

  • College Essay Editor  – small editing team
  • Allison Karpf  – former English teacher helping students
  • Your College Vision  – former journalist with more affordable rates
  • The College Guru  – good on paper but unresponsive
  • Sofia Zapiola – budget-friendly application assistance

Mid-size teams:

  • Lotus Learning  – focus on health sciences

Large platforms:

  • Study Point  – larger platform with mystery editors
  • Ivy Select  – larger platform with mystery editors
  • Empowerly  – larger platform with mystery editors
  • BeMo  – expensive and aggressive with wrong expertise

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Best College Application Essay Services in 2024

#1 – prepmaven.

Our Verdict — Best College Essay Assistance Overall Price: $79–349/hour (minimum $510 package) PrepMaven’s one-on-one college essay assistance is the best option overall. Founded by brothers and Princeton grads Greg and Kevin, almost all of PrepMaven’s essay coaches have Ivy-League experience, primarily from Princeton and Harvard. All essay coaches also undergo a thorough training program in PrepMaven’s methods, developed by professional writers with deep understanding of the college admissions process, for helping students to discover the most compelling stories for their essays. Unlike other services, PrepMaven offers college essay assistance at several different price points. At the most accessible rate, students can work with current Ivy-League undergraduates who specialize in writing and have recently aced the college application process. At higher rates, students can work with coaches who are both Ivy-League grads and professional writers (screenwriters, journalists, editors) with many years of experience helping students to craft compelling essays. Interested students can even work directly with founders Greg and Kevin, who have over 15 years of experience helping students through the entire essay-writing process. PrepMaven’s services combine many of the best features of other good options into one, and it’s hard to beat their experience.

Sign up for PrepMaven’s college essay help now

Any student wanting college essay help, at any point in the process, with a range of budgets.

At a glance:

  • Cost: $79–349/hour (minimum $510 package)
  • Writing coach qualifications: Princeton graduates and professional writers (or current Princeton students); all trained

What we like:

  • Ivy League experience —most of their writing coaches are Princeton grads or current students, with some from Harvard and other Ivies
  • Different pricing options to meet different families’ circumstances
  • More flexible and greater capacity to take on new students compared to individual consultants

Sign up for PrepMaven’s college essay help

Princeton University

#2 – College Essay Mentor

Our Verdict — Best of the Individual Consultants Price: unknown but high Some college essay consulting services consist of just one expert. Of these individual essay consultants, Chris Hunt at College Essay Mentor is our favorite. He combines writing experience as a journalist for the Economist and the Wall Street Journal with personal experience as a graduate of Dartmouth. However, he only works with a small number of students each year, and students need to apply to work with him — he only accepts students with top grades and test scores who are already strong applicants for top schools. Chris offers the option for one-time written feedback, but this only gives big-picture generalizations. (And written-only feedback is always limited.) In order for help with the essay process, students need to purchase a complete essay package.

Students with top grades and test scores who want to work with a one-person business, who have a sizable budget, and who are ready to get started early.

  • Cost: $210 for a one-time written essay feedback (big picture only), then $110 per draft feedback; pricing for essay process packages unknown
  • Essay coach qualifications: professional journalist, Dartmouth grad
  • Professional writing experience as a journalist
  • Extensive experience working with college applicants
  • Partners with Debra Felix, former Director of Admissions at Columbia, for full application review

What we don’t like:

  • One-on-one work is limited to very high-achieving students, who need to apply with a resume : “I limit my one-on-one work to students who I believe will be strong applicants to elite universities. As a rule, this means having high grades in challenging classes, a test score of ACT 34+ or SAT 1500+, and substantial activities outside of the classroom.”
  • Works with a limited number of students (60 per year), so often no availability
  • All-or-nothing packages don’t allow students to work with Chris for just a few hours or for part of the essay-writing process
  • Secretive about pricing (he’ll only give pricing details once he’s reviewed the student’s resume and agreed to work with them), but we expect the minimum cost of working one-on-one to be several thousand dollars

#3 – The College Essay Guy

Our Verdict — Best for Unlimited Essay Assistance Price: $4900 for application to 3 schools, $8050 for application for 10 schools We’re fans of Ethan Sawyer, the original “college essay guy”— his book, College Essay Essentials , is a great guide to the essay-writing process. Ethan doesn’t work directly with many students these days, but he now has a team of consultants who help students follow his principles. Their assistance is really all-or-nothing — they prefer to work with students from the very beginning of the process, and their minimum package is $4900, which includes assistance with essays for three schools. If students are applying to ten schools (a more realistic number for students aiming at competitive colleges), the fee is a hefty $7400.

Students who want unlimited help through the entire process, who have a sizable budget.

  • Cost: $4900 (supplemental essays for 3 schools) – $7400 (supplemental essays for 10 schools)
  • Essay coach qualifications: mix of Ivy grads and former teachers, some writers/screenwriters; all trained
  • Great free resources about the essay-writing process
  • Their Matchlighters Scholars Program gives back to the community by providing admissions consulting for select qualifying students
  • All-or-nothing packages have a high minimum fee and don’t work for students who want just a few hours of feedback or help with just part of the process

#4 – College Vine

Our Verdict — Best of the Big Platforms Price: $140–180/hour There are plenty of large platforms with large stables of part-time tutors and coaches available to work with students. Of these big platforms, we think CollegeVine has the best offerings. Compared to other large companies, CollegeVine provides more information about their tutors, and students can pick individual tutors to work with from their roster. However, this model is really just a way of finding individual tutors to hire. Tutors don’t receive any training and don’t share a common approach, so it’s a mixed bag. Their rates are fairly high for part-time tutors who don’t have specific expertise and training in college essay consulting. Because CollegeVine is really just a marketplace where individual tutors can find students, the quality and price will vary widely.

Students who want to work with a big company, or those who want a quick session or two to go over their essays.

  • Cost: Typically $140–180/hour
  • Essay coach qualifications: no specific qualifications, but a few are Ivy League graduates
  • Possible to select individual editors to work with from their roster.
  • Easy to schedule ad-hoc sessions with a tutor through the website.
  • No training or common approach for tutors
  • Editors are part-time , with no option to work with full-time college admissions experts
  • Relatively expensive for this level of expertise

College Essay Editing Alternatives (that Didn’t Make the Cut)

Individual essay consultants, #5 – college essay editor.

Our Verdict — Small Editing Team Price: Roughly $5,950 for applications to 10 schools College Essay Editor comprises two graduates of Stanford. This means that they have personal experience applying to highly competitive schools. One member of the team also has a college counseling certification, which is a good background for college essays. Based on their website, they appear to focus on the editing and proofreading phase of the essay-writing process. This can be helpful to students, but we recommend working with a service who can help students to uncover their values and brainstorm really great material that allows them to really shine—and if this doesn’t happen at the beginning of the process, it’s much harder to add in later on.

  • Cost: $195/1000 words for proofreading, $495/1000 words for 3 rounds of editing and proofreading, or $595/1000 words for unlimited rounds of editing and proofreading; for the purposes of comparison, complete applications to 10 competitive colleges would be around 9,650 words, or $5950.
  • Writing coach qualifications: Stanford graduates, one of whom has college counseling certification
  • Editors are graduates of Stanford University , and one is a member of NACAC, the national association of college counselors
  • They focus on editing and proofreading only , not on the crucial earlier steps of brainstorming and strategy
  • Small team with very limited availability
  • All asynchronous editing so you won’t be able to cultivate a real relationship with your essay coach.

#6 – Allison Karpf

Our Verdict — Former English Teacher Helping Students Price: $385/hour or $3850 package for application to one school Another option for students looking to hire an individual consultant is Allison Karpf. Allison is a former high school English teacher and a graduate of UC Berkeley who also holds a Masters of Education from Stanford. Her rates are definitely on the higher side, especially for someone who doesn’t have a professional writing background, but she does have extensive experience working with students to craft their essays.

  • Cost:  $385/hour or $3850 unlimited counseling (includes supplemental essays for one college)
  • Essay coach qualifications: former high school English teacher; Berkeley grad, Stanford MEd
  • Lots of experience helping students improve their college essays
  • Very quick to respond to client requests
  • No professional writing experience or Ivy-Plus undergraduate experience
  • High rates relative to other options
  • Limited availability , since she works alone

#7 – Your College Vision

Our Verdict: Former Journalist with More Affordable Rates Price: $180/hour, or packages starting from $3500 Laurie Lande is another individual consultant who helps students through the essay-writing process. She comes recommended by other consultants like Chris from College Essay Mentor . Laurie did not herself attend a highly competitive school, so she doesn’t have that personal experience of going through the selective admissions process, but she does have a professional writing background as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong.

  • Cost: $180/hour or packages starting at $3500
  • Essay coach qualifications: journalism background
  • Affordable pricing , relative to other options
  • Not a graduate of a highly selective school

#8 – The College Guru

Our Verdict — Good on Paper but Unresponsive Price: unknown Yet another individual essay consultant is Geanine Thompson from The College Guru. Geanine attended Dartmouth as an undergraduate and also holds an MBA from Duke. She also has a professional writing background as an assistant book editor at Berkley Publishing Group. Like Greg and Kevin at PrepMaven , she combines experience in the business world and at Wall Street firms with experience in education.

  • Cost: unknown
  • Essay coach qualifications: former assistant book editor; Dartmouth grad, Duke MBA
  • Dartmouth graduate and former book editor
  • Not responsive to emails and client requests

#9 – Sofia Zapiola

Our Verdict — A budget-friendly, personal essay editor. Price: $80/hour Yet another individual essay consultant is Sofia Zapiola, who offers a mix of essay editing and college application counseling services.

  • Cost: $80/hour
  • Essay coach qualifications: M.A. from Harvard; certificate in College Counseling from UC San Diego.
  • Individual approach, budget-friendly rates, commitment to working within families’ budgets.
  • Very few testimonials, so it’s difficult to evaluate how effective she is.

student writing college essay on laptop

Mid-size Teams

#10 – lotus learning.

Our Verdict — Expensive for Tutor Background Price: $165/hour Founded by a Harvard grad who is a former teacher and veteran of the publishing industry, Lotus learning offers college essay help in the Boston area. They have a small team of tutors, mostly recent grads from good but not Ivy-Plus colleges, and mostly with focus in health sciences.

  • Cost: $165/hour (minimum 8 hours)
  • Essay coach qualifications: tutors are recent grads, but not Ivy-Plus schools
  • Reasonable pricing with flexible packages
  • Essay editors aren’t graduates of Ivy-Plus schools and don’t have professional writing experience

Large platforms

#11 – study point.

Our Verdict — Larger Platform with Mystery Editors Price: Rates Between $60 and $120/hr Study Point is a larger essay editing service. They claim to have several decades of experience helping students to craft their college essays, but they do not give information about who their essay coaches are and what qualifications they might have.

  • Cost: $60-120/hr, depending on tutor experience
  • Essay coach qualifications: unknown
  • Larger company with several decades of experience
  • Unclear who the essay coaches are
  • Lack of statistics about their results

#12 – Ivy Select

Our Verdict — Larger Platform with Mystery Editors Price: unknown Ivy Select makes a lot of big promises on their website about having the best college essay consultants in the business, but they offer no information on who these consultants are, or on their backgrounds. They also brag that each consultant “only” works 20 students in one application cycle, but in our experience, that’s quite high.

  • Long list of impressive (but anonymous) testimonials
  • Only work with “top students”
  • No information on their website about who the editors are
  • Each essay coach works with up to 20 students at one time

#13 – Empowerly

Our Verdict — Larger Platform with Mystery Editors Price: High, from $6000/year Empowerly has over 60 college counselors who each work with an average of 5 students per year, in order to have more time to devote to each student. Their counselors come from “different educational backgrounds,” and while they do not provide specific biographical details we can assume that most of their essay coaches did not attend highly selective schools.

  • Cost: typically from $6000/year
  • Essay coach qualifications: college counselors
  • Counselors work with just a few students per year
  • You have to upgrade to “Empowerly Elite” to guarantee a counselor with a more selective educational background
  • No professional writing experience

#14 – Prepory

Our Verdict — Expensive but with Good Expertise Price: $325/hr Prepory is a college application and career counseling service that offers a comprehensive program for college applications at any stage of the process (including as early as 9th grade). They make a lot of impressive claims about the expertise of their coaches, but it’s quite difficult to actual find much information about their essay coach qualifications.

  • Cost: $325/hr
  • They have a comprehensive college application program that begins as early as 9th grade.
  • Limited information about essay coaches
  • High prices

Top 40 College Essay Services Considered

  • College Essay Editor
  • The College Essay Guy
  • College Vine
  • College Essay Mentor
  • Study Point
  • Allison Karpf
  • The College Guru
  • Lotus Learning
  • Summit Prep
  • Sofia Zapiola
  • Ivy Global / New Summits
  • College Essay Solutions
  • Your College Vision
  • Essay Edge*
  • ServicEscape*
  • PapersForge*
  • QuickWriter*
  • JustEditMyEssay*
  • JustDoMyEsssay*
  • ExpertWriting*
  • SpeedyPaper*
  • GradeMiners*

* A number of services will edit essays directly for students, or even write portions of the essay for students. We do not condone this. Admissions officers can tell when essays have been written or edited by adults and this can have severe consequences. We have excluded these services from our reviews.

student writing college essay

Why are college application essays important?

Can a great college essay alone get you into Harvard?

No. You’ll need your grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities (as well as letters of recommendation and interview) to be outstanding.

But can a mediocre essay be the reason you didn’t get into Harvard?

Yes. There are thousands of amazingly-qualified students who graduate from high school each year. Great grades and test scores might be a prerequisite for admission to a competitive college, but they alone aren’t enough.

Harvard University

College essays are a key component of a student’s application . When done well, they transform a collection of numbers—GPA, class rank, SAT or ACT scores , number of AP classes taken, AP scores—into a glimpse of a real, individual person.

Essays do many things. Good college essays can highlight extracurricular achievements which otherwise would be overlooked in a sterile list. Strong essays often indicate the student’s future plans —how they plan to leave a mark on their college campus and on the world. They can shine a light on unique challenges that a student may have had to face on their journey.

College admissions officers only have a few minutes to spend on each application. College essays need to be original, interesting, and memorable . They need to grab the attention of the admissions officer and persuade them that this is the student out of hundreds or thousands of other similarly-qualified applicants who should be admitted.

College admissions essays are usually unlike any other kind of writing that students have done before. They’re a combination of memoir and marketing pitch, and they need to be creative but also highly strategic. That’s a tough assignment!

What’s more, students are left to figure this assignment out on their own. A thoughtful and generous high school English teacher may provide guidance or offer to read essays and give feedback, but these teachers are responsible for many students, and they’re (usually) not experts in admissions strategies.

There’s another reason college essays are especially important from 2024 on. After the recent Supreme Court decision, the application essay has become one of the main ways that you can communicate how your racial identity has affected your life.

In fact, the New York Times published an article about how important it can be for students to discuss race in their college application essays!

Princeton University

Why work with a college essay service?

You may want to consider a college essay service if:

  • You have no idea where to start in order to write your college application essays
  • You feel overwhelmed by all of the different ideas you have and don’t know what would be the most strategic for college admissions—and what topics to definitely avoid for college essays
  • You don’t know how to craft a compelling stor y
  • You’re not sure how to edit and refine what you’ve written
  • You have a hard time keeping yourself on track and want an external structure to hold you accountable
  • You’re tired of conflict between students and parents about college essays
  • You’re aiming at a competitive college (not just the Ivy League!) and know that you need your essays to be outstanding
  • Your grades, test scores, and extracurriculars aren’t exceptional, so you need your essay to make your essay stand out from the pack
  • You’re unfamiliar with the US college admissions process (a common situation for international students and first-generation families in the US)

Any of these are strong reasons to consider working with a college essay service!

It’s also worth remembering that a lot of the free advice on college’s website isn’t always very clear. For example, NYU’s admissions Senior Assistant Director of Admissions says that “There is no right or wrong way to answer as long as your answer is genuine to you.”

While that’s true, that doesn’t offer much guidance on how to actually write the essay!

Though many college applicants might not mention it, more and more students are using professional college application consultants. Research at the University of Chicago has shown that over a quarter of high-achieving seniors employed private specialists to help with the college application process.

In fact, according to NPR , some companies are even offering college admissions counseling to their top employees as an incentive–that’s just how important professional help can be in the current landscape of college admissions.

It’s important to note that a good college essay service will not write your college application essays for you . This is unethical and illegal. That’s not just coming from us: take it from a school like Princeton, whose website insists on the importance of writing your own application essays.

A good college essay service will guide you through each step of the process , teaching you how to self-reflect and write well while sharing insider insight about admissions strategy .

Yale University

What makes a good college essay service?

We strongly believe that students need to write their own college essays , and we do not condone plagiarism or “buying” a college essay.

However, writing college application essays requires a completely new set of skills that is rarely taught in high school!

Writing a personal essay is much more creative than simply writing a good paper for English class. It requires a compelling narrative and a great deal of writing craft . A good essay service will teach how to do this kind of writing.

There are many college essay services that will provide only written feedback to students, usually in the form of comments added to an essay draft. (Remember, it’s important that students write their own essays, so avoid any college essay service that will make edits directly to an essay document .)

Written comments can be an effective component of good essay coaching. However, writing college essays is a deeply personal process , and it’s incredibly difficult to guide a student through the process of self-reflection, brainstorming, and planning purely through written comments.

In addition, a great college essay coach will teach students how to do this entire process of brainstorming, planning, outlining, writing, and revising . It’s difficult to learn why an essay coach is advising certain changes through written comments alone.

For these reasons, look for a college essay service with live, one-on-one services , not just written feedback. These days, it’s easy to work with the best college essay consultants in the country over Zoom!

college essay coaching service online

Students need to reflect on their goals, their passions, and what drives them to be the person they are. This requires a great deal of self-awareness and self-analysis . An experienced college essay coach can help draw these ideas out of students through tested introspection techniques and brainstorming exercises .

On top of all of that, students need to be cognizant of which traits and accomplishments will be most appealing to colleges , and which stories will be cliche and boring. Personal statements and supplementary essays need to fit together to tell a cohesive story, and they need to work together with the rest of the student’s application (extracurriculars, grades, and other accomplishments).

In other words, there’s a great deal of strategy here! An experienced college essay service can help students decide how to present themselves in the best possible light .

Furthermore, most students don’t know how to edit effectively . A really top-notch college essay service will also teach students how to edit their own writing —how to reorder sections for better flow, cut unnecessary words to meet a word count, eliminate passive verbs, and make their writing vivid and exciting. Our students are routinely amazed by how transformative this step can be, and how much they learn by doing it together with the essay coach.

Finally, the best college essay services can also help students to make a writing plan and keep them on track , so that parents don’t have to be involved directly.

Ready to work on your college essays? Schedule a free 15- to 30-minute consultation with Jessica or one of our founders.

Best overall: PrepMaven’s tutors offer the highest quality at the best price. With three tiers of tutors, they make it easy to work with an Ivy League undergraduate for as little as $79/hr. Or, families can work with education professionals or Ivy League graduates from $150/hr. PrepMaven’s track record means that you can be sure every hour is being spent productively, so that you can expect real results from the work.

Best for individual consultants: College Essay Mentor. In theory, College Essay Mentor would offer an unparalleled level of individual attention and guidance: his website boasts of some very impressive results. You might find it hard to actually schedule with him, however, since he’s very selective about his clients.

Best for unlimited essay assistance: The College Essay Guy might not offer that personalized attention you get from live, face to face essay coaching, but they do offer unlimited essay editing for up to 10 schools (if you’re comfortable paying a hefty package price).

Best of the big platforms: College Vine will always be a bit of a gamble. Because it’s a tutor marketplace, your results (and costs) will really depend on how lucky you get with your consultant. From our research, however, many of their essay coaches look to have solid track records.

Ready to work on college essays with one of our experienced writing coaches? Schedule a free test prep consultation with Jessica (Director of Tutoring) or one of our founders to see what would be the best fit for your family.

It’s always best to start early and not wait until the last minute to write your college essays! Remember that essays can be used to earn scholarships as well as college admission, so a few months of writing now can pay off with up to $300,000 in tuition saved later. 

We work with students at all stages of the writing process, from I-have-no-idea-what-to-write to final edits. To start working with an Ivy-League writing coach today, set up a quick free consultation with our team.

Schedule a free college essay consultation

Ivy League schools

Top College Essay Posts

  • Qualities of a Successful College Essay
  • 11 College Essays That Worked
  • How to Answer the UC Personal Insight Questions
  • How Colleges Read your College Applications (A 4-Step Process)
  • How to Write the Princeton Supplemental Essays
  • The Diamond Strategy: How We Help Students Write College Essays that Get Them Into Princeton (And Other Ivy League Schools)
  • What is the College Essay? Your Complete Guide for 202 4
  • College Essay Brainstorming: Where to Start
  • How to Write the Harvard Supplemental Essays
  • How to Format Your College Essay

phd essay reviews

Emily graduated  summa cum laude  from Princeton University and holds an MA from the University of Notre Dame. She was a National Merit Scholar and has won numerous academic prizes and fellowships. A veteran of the publishing industry, she has helped professors at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton revise their books and articles. Over the last decade, Emily has successfully mentored hundreds of students in all aspects of the college admissions process, including the SAT, ACT, and college application essay. 

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How to write a superb literature review

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The real proof – writer experience and quality of products, now the money – prices, discounts, payment methods, the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly.

PhD Essay Review by All Top Reviews infographic

PhDEssay.com is an American-based writing company that is a bit different than most services we have reviewed. We are conducting this PhDEssay review as a result of several requests by our site users who have concerns about the company and its practices. In preparing this summary of the company and its services, we have reviewed all of the site content; we have read all of the on-site PhD Essay testimonials; we have searched and found PhD Essay reviews posted on other review sites and social media; we looked at policies, guarantees, pricing, and the on-site blog. And we ordered a short research paper to see for ourselves just what kind f customer service and quality is provided.

PhD Essay offers a very different kind of service to students. It has a large database of free essays and papers which students can choose to download; it also offers to re-write any essay or paper a student may want to use. Both of these are horrible risky activities, and we would never recommend a student do this.

In addition to its database, the company also offers original academic writing products which students can order. It claims to have qualified researchers and writers to complete them.

We were able to find a number of PhDEssay reviews on the web, but none were positive. Well, let us qualify that. Students did state that they were able to find essays and papers on topics they needed. However, they also stated that they were not really good examples because the resources were outdated and the writing pretty poor.

Students who selected essays or papers from the database and then asked for one of the company’s writers to re-write them so that they would be original stated that the re-writes were poorly done and their own plagiarism scans pointed out plagiarized parts.

The quality of original writing did not fare much better with customer comments and feedback.

The paper we ordered was delivered on time, but that is the most positive thing we can say. Resources were old and outdated, and the writing was clearly completed by a writer who was not native English-speaking. We suspected that the piece may have been a re-write of one that is in the company database.

PhDEssay prices begin at $13.90 per page for re-writes and move up from there. The 8-page “original” piece we ordered with a 7-day deadline was priced at $148.20. We did contact customer support through their messaging system to ask about a PhD Essay discount for new customers, but were told that PhDEssay.com discounts were not given. Students should not look for any type of PhDEssay coupon code or any PhD Essay promo codes – they do not exist.

Payment methods are via credit cards, and a third-party processor is used. They are safe.

There is not much good to say about this company. In our opinion, it puts students in very risky positions by offering its free database and even by offering to re-write one of those essays or papers. The original writing feature is inferior too. Our PhD.com review is not a good one, for obvious reasons. We recommend that students avoid using it. Overall, our PhDEssay.com rating is “poor.”

PhDEssay Customers’ Reviews

I appreciated their prompt customer support, but I'm still confused about why they don't deliver sooner.

Their writers know English worse than a 5-years-old child

they didn't deliver my paper and ignored all my messages!! it's a fraud, don't by fooled by them!!!

STAY AWAY!! This company makes it looks like they will achieve the best essay and in result it’s overpriced and under performed it’s bullshit don’t waste your time or your money or your energy. They have high school students in India doing the writing and making it look like it’s Drs and Professors to fool you!! STAY AWAY

I really liked the depth of the research they made for my paper but they didn't put any thought in it. I basically have a list of facts, no logical conclusion, no opinion behind. That's not a research paper.

The company looks legit because of their website and support and attitude and all that stuff. But the final result is poor in terms of writing itself that is just not ACADEMIC. Maybe high school at best. I struggled a lott trying to edit the paper so that my professor could accept it. Don`t recommend this company at all!

Want to get my money back! Your service is terrible.

Their website is super confusing. I needed at least an hour to find my way and place an order. Plus, I`m not very excited about the final result either. Too basic for Senior students.

They wrote the worst essay for me. So, I doubt you can trust them with a dissertation or something more important. My advice here is to stay away from this company and its "experts". The quality is truly awful.

It seems that they gathered too much data for my research paper and decided to use it all in one text. Not the academic attitude my professor would like.

What I really liked about this service is their website. That`s it.

It`s awful that such services exist! They take money for papers written for other people and slightly rewritten for your order. My professor was angry with me because of plagiarism and told me to retake the whole course. Not a kind of help I expected.

Do you expect a competitive paper to be done by experts, or do you expect a plagiarized one? If the last that means you picked the right place. I`m still under the gross shock about the outcome of the term paper ordered in here. First of all, it`s not dedicated to the provided topic. Second - it doesn`t show any level of high quality that I was promised. Seriously, that`s an awful place to work.

Never again I`m coming back to phdessay. Terrible service with rude support managers!

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PhD essay Review – Why You Must Avoid This Service

Updated 23.09.2021

Based on 13 reviews

To decide what score each company deserves, we compare our team’s grades, academics’ ratings, and individual reviews. Opinions of LetsGradeIt.com team is worth 30% of the total grade. Academics’ ratings comprise 35%, and individual grades account for 35%. In cases when there are no individual reviews posted about a firm, academics have a say by 60%, while our team gets 40%.

All ratings, opinions, and reviews you see on this site do not necessarily reflect the official position of any other company, educational establishment, or employer. These reviews are always subject to revision and change. Please do not hold us to them — visit actual websites to make any decision.

phdessay.com

  • free essay samples
  • they are a legit company
  • poor grammar
  • shady order pricing scheme
  • Discounts Not Available
  • Types of Papers Essays, Research papers, Thesis, Dissertation, Coursework
  • Payment Methods : VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Discover
  • Minimum Deadline 2 hours
  • Lowest Price $20
  • Number of Samples 100k+
  • Number of Categories 37
  • Access Free
  • Originality of Samples Plagiarized
  • Quality of Samples Low
  • Website Navigation Simple
  • Plagiarism Checker

This company is a newcomer in the field, which could have been promised, yet it is one of those clones that offer poor grammar and lack of proper revision work. What makes it worse, in our opinion, is their awful bidding system, which only increases the final price and makes it quite expensive for the tons of mistakes that they offer. Their writers seem to be non-English speakers who genuinely fail to understand what you are asking for. Their essay samples are plagiarized as well. This company must be avoided if you do not want to receive poor results and waste your time by paying way more than you expect.

In this particular case, we are dealing with yet another company operated by Ratata Ltd, which is also famous for EduBirdie, Papersowl, and the likes, which is why our Phd essay review team knew what to expect. This essay writing service does not have much coverage or reviews online, which is why we took the risk to try this company’s services to determine their quality. They offer basic essay writing that includes proofreading and lots of free essay samples. Speaking of those, one may have luck finding something decent, yet the majority of them remain poor. Their pricing scheme is unclear because they are promising $35.80 for a two-page paper, yet since they implement bidding, we had to pay $30 per page of college-level writing. The company is not new in the market, yet we could not find any reviews on Sitejabber or Trustpilot to confirm our negative experience.

Phdessay Review of Tools

Unfortunately, we could find only one tool for our Phd Essay review that is a free plagiarism detection tool. It makes us feel concerned because this company failed to check their essay samples with it. Otherwise, it would show that they lack originality.

phdessay-tools

Phd Essay Reviews of Samples

Since PhD Essays focus on their vast collection of free essay samples, we shall check them for our best essay writing website review and see whether they have something good on offer.

phdessay-samples

Access: Free

Originality: Plagiarized

Number of categories: 37 different categories and a complex keywords system that lets you choose your essay examples based on single words or expressions

Sample quality: Low

Sample accuracy: It could have been better. For example, our case study sample that we used has been found in the “Case Study” category while it also relates to Marketing, Business Management, or even Environmental Science or Politics. It could not be found there.

The majority of free essay examples we have studied represent poor quality, lack of proper proofreading, and the worst English grammar that is not even high-school level. We do not recommend downloading any of these samples.

The Winter’s Tale Mystery

Category: Research

Topic: Mystery

Words: 5087

Assessment: This assignment lacks the academic structure that is necessary for any good research. The author’s ideas are unclear and there are frequent jumps between Shakespeare’s play and the card games with no evidence or references that would at least support some point. It has only 57% originality and contains poor grammar. It requires major proofreading and a different structure.

the-winters-tale-mystery

A Reaction Paper on Connected, but alone?

Topic: Connected but Alone, Innovation

Assessment: The very first sentence “The technology has impacted on our lives very greatly” has been written by some non-English speaker but it looks more like a machine translation. As we worked on our phd essays review, we have seen similar “English” phrases in our order as well. This sample is shockingly bad, let alone plagiarized. It has no references for all the claims it makes, which is another negative point.

a-reaction-paper-on-connected-but-alone

Travel is The Best Education

Category: Best Education

Topic: Education

Assessment: This paper has numerous repetitions and does not implement any statistical information or numbers that would help make it reliable. While it has relatively better grammar, it lacks good structure and a thesis statement that would explain the author’s main point. It does not provide any educational value, in our opinion.

travel-is-the-best-education

Interface and Its Usability

phdessay-interface

PhD Essay website revolves around their free essays , which is a bit confusing because their sorting system could have been better. As we wrote this Ph.D. essay review, we mostly encountered paper types instead of topics that would help identify these completely free essays online. This aspect could have been addressed in a better way.

Prices and Payment Methods

This part is relatively unclear as we have seen $20 per page when we placed our order, yet our price has increased to $30 per page, which was the lowest we could get. According to some other phdessay.com reviews that we could study, some prices would go up to $41 per page without an explanation as to why such a sudden price change. We can only assume that it depends on who your writer is, yet it looks like they have a pool of freelancers. No discounts at the time of this PhD Essay review.

Delivery Time & Deadlines

Our paper has been delivered on time and we had no issues here. They promise to deliver your paper in as little as six hours, yet it was impossible to select this option for some reason.

Revision & Refunds

They promise free revisions, yet our revision request has been ignored because our writer was unavailable to do it. We were told to pay a little extra and place a new request, which was already past our deadline. They offer refunds only if one is lucky to pass their QA Control.

Confidentiality & Guarantees

We could not find reliable phdessay reviews that would help us form an opinion. The few that we have analyzed feel concerned about their reliability, which is exactly how we felt writing this PhD essay review. Their unclear payment scheme and high prices are a bit odd for a serious company.

Writers at Phd Essay

They use a bidding system, which means that your price will always be more (when it is supposed to be less!) than what you see in the beginning. They claim that you can choose your writer, which is not true because you will see at least five profiles of those who want to bid for the price. These profiles are fake, according to some online reviews. Phd essays writer’s pages do not contain any information or user reviews that would help make one’s choice. Paying an additional $9.99, you can ask Phd Essay to find a good writer for your particular task. Not much safer than choosing a professor called “Fast and Reliable”.

Written Assignments’ Quality

Low. Our paper for this PhD essay review was an example of the worst quality, considering their high price. It is unacceptable for homework websites that claim to have college-level writing. Premium and Platinum options would mean a 10 or 20% addition to your order’s price.

Customer Support

Their customer support starts with an AI-chatbot, which is more annoying than helpful. We got in touch with a human being in about fifteen minutes after talking to their bot. Their ordering system is quite simple but you will find their bidding system challenging. Our review of Phd essay required their free paper revision. Their support has ignored our request, asking us to pay again.

Online Reputation of PhDessay

Their online reputation is virtually non-existent. We could find several negative reviews from single individuals who shared their thoughts, yet both Sitejabber and Trustpilot do not have any reviews that could be verified. It brings up serious concerns about the Phd essay’s reliability.

Is the company legit?

They are run by Ratata Ltd and have a phone number in the United States. We did not detect any scam activity.

We have encountered poor grammar, lack of free revision, and no Bibliography page. Asking to fix it resulted in rude behavior and asking to pay an extra to another writer. Our order’s price has been $10 more than what we expected.

Final Verdict

PhD Essays represent themselves as the collection of college paper examples that can be accessed for free with a helpful addition of paid services. These offers are nothing special and do not differ much from the rest of the company’s clones. While you can see their constant deals of $35.80 for two pages of work, it is far from being true. Their bidding system is unreliable, considering sudden price jumps like what we have experienced during our PhD essays review.

Our Phd Essay review can only give 2.5 stars out of 5 because of poor order quality, high prices, lack of real writers, incorrect bidding system, and plagiarized essay samples.

They cannot be considered a safe company. They lack paper refunds, their revisions are not always free. Poor English grammar and plagiarism issues.

They are not a scam per se, yet their paper quality is poor. We recommend looking for help elsewhere. Their user profiles have fake names and pictures.

No, it is not free. One page of academic writing will cost you at least $20 per page. They provide essay samples free of charge. You can also use their plagiarism detector without registering.

user

I don’t think they read the book i gave them. if they truly did the report they wrote wouldn’t have been this bad. They missed a lot of information and it is just impossible for me to tender this to my professor.

thanks for sending the paper on time!

I’m kind of happy with the work, but the price is a bit steep. It would be nice if the prices were cheaper or at least some discounts for students 😀

not bad, not bad! suitable for a quick solution to academic questions

Got on time, there were some typos but not a big deal

There are some grammatical flaws, but that’s okay, we all make mistakes sometimes.

I can’t give this service a high rating because they didn’t meet the deadline

the writer wrote a good essay, but it took him longer than we had stipulated

They don’t have a problem with the quality of the writing, but the fact that they have already delayed the paper twice is not very good.

The essay service provided me with a paper that was similar to what I could have written myself.

My essay struck a balance between theoretical concepts and practical examples.

As a student with a strong academic background, I have mixed feelings about essay writing services. While I understand the convenience they offer for busy students, I also believe that relying too heavily on these services can be detrimental to one’s academic growth. That being said, I recently used an essay writing service to get some help with a particularly difficult assignment, and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the work I received. The writer followed my instructions carefully and produced a well-written paper that met all of the requirements. While I don’t plan on using these services frequently, I appreciate having them as an option for when I’m in a pinch.

In my opinon PhDessay was average overall. The platform offered a decent selection of academic essays and research papers on various subjects, which was helpful for gathering information and understanding different perspectives. Navigating the website was relatively straightforward, and the search feature made it easy to find relevant materials. However, I found the quality of some essays to be inconsistent. While a few were well-written and informative, others lacked depth and critical analysis.

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Is it possible to get a PhD by writing only review and survey papers?

Suppose that a PhD (in engineering) student has 3-4 review/survey papers in their domain, and has received more than 500 citations in total. In a situation like this, can they pass the oral defense and get the PhD degree without a research paper?

What I want to know if review/survey papers can compensate my lack of research output. Any examples and stories that I can refer to?

  • graduate-school

Greg Martin's user avatar

  • 28 I would say no. A lit review is usually just a chapter in the thesis. It is not counted as a contribution. My advice is to have a look at the examination criteria of your PhD program. At my university, a lit review is only one out of 10 criteria; i.e., if you only have a lit review, you will get 1 mark -- a bad fail. –  Prof. Santa Claus Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 4:52
  • 4 It seems not a very realistic situation. –  Alchimista Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 5:03
  • 2 1) If you know someone who did, the answer is a clear yes, so please post it! 2) Keep in mind that phds are often awarded without any papers (your comment sounds like he/she did some new things but they were not accepted in a journal. 3) In most of the cases, you only have to convince the supervisor -- the commitee often doesn't want to oppose them (for political reasons). –  user111388 Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 5:26
  • 2 Review papers are often by invitation these days, and it will be well-established researchers that are asked to author these, not PhD students. A paper is also unlikely to rack up 500 citations by the end of your PhD. –  RPM Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 21:11
  • 1 Prof. Santa Clause, Capt. Emacs, Tom -- please consider converting your comments to proper answers; answers-in-comments are subject to deletion. –  cag51 ♦ Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 22:44

7 Answers 7

It is possible to get a PhD without writing any papers; the formal requirement is of writing a thesis, and many people do just that. So I think the formulation of your question is a bit misleading.

But cutting to what I think is the actual intent behind your question rather than the specific choice of words, the answer is almost certainly that you cannot get a PhD without doing original research. Just making expositions of research already done by others, no matter how detailed or how many citations you get for them, is not what a PhD is about and wouldn’t satisfy the requirements.

Dan Romik's user avatar

  • 18 @user2768 let’s not get carried away with the academic’s bad habit of qualifying every statement with endless caveats and asterisks. I’m sure one can while away many hours arguing about what it means to “tease out new knowledge”, but it won’t change the fact that you can’t get a PhD for writing survey papers. –  Dan Romik Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 7:20
  • 2 I respectably disagree, I think you could get a PhD from the "right" survey papers. For instance, surveys revealing and plugging significant holes in the literature. Especially when holes would likely not be identified without surveying. I certainly wouldn't recommend that route! The OP can chime in on whether there is any novelty in their surveys. –  user2768 Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 7:44
  • 4 Thoroughly reviewing the literature can yield new analysis that would be considered original research, but in many cases it would be a particularly inefficient way to proceed. Imagine you want to know if sugar improves tea taste and no single paper exists on the subject. Option one: test (recruit volunteers, make double-blind taste ratings). Option two: find a newspaper survey about sugar in coffee, a figure of a physiological study of tea effects on the brain, and an appendix table of a food chemistry interaction guide, and try to glue it all together. I know which I would prefer... –  UJM Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 12:27
  • 9 In my lab in grad school, it was very clearly expected that a person defending their thesis would be able to plainly answer the question, "What is it that you are doing that is new?" –  Tristan Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 15:07
  • 6 Note: the formal requirement depends on country (and possibly subject within that country?) and does in some countries require you to have published. –  Jack Aidley Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 16:35

The naive answer is yes. All you have to do is convince a panel that what you did warrants a PhD. This will be different for each school/department/panel/student. Typically this requires contributing something novel to the field. Something novel does not have to be a research paper.

A couple examples:

A colleague wrote a review where he extracted related data from a multitude of papers. He did this for a single minor figure in his review. Turns out others wanted that data already aggregated and it spawned many more research papers. He ended up creating a website/database and maintained it throughout the rest of his PhD. This database was a significant portion of his PhD (and probably his strongest portion).

Another colleague created a machine to automate a particularly labor intensive process in the lab (2 years of development). This was then used by many other researchers in their own novel research papers. Again this became a large portion of his PhD, and made him very popular among those who wanted to use it.

It doesn't have to be a research paper but it does need to be novel and contribute to the field. A review in and of itself is not necessarily novel, but it can be. As @JonCuster pointed out, the 'new' stuff was not the review nor a research paper but new tools that helped the community do further research.

noslenkwah's user avatar

  • 25 In your two cases, each created a new tool that was a step forward in the field - that was the 'new' stuff they did, and indeed those steps are items worthy of being part of a PhD. –  Jon Custer Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 14:14
  • 2 @noslenkwah Jon Custer's positive comment got more upvotes than your answer. Consider incorporating it. –  Captain Emacs Commented Sep 4, 2020 at 5:46
  • 2 @CaptainEmacs - Agreed. Done. –  noslenkwah Commented Sep 4, 2020 at 12:59

Survey papers are useful and will give you citations if well written.

But for a PhD, you need to add to the existing body of knowledge, not merely reorganize it. Unless it is a massive contribution, such as a reformulation or neater repackaging of existing knowledge (for extreme examples, consider parts of Euclid, Cartan, Wielandt, the latter of which merely found a shorter proof of a known theorem, but it was much shorter), which itself is a scientific contribution, it's a very clear no .

In fact, if you are able to create a simplified map through a difficult and ill-understood landscape, that's definitely a PhD.

Others talked about new tools as worthy of a PhD, in a way, this is a similar situation. Identifying what makes a field hang together is a new tool. Done well, it can change a field.

However, this is most likely to be far harder than to pick a concrete problem and study it. However, it is also far more than just a literature review.

Captain Emacs's user avatar

Information Systems professor here. I chair a dissertation every year or two. Short answer is no.

(1) You need to prove that you can independently execute the scientific method and complete a sufficiently complex research project that extends the body of knowledge in your area.

(2) I wouldn't be doing you any favors if I let you leave the program without a good body of work that you could use for conference papers and grant proposals.

Jordan's user avatar

Your advisor and your university determine whether your work meets the requirement for the degree. That's where to go for guidance.

I suspect (as @DanRomik says) that a literature survey, no matter how thorough and useful, will be insufficient.

Ethan Bolker's user avatar

It seems to me that what you're actually asking is can a person be classed as a researcher if they only write review papers. I think that you know that the answer to that is no, unless the review papers have significant research results embedded in them. Generally though, review papers are requested, and just randomly writing up a survey paper and getting it published is very difficult, and actually not recommended unless you are an expert and have been studying the subject for a long time.

Tom's user avatar

You might be able to get a PhD in metascience.

To quote Wikipedia, metascience is "the use of scientific methodology to study science itself", performing research on the process of research. Part of this process would involve writing a bunch of literature reviews in order to analyze aspects of the scientific literature to determine information about the scientific process. For instance, you might code a thousand recently-published Information Technology papers to determine what the most popular scientific methodologies are, and how the methodology chosen affects other aspects of the paper like reproducibility or the availability of software artifacts produced during the process of writing the paper.

As a result, when you perform a metascientific analysis of the literature, you're not just taking existing knowledge and packaging it into a more convenient location, but producing new knowledge about the scientific process.

This isn't just speculative, either; when looking up the publications of authors who created popular scientific methodologies and gotten thousands of citations on their papers introducing them, you'll sometimes find that they've created a career out of publishing papers on metascience and scientific methodologies.

nick012000's user avatar

  • 1 Obligatory xkcd . –  Dan Romik Commented Sep 4, 2020 at 6:07
  • @DanRomik Basically, yeah. –  nick012000 Commented Sep 4, 2020 at 6:10

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phd essay reviews

phd essay reviews

  • What Is a PhD Literature Review?
  • Doing a PhD

A literature review is a critical analysis of published academic literature, mainly peer-reviewed papers and books, on a specific topic. This isn’t just a list of published studies but is a document summarising and critically appraising the main work by researchers in the field, the key findings, limitations and gaps identified in the knowledge.

  • The aim of a literature review is to critically assess the literature in your chosen field of research and be able to present an overview of the current knowledge gained from previous work.
  • By the conclusion of your literature review, you as a researcher should have identified the gaps in knowledge in your field; i.e. the unanswered research questions which your PhD project will help to answer.
  • Quality not quantity is the approach to use when writing a literature review for a PhD but as a general rule of thumb, most are between 6,000 and 12,000 words.

What Is the Purpose of a Literature Review?

First, to be clear on what a PhD literature review is NOT: it is not a ‘paper by paper’ summary of what others have done in your field. All you’re doing here is listing out all the papers and book chapters you’ve found with some text joining things together. This is a common mistake made by PhD students early on in their research project. This is a sign of poor academic writing and if it’s not picked up by your supervisor, it’ll definitely be by your examiners.

The biggest issue your examiners will have here is that you won’t have demonstrated an application of critical thinking when examining existing knowledge from previous research. This is an important part of the research process as a PhD student. It’s needed to show where the gaps in knowledge were, and how then you were able to identify the novelty of each research question and subsequent work.

The five main outcomes from carrying out a good literature review should be:

  • An understanding of what has been published in your subject area of research,
  • An appreciation of the leading research groups and authors in your field and their key contributions to the research topic,
  • Knowledge of the key theories in your field,
  • Knowledge of the main research areas within your field of interest,
  • A clear understanding of the research gap in knowledge that will help to motivate your PhD research questions .

When assessing the academic papers or books that you’ve come across, you must think about the strengths and weaknesses of them; what was novel about their work and what were the limitations? Are different sources of relevant literature coming to similar conclusions and complementing each other, or are you seeing different outcomes on the same topic by different researchers?

When Should I Write My Literature Review?

In the structure of your PhD thesis , your literature review is effectively your first main chapter. It’s at the start of your thesis and should, therefore, be a task you perform at the start of your research. After all, you need to have reviewed the literature to work out how your research can contribute novel findings to your area of research. Sometimes, however, in particular when you apply for a PhD project with a pre-defined research title and research questions, your supervisor may already know where the gaps in knowledge are.

You may be tempted to skip the literature review and dive straight into tackling the set questions (then completing the review at the end before thesis submission) but we strongly advise against this. Whilst your supervisor will be very familiar with the area, you as a doctoral student will not be and so it is essential that you gain this understanding before getting into the research.

How Long Should the Literature Review Be?

As your literature review will be one of your main thesis chapters, it needs to be a substantial body of work. It’s not a good strategy to have a thesis writing process here based on a specific word count, but know that most reviews are typically between 6,000 and 12,000 words. The length will depend on how much relevant material has previously been published in your field.

A point to remember though is that the review needs to be easy to read and avoid being filled with unnecessary information; in your search of selected literature, consider filtering out publications that don’t appear to add anything novel to the discussion – this might be useful in fields with hundreds of papers.

How Do I Write the Literature Review?

Before you start writing your literature review, you need to be clear on the topic you are researching.

1. Evaluating and Selecting the Publications

After completing your literature search and downloading all the papers you find, you may find that you have a lot of papers to read through ! You may find that you have so many papers that it’s unreasonable to read through all of them in their entirety, so you need to find a way to understand what they’re about and decide if they’re important quickly.

A good starting point is to read the abstract of the paper to gauge if it is useful and, as you do so, consider the following questions in your mind:

  • What was the overarching aim of the paper?
  • What was the methodology used by the authors?
  • Was this an experimental study or was this more theoretical in its approach?
  • What were the results and what did the authors conclude in their paper?
  • How does the data presented in this paper relate to other publications within this field?
  • Does it add new knowledge, does it raise more questions or does it confirm what is already known in your field? What is the key concept that the study described?
  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of this study, and in particular, what are the limitations?

2. Identifying Themes

To put together the structure of your literature review you need to identify the common themes that emerge from the collective papers and books that you have read. Key things to think about are:

  • Are there common methodologies different authors have used or have these changed over time?
  • Do the research questions change over time or are the key question’s still unanswered?
  • Is there general agreement between different research groups in the main results and outcomes, or do different authors provide differing points of view and different conclusions?
  • What are the key papers in your field that have had the biggest impact on the research?
  • Have different publications identified similar weaknesses or limitations or gaps in the knowledge that still need to be addressed?

Structuring and Writing Your Literature Review

There are several ways in which you can structure a literature review and this may depend on if, for example, your project is a science or non-science based PhD.

One approach may be to tell a story about how your research area has developed over time. You need to be careful here that you don’t just describe the different papers published in chronological order but that you discuss how different studies have motivated subsequent studies, how the knowledge has developed over time in your field, concluding with what is currently known, and what is currently not understood.

Alternatively, you may find from reading your papers that common themes emerge and it may be easier to develop your review around these, i.e. a thematic review. For example, if you are writing up about bridge design, you may structure the review around the themes of regulation, analysis, and sustainability.

As another approach, you might want to talk about the different research methodologies that have been used. You could then compare and contrast the results and ultimate conclusions that have been drawn from each.

As with all your chapters in your thesis, your literature review will be broken up into three key headings, with the basic structure being the introduction, the main body and conclusion. Within the main body, you will use several subheadings to separate out the topics depending on if you’re structuring it by the time period, the methods used or the common themes that have emerged.

The important thing to think about as you write your main body of text is to summarise the key takeaway messages from each research paper and how they come together to give one or more conclusions. Don’t just stop at summarising the papers though, instead continue on to give your analysis and your opinion on how these previous publications fit into the wider research field and where they have an impact. Emphasise the strengths of the studies you have evaluated also be clear on the limitations of previous work how these may have influenced the results and conclusions of the studies.

In your concluding paragraphs focus your discussion on how your critical evaluation of literature has helped you identify unanswered research questions and how you plan to address these in your PhD project. State the research problem you’re going to address and end with the overarching aim and key objectives of your work .

When writing at a graduate level, you have to take a critical approach when reading existing literature in your field to determine if and how it added value to existing knowledge. You may find that a large number of the papers on your reference list have the right academic context but are essentially saying the same thing. As a graduate student, you’ll need to take a methodological approach to work through this existing research to identify what is relevant literature and what is not.

You then need to go one step further to interpret and articulate the current state of what is known, based on existing theories, and where the research gaps are. It is these gaps in the literature that you will address in your own research project.

  • Decide on a research area and an associated research question.
  • Decide on the extent of your scope and start looking for literature.
  • Review and evaluate the literature.
  • Plan an outline for your literature review and start writing it.

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Kelly Wilson

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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

  • An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
  • A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
  • Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
  • Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
  • Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
  • Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
  • Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

  • Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
  • Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

  • Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
  • Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
  • Qualitative versus quantitative research
  • Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
  • Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
  • Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

  • It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
  • Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
  • Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
  • Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

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My real review on PhdEssay service:

I would give this company a negative review if I could. This was my second time using PhdEssay. The first time my paper was decent, I still needed to spend about two hours of my own time editing, but at least it was salvageable.

THIS TIME, my paper was on OBESITY IN AMERICA. How difficult is that? I require four pages with 2 cites and needed it within 24 hours. When the 24 hours was up, I still didn’t have my paper. I need to chat with a representative to see what the status was. Then I was told I would get my paper within five minutes, which was also a lie. More like 15.

When I looked at the preview, it was AWFUL. Complete garbage. Misspellings ALL over the place, now flow from one topic to the next, sentences were not in English at all. I am in complete shock. When talking to my rep about revisions or a refund, she told me that she needed 5+ hours for the revision. UM… NO!!!

I paid over $100 for nothing. The paper is completely useless. I approved it only because I have a paper to submit in 4 hours so I’ll be spending the rest of my day at work FIXING it in between projects.

I WILL NEVER, ever recommend PhdEssay to anyone. They should be ashamed to stand behind work they claim is “college” level. Papers of mine weren’t this poorly written in middle school. Unbelievable!!!!!

What is PhDEssay?

PhDEssay is both a database of free essays and a paid writing service. It is true that the first section of the website is designed to redirect you to the second and convince you to buy a custom essay at a high price from professional writers. This is what I found most offensive about the site.

Clicking on most of these things will take you to the order form. These are cheap tricks that no legitimate company would employ. Despite my disgust at the constant pop-ups and ever-present ‘Place an Order’ banners I decided to write a decent and concise review of phdessay.com and see if this site is worth trusting.

What I enjoyed: You can find some good free essays examples. You can prepare for the test by using flashcards An easy-to-fill order sheet.

What I didn’t like: Constant pop-ups and banners Essay examples cannot be copied nor downloaded Unreasonably high prices Fake writers Customer support is ineffective and intrusive; low papers quality.

What Does a Paper Cost You?

Site uses a bidding system that can be very beneficial if it is well-regulated. PhDEssay offers prices that are much higher than the average, but this is not the case. It’s unclear why some writers charge $25 per page while others charge $35. Although I understand if you have an urgent order, I did not set a deadline of 16 days for my essay.

Perhaps the difference could be due to a writer’s qualifications? This would be a solid explanation… If writers didn’t have fake profiles photos and certainly made-up names.

But there’s more to the story. Oceonica Corp owns the site. This company evidently manages several similar education help websites. They also have a shared pool with customer support agents and freelance writers. These platforms set the price, and the writers only get a fraction of the amount you pay. They can’t change the price, so there is no bidding or negotiation.

PhDEssay Discounts

This company uses the company’s bidding to deny it any coupon code for PhDEssay. There was a way to get a discount, however. I received an email immediately offering a 10% discount after I cancelled my order. I was hoping to make a new order later. This is another confirmation that the system sets the prices.

Is PhDEssay Safe?

The information I’ve read so far has been sufficient to help me answer the critical question “Is PhD Essay legit?” But I need to review the terms and conditions of the website. Here’s the thing: they differ for each section of the website. This is a warning. The essay examples database contains orders, refunds and freelancers in it’s terms of use, even though it doesn’t actually provide writing services. It just redirects you on to another page. Which one should you trust? It’s probably safer to not trust any of them, particularly since I don’t have enough PhDEssay reviews that would convince me otherwise.

These are the Comments of Customers About this Writing Service

There are very few reviews and the comments on PhDEssay.com are not taken into consideration. SiteJabber and TrustPilot have not posted any reviews. The few that I did find on Google were mostly negative and complained about the poor quality of writing and high price. I checked the comments and threads on PhDEssay Reddit, but found no mention of this website. The company’s services are not appreciated by many people.

How it Works

It’s very easy to create an order. First, you need to provide some basic information about your paper. You can then choose additional features that will be used on all Oceonica Corp websites.

Now I want to concentrate my PhDEssay review upon the essay examples. First, there aren’t a million. According to the pages, there are approximately 33 thousand essays and 15 000 flashcards.

This is a complete lie. However, these numbers are quite high. What is the source of all these materials? They are reliable! Take a look at the “essay example”

These are only a few random chapters taken from a book. This is not an analysis, it was simply a copy of the book. It is clear that there are many examples of this type on the site. Flashcards are also a mess. It seems that they are generated from study books by a bot.

How to Contact Customer Support

You can’t get customer support until you are redirected. It seems that they don’t know about the essays database. After complaining to an agent that I had not received the essay sample promised to me, she stated that they don’t offer free samples and tried to persuade me to order one. After explaining the situation to her and providing screenshots, she assured me that she would forward the matter to another department and she would close the chat. That was the last I heard of it.

Is PhDEssay worth the Effort?

I didn’t expect the paper promised to me, and it wasn’t a miracle. Even with the PhDEssay discount code that I received, the writing was not worth what I paid. The writers are not qualified and don’t make a lot of money, but the company charges prices that seem to be comparable to real professors. PhDEssay is fraudulent, even though they do deliver papers. It is a scam. The lack of reviews is its only positive aspect. These scoundrels are unlikely to fool many people.

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IMAGES

  1. The Greatest Literature Review Thesis Tips

    phd essay reviews

  2. How to Write an Article Review (With Samples)

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  3. Basic to Advanced Guide on Review Paper Writing for PhD Scholars

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  4. PhD Essay Review

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  5. PhDessay Review ️ Legit and Reliable?

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  6. The BEST MD/PhD Essay Examples

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VIDEO

  1. Essay Crisis VLOG🤯 Writing a 20 page literature review in 5 days

  2. Tips For PhD Students

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COMMENTS

  1. Read Customer Service Reviews of phd-essays.com

    Excellent Service. I have been using phd-essays.com for more than 3 years now and have been pleased with the experience. The assignments (mostly essays) were done on time and the revisions were free and fast. I wish all such services were as good as this one. Date of experience: February 15, 2022. Useful. Share.

  2. A Guide to Writing a PhD Literature Review

    The length of a PhD literature review varies greatly by subject. In Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences the review will typically be around 5,000 words long, while STEM literature reviews will usually be closer to 10,000 words long. In any case, you should consult with your supervisor on the optimum length for your own literature review.

  3. PDF Writing an Effective Literature Review

    at each of these in turn.IntroductionThe first part of any literature review is a way of inviting your read. into the topic and orientating them. A good introduction tells the reader what the review is about - its s. pe—and what you are going to cover. It may also specifically tell you.

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    Overuse of passive voice. Subjective or inflated language. For a more comprehensive edit, you can add one or multiple add-on editing services that fit your needs. ⏰ Deadline. Within 3 hours. 📄 Texts. Papers, essays, reports, manuscripts. ⭐️ Rating. 4.6 based on 13,690 reviews.

  5. PHDEssay.com Review 2023: Services, Discounts, Prices, and Benefits

    No reviews. Reddit. No reviews. Phd Essay. Look at this circus. Do you believe that students who wrote PhdEssay reviews openly used their names and pics? Yeah, I don't trust it, either. Social Media. The company has Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram profiles, but they are outdated and have no engagement with students.

  6. What Is a Dissertation?

    A dissertation is a long-form piece of academic writing based on original research conducted by you. It is usually submitted as the final step in order to finish a PhD program. Your dissertation is probably the longest piece of writing you've ever completed. It requires solid research, writing, and analysis skills, and it can be intimidating ...

  7. A Guide to Writing a PhD Thesis

    The first stage of your PhD thesis will usually be the literature review.We've already written a detailed guide to what the PhD literature review involves, but here's what you need to know about this stage of your PhD:. The literature review is a chance for you to display your knowledge and understanding of what's already been written about your research area - this could consist of ...

  8. Expert College Essay Review

    Essay review. Work with an independent reviewer to improve your college essays. Essay experts go beyond editing for grammar and language. ... Yale University - PhD in Theoretical Physics . Review starting at $50. Return time. Standard delivery up to 48 hours. Also offers 4 hour return time. 5 hour return available. Denise Haile. 4.7. 24 years ...

  9. 14 Best College Essay Services for 2024 (40 Services Reviewed)

    Research conducted by Emily Kierkegaard, PhD, and expert-reviewed by Kevin Wong, PrepMaven Co-founder. Not sure which college application essay coaching and editing service is the best? We compared the top 40 services, created in-depth reviews for 14 of them, and narrowed it down to the 4 best that will help guide you through the process of writing amazing college application essays.

  10. How to write a superb literature review

    The best proposals are timely and clearly explain why readers should pay attention to the proposed topic. It is not enough for a review to be a summary of the latest growth in the literature: the ...

  11. Scribbr's College Essay Editing & Coaching

    Amy. Originally from Maryland, Amy headed west to attend Scripps College in California, where she earned a bachelor's degree in music and gender studies. In 2009, she began working for the admissions office of her alma mater, where she focused on reviewing applications and interviewing prospective students. Excellent Based on 13,688 reviews.

  12. ᐅ Free Essays and Papers Online on Phdessay.com

    Phdessay is a group of experienced scholarly experts who can help you with writting your essay ☝ We have more than 1.000.000 free essay examples online for you. Essay Examples; ... PhD - level papers. Hire expert. Hire a subject expert to get better results faster. Hire Expert. ... (190 reviews) Completed projects 242. Joined us ...

  13. PhDEssay.com: pros and cons checked and estimated in one review

    In our opinion, it puts students in very risky positions by offering its free database and even by offering to re-write one of those essays or papers. The original writing feature is inferior too. Our PhD.com review is not a good one, for obvious reasons. We recommend that students avoid using it. Overall, our PhDEssay.com rating is "poor.".

  14. PhD Essay Review

    Low. Our paper for this PhD essay review was an example of the worst quality, considering their high price. It is unacceptable for homework websites that claim to have college-level writing. Premium and Platinum options would mean a 10 or 20% addition to your order's price. Customer Support

  15. Is it possible to get a PhD by writing only review and survey papers?

    Suppose that a PhD (in engineering) student has 3-4 review/survey papers in their domain, and has received more than 500 citations in total. In a situation like this, can they pass the oral defense and get the PhD degree without a research paper? What I want to know if review/survey papers can compensate my lack of research output.

  16. Scribbr's Dissertation Editing Services

    Overuse of passive voice. Subjective or inflated language. For a more comprehensive edit, you can add one or multiple add-on editing services that fit your needs. ⏰ Deadline. A perfect PhD within 1 week. 📄 Texts. Dissertations. ⭐️ Rating. 4.6 based on 13,690 reviews.

  17. What Is a PhD Literature Review?

    Summary. A literature review is a critical analysis of published academic literature, mainly peer-reviewed papers and books, on a specific topic. This isn't just a list of published studies but is a document summarising and critically appraising the main work by researchers in the field, the key findings, limitations and gaps identified in ...

  18. Graduate Admissions Consulting

    Grad School Scholarship Essay Services. Your graduate school admissions consultant will review and critique your scholarship application essay, providing you with expert guidance, actionable feedback and ways you can improve your essay. Our flat-rate package also includes brainstorming and outlining of your scholarship essay. Learn more.

  19. Writing a Literature Review

    Writing a Literature Review. A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and ...

  20. Free Essay and Paper Checker

    4.6 based on 13,690 reviews . Save time and upload your entire essay to fix it in minutes. Try the new AI Proofreader. Scribbr & academic integrity. Scribbr is committed to protecting academic integrity. ... Our Essay Checker can detect most grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. That said, we can't guarantee 100% accuracy.

  21. PhdEssay Review (Legit or Scam & Fraud?)

    The writers are not qualified and don't make a lot of money, but the company charges prices that seem to be comparable to real professors. PhDEssay is fraudulent, even though they do deliver papers. It is a scam. The lack of reviews is its only positive aspect. These scoundrels are unlikely to fool many people.

  22. Scribbr

    Whether we're proofreading and editing, checking for plagiarism or AI content, generating citations, or writing useful Knowledge Base articles, our aim is to support students on their journey to become better academic writers. We believe that every student should have the right tools for academic success.