As a biology student at UCL, I had to write many essays over the years. (This is because for some reason biology is taught as an essay-based subject in the UK, which is interestingly not the case in the US, or at least not at Caltech, where assignments are mostly problem sets.) When I started university, I had absolutely no idea how to write a good essay, as it wasn’t something I had ever been taught back in Hungary where I grew up. Furthermore, there is very little guidance even at university on how to write a proper essay, and most students either get it by themselves or they don’t.
I have put a lot of effort into some of my essays, and along the way found the “recipe” for writing a First-class essay. For those not based in the UK, a “First” is the best mark you can get at a UK university, and this generally means >70% for an essay, which about a quarter of students get each time. The difficult part isn’t to get a good grade once, but do to so reliably, and I managed to do this for every single essay/exam in my studies. I ended up ranking #1 on my degree twice with an average of >80% over the years.
Sadly, most of these essays, however good they are, usually get lost after the assignment is done. I thought that I would dig my essays out and put them on the internet for free, so that hopefully some students can learn from them. These are of course not scientific publications, have not been peer-reviewed, and have not been changed since their submission (even though feedback was received and errors were identified). The whole purpose of this blog post is so that students can have a reference for what is usually a First-class essay. This is important because typically no one will teach you how to write an essay, you are just expected to *know* how to produce them. The essays below range from things like the evolution of complex life, and the biology of ageing, to CAR-T cancer therapies and much more.
For some of these, I don’t even remember any of the content, so it was also quite a nice experience for me to re-read them.
Of course, it goes without saying, but it is not advised to copy any of the content here, because Turnitin will flag you for plagiarism. However, feel free to adapt the citations and ideas from these essays to fit your work. Don’t need to cite this page or anything, but please leave a like if it was useful.
Below is a list of some essays/exam answers that might be useful to you. If I find some of the other ones I might update this page. I will group these based on year and course code.
2022/23 UCL
- Instructive, modulatory and essential regulators of transcription (CELL0016) – My fastest written essay that I wrote basically in one night with the one below
- News and views – Single cell RNA seeks’ to understand hematopoiesis (CELL0016)
- CELL0016 exam 1. Essay on cellular senescence 2. Measurements of gene expression
2021/22 Caltech
2020/21 UCL
- Ageing as a continuation of development (BIOL0013 The Biology of Development – My highest graded essay >90%)
- Nodal flow and the initial establishment of left/right asymmetry in Bilateria (BIOL0013 The Biology of Development)
- Is complex life genuinely improbable? (Energy and Evolution)
- How falling atmospheric CO2 levels drove the evolution of megaphyll leaves and C4 photosynthesis (Energy and Evolution)
2019/20 UCL
- What is Urbilateria? What we know about its characteristics and how they were inferred (My first essay ever)
Bence Kover 