If you’re returning to a university setting for the first time since earning your undergraduate degree, getting back into the scholarly mindset can be difficult. Even if you’ve been taking classes off-and-on, when trying to switch gears from the workforce to the university, you might find yourself a bit rusty.
The Excelsior OWL has a wide variety of pages to help writers at all levels, so take some time to browse around. To get started, we’ve highlighted some specific areas that returning graduate students—like those entering Excelsior’s DBA program—might find particularly helpful.
MICROSOFT WORD: Maybe it’s been a while since you last popped open a Microsoft Word document. Even if it hasn’t—do you know how to make a hanging indent? We’ve gathered some Word tutorials to refresh you on the basics.
APA: The American Psychological Association Publication Manual is about to become a huge part of your life. Writing at the highest level of academia means abiding by your discipline’s expected format. There’s no substitute for having your style guide of choice handy in your writing space, but the OWL has a number of quick references if you need them:
- Our in-text Citations section begins here.
- And our guide to formatting your References starts here.
- You might also want to keep our APA formatting guide handy.
If you’re in a program that requires the MLA Handbook or the Chicago Manual of Style, we also have coverage of those.
RESEARCH: Much of the writing you’ll be doing at the graduate level will be backstopped by research. Developing smart research habits and understanding how to deploy the material you find will elevate your writing.
- Reviewing our pages on evaluating sources will refresh you on the different types of materials, authorship, and timeliness. There’s also a checklist available there to make sure your sources are reaching the graduate writing standard.
- Knowing how to utilize an annotated bibliography will keep your research organized (and may be a requirement for your classes).
- Our unit on constructing a research hypothesis will help you transition your research into strong argumentation.
WRITING: Now we get to the fun part: writing. In your graduate degree program, you’re going to be doing a lot of it. So much writing. The OWL was built to support writers at all stages, and we’ve collected some pages below that should make for a handy refresher:
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It might seem simplistic, but the MEAL plan is a useful system for organizing your paragraphs. Pretty soon, you’ll be using this technique without even thinking about it. [link]
The Grammar Refresher and our review of the 20 Most Common Writing Errors might help iron out the kinks from your writing. [link]
Consider this page your base camp as you begin your climb toward a graduate degree. On the coming pages, we’ll have material that digs deeper into the specific writing, tools, and assignments that you might encounter along the way.