Good Essay Topic and Ideas

Writing an essay, any type of essay, can seem daunting for a student. It requires many steps that take tons of time and can drain you from your productivity and energy. First, it begins with choosing the best topic. This part can affect the entire research and writing process – and even your grade.

Unless you pick a great topic to write about, this will be dull and a bigger challenge than it already is. It will also make it harder for you to do research and can be boring for the reader. Thankfully, we’ve decided to help you with this and came up with some great essay topics. In this article, you’ll find topics for different essay types, as well as a short guide on how to choose the best one for your subject.

How to Choose the Best Topic

Don’t know which essay topic to choose? Before we provide you with the best topic ideas, we’d like to tell you a bit about the selection process. When we’re asked to provide a student with a great essay topic idea, we do the following:

• Find several things to write about. You need more ideas if you want to find the perfect one. Brainstorming will help you eliminate the ones that don’t work.
• Analyze all of your options. Spend some time researching about every essay topic idea you have. Is it debatable? Does it fit the essay type you’ve chosen? Do you find it interesting?
• If necessary, ask your teacher for advice. Take your list with you and ask them which topic they want you to write on.

Essay Topics by Writing Style

Very often, freedom is not the best thing for a student. Teachers at school will often just tell you the essay type and ask you to do the rest. They’ll demand expository writing and ask you to come up with the idea. They might pose a word count limit and request specific essay styles and formatting. However, in many cases, the essay topic depends on the student.

Depending on the type of essay you’re asked to write, you’ll need to take different steps for choosing a topic. For example, in persuasive writing, you need to choose something that has two sides to it, and something that you have an opinion on. With descriptive writing, it’s best to choose something that has a lot to be said about. It should also be a topic you understand at least partially and can get into specifics. Topics for narrative writing require contained or transformative events that you can narrate on.

Argumentative Essay Topics

Argumentative essays are papers where the writer makes an argument by providing relevant and accurate research data. Such papers support the position of the writer by using evidence. Unlike other essay kinds, argumentative papers express one selected argument or point of view and use evidence and research to support it.

Here are a couple of easy argumentative essay topics you might like:

1. Should social media platforms like Facebook collect data from users?
2. College athletes and payment: should they be paid to play in sports team?
3. Assisted suicide: should it be legal or illegal?
4. Prisoners and voting: should they be allowed to vote?
5. Legalization of sex work: yes or no?
6. Death penalty: yes or no?
7. The idea of universal basic income: yes or no?
8. Should college education be free for all?
9. Graffiti: art or vandalism?
10. Content on YouTube: is it organized enough?

Argumentative Essay Topics for College

When you’re studying in college, you’ll often be tasked to write argumentative essays. At some point, you’ll be allowed to choose a topic that you find to be most interesting. Here are some college-related ideas that can motivate you:

1. How helpful is academic grading in terms of students’ performance?
2. Are tests like ACT and SAT effective or not?
3. Discussing the perks and downsides of an MBA program
4. Does the US educational system offer advantages to international students?
5. Should Internet access be limited to students while at college or not?
6. Should all students study every college subject or should they choose the ones they are interested in?
7. Should the production and sales of tobacco be made illegal?
8. Smoking in public places: yes or no?
9. Should alcohol be sold after 10 p.m.?
10. Debating the most suitable age to have the right to vote

Argumentative Essay Topics for Middle School

1. Giving students homework: is it helpful or not?
2. Video games: do they promote violence in middle school students?
3. Diets: positive or negative impacts?
4. How healthy it is to practice dangerous sports?
5. Anorexia and how well our society fights against it
6. Should education counseling be part of middle school education or not?
7. Steroid using in sports: should it be banned in schools?
8. Do male students get better educational opportunities than females?
9. Smoking: habit or lifestyle?
10. Is success in life affected by physical activities?

Persuasive Essay Topics

Persuasive essays are types of academic writing that are frequently assigned to students regardless of their academic level. These are very similar to argumentative papers, but they have a higher emphasis on convincing the reader. Instead of argumenting a side for the sole purposes of teaching people why your argument is the right one, you need to use content to convince people of things that you are passionate about. Here are some good persuasive essay topics:

1. Going to college: yes or no?
2. Taking a gap year before college: should students do this?
3. Learning a foreign language: is it available enough in schools?
4. Protesting: should participants be allowed to block the traffic?
5. Same-sex marriage: should it be legal or illegal?
6. Gun laws: are they restrictive enough?
7. Humans’ privacy and social media: is our privacy hurt today?
8. Can a criminal be rehabilitated?
9. Paternity vs. maternity leave
10. Social media: good or bad for our society?

Compare and Contrast Essay Topics

Compare and contrast essays are often given to students with the goal to enable them to view both the positive and negative sides of different ideas, things, and subjects. To write this type of essay, a person has to be able to understand and accept that there are different types of one story. Here are some of the best topics for your compare and contrast papers:

1. Allopathic vs. homeopathic medicine
2. Using traditional vs. alternative healthcare
3. 3D movies vs. 4D movies
4. Difference between a psychiatrist and psychologist
5. Comparing iOS and Android
6. Natural remedies vs. traditional medicine
7. Comparing textbooks with e-books
8. Executive vs. legislature
9. Contrasting democracy with monarchy
10. Parliamentary or presidential system

Cause and Effect Essay Topics

You have two events that are somehow connected. One happened because of the other or vice versa. This is what cause and effect essays explore – the connection between two events. In such papers, you need to use a cause and effect methods i.e. explain the action and the consequence and elaborate on the chain of events: why it happened, how it happened, etc. Here are some great cause and effect essay topics for you:

1. Alcohol and its effects on the human nervous system
2. What are the effects of pollution?
3. How the Internet influences children
4. Domestic violence and its effect on children
5. Effects of bullying for high school students
6. The different causes of divorce
7. Tsunami: what causes it to happen?
8. Growing in poverty: how it affects a person
9. Putin’s politics and their effect on neighbouring countries
10. The war in Syria and its effect on the US

Informative Essay Topics

Informative essays are very similar to narrative papers. They can include cause and effect essays’ features, too. In any case, this is one of the research essays, papers that require thorough checking of data before they are written. The next step is, of course, to educate readers on the topic you researched. Speaking of topics, here are some good essay topics for you:

1. Addiction to caffeine: the signs, the problems, and overcoming them
2. The issue of domestic violence: how it affects the family, the society, and how it can be reduced
3. Plastic surgery, the growth in popularity, the good and the bad of it
4. Poverty and the problems it brings across the world
5. Procrastination among students and how it affects their studies
6. Stress: how many people have it and what causes it
7. Anorexia around the world and treatment options for this disorder
8. Safety and dangers of prostitution in the world
9. Illegal immigration around the globe
10. Tattoos and young people

Narrative Essay Topics

A narrative essay is an academic assignment that revolves around storytelling. It’s just like when your parents told you stories before bed, but more academic. In such papers, you need to make a point while talking about your personal experience. Here are some ideas for your narrative essay:

1. The best vacation I’ve ever had with my family
2. An unforgettable trip
3. My favourite Christmas and how it went
4. A very important life lesson you’ve learned
5. How a tragic event affected me and my life
6. Something that scared you to your core
7. A depressing moment in your life
8. The story of a person bullying you/ treating you unfairly
9. A time when you misjudged someone
10. Helping a stranger and how that made you feel

Proposal Essay Topics

A proposal essay serves a strong purpose – to propose some idea. It should also provide arguments and evidence in regard to that idea. Here are some excellent topic ideas for proposal essay:

1. Improving sex education courses in schools
2. Ways to reduce childhood obesity
3. Persuading kids not to experiment with drugs
4. Different ways to grade children and how well they work
5. Ways to curb illegal use of drugs
6. Creating a better curriculum for high school students
7. The most effective ways to teach children responsibility
8. The impact of an individual’s attempts to combat global climate change
9. Reduction of teen pregnancies: what can be done?
10. Is technology advancing too fast?

Research Essay Topics

Research is an important skill you need to master while at school. With that in mind, you’ll often get a task to write a research essay. Here are some great research essay topics to inspire you:

1. Diversity in teams: is it a good or a bad thing?
2. Our world without Nikola Tesla: where would we be?
3. Are older people really wiser than young people because of experience?
4. Friendships between people of the same sex vs. different sex
5. How much effect does appearance and beauty have on a person’s success in life?
6. Can technology cause a generation gap for real?
7. Are video games really making children more violent?
8. Should people with chronic pains consume cannabis or not?
9. How beneficial is listening to music while studying?
10. Women and the superior positions in companies: is gender discrimination still a big issue?

Personal Essay Topics

When you’re writing personal essays, you need to get personal. This is very similar to narrative papers, but it explores your thoughts more deeply. That being said, here are some great personal essay ideas:

1. Superpower I’d choose if I had the chance
2. The bravest moment in my life
3. How I overcame a big fear
4. Place in the world where I feel the safest
5. How I felt when my friend let me down
6. One event that changed my life forever
7. My story with my pet
8. Things that will make me succeed in life
9. Things that make me/ someone else special
10. That moment when I knew I grew up

Descriptive essay topics

Describing things make you use your poetic skills, as well as allow you to show the reader how great of a writer you are. Descriptive essays are frequently assigned in school. They require that you use your senses when telling the story: what did you see, hear, touch, smell, and taste? Here are some great essay topics you could use:

1. My favorite place to study
2. What a perfect bedroom would look like for me
3. The most peaceful place in the world for me
4. If I had a house on Mars, what would it look like?
5. Describing my favorite family member
6. How I’d describe myself to people I’ve never met
7. How I see people who discriminate and bully others
8. My perfect career choice: what I’d like to become in the future
9. A person I miss
10. A person I admire
11. A person I’d never like to be and why
12. How I’d describe the Internet to a time traveler from the past
13. Where I’d go if I had a time capsule
14. What I’d change if I could go back in time
15. The time when I felt most scared/ happy/ excited

Expository essay topics

Expository essays discuss a topic not by using opinions, but by using facts. This paper requires a lot of research and thorough evaluation. Here are some topic ideas for you:

1. Reasons why teens join gangs
2. Why I admire X person
3. Curfews for teens in some cities
4. Reasons why parents have to be strict with children
5. How moving around can affect children
6. What are the major stressors in an adult’s life
7. Why students listen to metal/ rock, etc
8. How music affects the learning process
9. Nonmaterial things and why they make people happy
10. The consequences of taking or selling drugs

Problem solution essay topics

Just like the name tells you, problem solution essays require that you present an issue and a solution or several solutions for it. Here are some good problem solution essay topics for you to consider:

1. The issue of undocumented immigrants
2. Sexual assaults that happen at colleges: is there a solution?
3. Mass shootings: how can they be reduced?
4. Long-term unemployment and how it can be overcome
5. Suicide: is there a way to reduce its rate?
6. Why is ignoring race in education a big mistake?
7. Police brutality and how we can prevent it
8. How we can address child labor across the world
9. Student loan debts – is there something to be done to reduce them?
10. Worker exploitation – what can be done?

Classification essay topics

Classification essays divide and classify common points and ideas. That being said, we are providing you with some great classification essay topics ideas of things you could classify:

1. Different Instagram users
2. Types of roommates you meet in college
3. How people see the dentist
4. People responding to rain
5. Different search engines
6. Tools for studying
7. Ways to apologize
8. Goers to the cinema
9. Annoying songs
10. Endings of movies

Evaluation essay topics

When you write evaluation essays, you need to take a point and elaborate on its good and bad things. Here are some topics for evaluation essay:

1. Social media and its effect on relationships
2. The characters and quality of acting in X movie
3. Recycling plastic: its pros and cons
4. Advantages and disadvantages of remote learning
5. Effects of global warming
6. Sex education programs at schools today
7. Influence of smoking on our brain
8. Video games’ impact on younger generations
9. Using technology to study
10. An analysis of a classical book

Exemplification essay topics

Argumentative essays are based on making arguments, while exemplification essays require example after example. Some good topics for exemplification essay include:

1. Relation with neighbors: what are the moral norms?
2. The power of postcards
3. Secure and dangerous Internet use
4. Handwriting: what does it say about the person?
5. How people gesture shows their mood
6. Different ways to make your pets love you
7. Is condensed milk beneficial or not?
8. Are Zodiac constellations a myth?
9. How people found a meteorite
10. Describing self-esteem

Opinion essay topics

Choosing an opinion is not an easy thing to do. In opinion essays, you don’t just need to pick an opinion, but also elaborate on it. Here are some good opinion essay topics:

1. Gandhi as a messenger of peace
2. Bias in the coverage of the Vietnam War
3. Positive ways monarchy affects a modern society
4. The truth about global warming
5. Are polar bears really a legacy?
6. How ethical is chipping of animals?
7. How ethical are Green Peace activists?
8. Should vaccination be forced?
9. Is alternative medicine better than traditional
10. The failures of Obama Care

Rhetorical analysis essay topics

Rhetorical analysis essays can be written about everything including movies, literature pieces, speeches, etc. Here are some great rhetorical analysis topics for essay:

1. X speech from President Trump
2. Blog that I frequently follow
3. Fight Song by Rachel Platten
4. The See Both Sides of the Story by BBC World
5. Understanding Mona Lisa’s smile
6. The speech of Alexander the Great
7. Best speech by Gandhi ever
8. Symbolism found in The Things They Carried
9. Strength of Rowling’s stories in Harry Potter
10. Literary devices that Jane Austen used

Bonus: List of How to Essay Topics

Lastly, we’d like to give you some ideas for ‘how-to’ essays:

1. Change a tire like a pro
2. Earn $100 in a day
3. Make a costume for Halloween
4. Milk a cow
5. Pursue a career as a beekeeper
6. Read palms/ tea leaves
7. Decorate your room on a budget
8. Clean like a pro
9. Boost your writing skills
10. Write a complaint