So, what makes a good thesis in college?
A Good Thesis Is Not Obvious
High school teachers needed to make sure that you and all your classmates mastered the basic form of the academic essay. Thus, they were mostly concerned that you had a clear and consistent thesis, even if it was something obvious like “sustainability is important.” A thesis statement like that has a wide-enough scope to incorporate several supporting points and concurring evidence, enabling the writer to demonstrate his or her mastery of the five-paragraph form. Good enough! When they can, high school teachers nudge students to develop arguments that are less obvious and more engaging. College instructors, though, fully expect you to produce something more developed.
A Good Thesis Is Arguable
In everyday life, “arguable” is often used as a synonym for “doubtful.” For a thesis, though, “arguable” means that it’s worth arguing: it’s something with which a reasonable person might disagree. This criteria of being debatable is closely related to the need for a thesis to be non-obvious. An arguable thesis shows that the author has deeply explored a problem and arrived at an argument that legitimately needs 3, 5, 10, or 20 pages to explain and justify.
In that way, a good thesis sets an ambitious agenda for a paper. A thesis like “sustainability is important” isn’t at all difficult to argue for. There are few people who would argue against sustainability, and the reader would have little intrinsic motivation to read the rest of the paper. However, an arguable thesis like “sustainability policies will inevitably fail if they do not incorporate social justice,” brings up some healthy skepticism. Thus, the arguable thesis makes the reader want to keep reading.
A Good Thesis Specifically Introduces the Argument and Reasons
Some student writers fear that they’re giving away the game if they specify their thesis up front; they think that a purposefully vague thesis might be more intriguing to the reader. However, consider movie trailers: they always include the most exciting and poignant moments from the film to attract an audience.
In academic papers, too, a well specified thesis indicates that the author has thought rigorously about an issue and done thorough research, which makes the reader want to keep reading. Don’t just say that a particular policy is effective or fair; say what makes it is so. If you want to argue that a particular claim is dubious or incomplete, say why in your thesis.
A Good Thesis Includes Implications of the Argument’s Significance
Suppose your assignment is to write a paper about some aspect of the history of linen production and trade, a topic that may seem exceedingly arcane and unrelated to contemporary life. And suppose you have constructed a well supported and creative argument that linen was so widely traded in the ancient Mediterranean that it actually served as a kind of currency. That’s a strong, insightful, arguable, well specified thesis. But which of these thesis statements do you find more engaging?
Version A:
Linen served as a form of currency in the ancient Mediterranean world, connecting rival empires through circuits of trade.
Version B:
Linen served as a form of currency in the ancient Mediterranean world, connecting rival empires through circuits of trade. The economic role of linen raises important questions about how shifting environmental conditions can influence economic relationships and, by extension, political conflicts.
Putting your claims in their broader context makes them more interesting to your reader and more impressive to your professors who, after all, assign topics that they think have enduring significance. Finding that significance for yourself makes the most of both your paper and your learning.
Creating a Strong Thesis: The Three Story Approach
How do you produce a good, strong thesis for college-level essays? And how do you know when you’ve gotten there? Many instructors and writers find useful a metaphor based on this passage by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.:
There are one-story intellects, two-story intellects, and three-story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors who have no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason, generalize using the labor of fact collectors as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, predict—their best illumination comes from above the skylight.
In this passage, Holmes argues that there are three levels of thinking.
- The first level states inarguable facts.
- The second level includes an arguable (interpretive or or analytical) point.
- The third level situates that point within its larger, compelling implications.
The three-story metaphor is useful for describing the process of building a strong, college-level thesis.
To build the first story, you first have to get familiar with the complex, relevant facts surrounding the problem or question. You have to be able to describe the situation thoroughly and accurately. Then, with that first story built, you can layer on the second story by formulating the insightful, arguable point that animates the analysis. That’s often the most difficult part and the one that requires the most effort: brainstorming, elaborating and comparing alternative ideas, finalizing your point.
Only once you’ve established factual knowledge and undertaken insightful analysis can you reach the final level and articulate why the point you are making matters beyond its particular topic or case.
Student Perspective
Thesis: that’s the word that pops at me whenever I write an essay. Seeing this word in the prompt scared me and made me think to myself, “Oh great, what are they really looking for?” or “How am I going to make a thesis for a college paper?” When rehearing that I would be focusing on theses again in a class, I said to myself, “Here we go again!” But after learning about the three-story thesis, I never had a problem with writing another thesis. In fact, I look forward to being asked on a paper to create a thesis.
Timothée Pizarro
Leaving behind the rigid formula of the five-paragraph essay doesn’t mean that you have to write without tools and guidance. Using the three-story concept of a thesis, you can create flexible, complex arguments to meet the needs and expectations of your college courses.
How to Write a Three-Story Thesis
Using the three-story concept of a thesis is a different process than creating the three-point thesis required for high school essays. Rather than writing from your own opinion, college-level academic writing requires that you write from deep knowledge. A key part of creating a college-level thesis is to read and learn about the assigned or selected topic before settling on an argument.
Here’s an example:
Imagine you have been assigned a paper about the impact of online learning in higher education. First, you would need to learn about the established facts about online learning.
Here is an example of the process a writer might take to come to a thesis about this topic:
- You would first need to learn about what online learning is. You might research and read about the origins of online courses and learn about the multiple forms of online learning.
- Because the prompt asks you to look at the impact, you would want to figure out if there are any established, agreed-upon facts about the use or effectiveness of online learning.
- If you’ve done that well, you’ll probably come up with a well considered opinion that wouldn’t be obvious to readers who haven’t looked at the issue in depth.
- Maybe you’ll want to argue that online learning is a threat to the academic community.
- Or perhaps you’ll want to make the case that online learning opens up pathways to college degrees that traditional campus-based learning does not.
- In the course of developing your central, argumentative point, you’ll come to recognize its larger context; in this example, you may claim that online learning can serve to better integrate higher education with the rest of society, as online learners bring their educational and career experiences together.
To outline this example:
- First story: Online learning is becoming more prevalent and takes many different forms.
- Second story: While most observers see it as a transformation of higher education, online learning is better thought of an extension of higher education in that it reaches learners who aren’t disposed to participate in traditional campus-based education.
- Third story: Online learning appears to be a promising way to better integrate higher education with other institutions in society, as online learners integrate their educational experiences with the other realms of their life, promoting the freer flow of ideas between the academy and the rest of society.
Here’s another example:
- First story: Scientists disagree about the likely impact in the U.S. of the light brown apple moth (LBAM), an agricultural pest native to Australia.
- Second story: Research findings to date suggest that the decision to spray pheromones over the skies of several southern Californian counties to combat the LBAM was poorly thought out.
- Third story: Together, the scientific ambiguities and the controversial response strengthen the claim that industrial-style approaches to pest management are inherently unsustainable.
A thesis statement that stops at the first story isn’t usually considered a thesis. The fact that scientists disagree isn’t an argument.
A two-story thesis is usually considered competent, though some two-story theses are more intriguing and ambitious than others.
A thoughtfully crafted and well informed three-story thesis puts the author on a smooth path toward an excellent paper.
Student Perspective:
The concept of a three-story thesis framework was the most helpful piece of information I gained from the writing component of [this course]. The first time I utilized it in a college paper, my professor included “good thesis” and “excellent introduction” in her notes and graded it significantly higher than my previous papers. You can expect similar results if you dig deeper to form three-story theses. More importantly, doing so will make the actual writing of your paper more straightforward as well. Arguing something specific makes the structure of your paper much easier to design.
Peter Farrell
Building on the Thesis: The Writing Process
The three-story thesis is a beautiful thing. For one, it gives a paper authentic momentum. The first paragraph doesn’t just start with some broad, vague statement. Instead, every sentence is crucial for setting up the thesis. The body paragraphs build on one another, moving through each step of the logical chain. Each paragraph leads inevitably to the next, making the transitions from paragraph to paragraph feel wholly natural. The conclusion, instead of being a mirror-image paraphrase of the introduction, builds out the third story by explaining the broader implications of the argument. It offers new insight without departing from the flow of the analysis.
An essay or project with this kind of momentum often reads like it was knocked out in one inspired sitting. But in reality, just like accomplished athletes and artists, masterful writers make the difficult thing look easy.
Experienced writers don’t figure out what they want to say and then write it. They write in order to figure out what they want to say.
Experienced writers develop their thesis in dialog with the body of the essay because they understand that writing is always a recursive process. Strong writers know that strong writing isn’t natural. No one sits down and writes the perfect text the first time. Instead, strong arguments are developed through a process of invention, drafting, and revision that often needs to be repeated again and again, as the writer comes closer and closer to the clearest version of their argument.
The writing process may begin with an initial understanding of the topic or problem leads to a tentative thesis. Then drafting the body of the paper reveals contradictions or critical areas of ambiguity, which should prompt the writer to revisit or expand the body of evidence and then refine the thesis based on that fresh look. The revised thesis may require that body paragraphs be reordered and reshaped to fit the newly-revised thesis.
Throughout the process, the thesis serves as an anchor point while the author wades through the facts and ideas found in their research. The dialogue between thesis and body continues until the author is satisfied or the due date arrives, whatever comes first. It’s an effortful and sometimes tedious process.
Novice writers, in contrast, usually oversimplify the writing process. They formulate some first-impression thesis, produce a reasonably organized outline, and then flesh it out with text, but they never thake the time to reflect or truly revise their work. They assume that revision is a step backward when, in reality, it is a major step forward.
Student Perspective
Everyone has a different way that they like to write. For instance, I like to pop my earbuds in, blast dubstep music and write on a white board. I like using the white board because it is a lot easier to revise and edit while you write. After I finish writing a paragraph that I am completely satisfied with on the white board, I sit in front of it with my laptop and just type it up.
Kaethe Leonard
Three-Story Thesis: Redefining Strong Arguments
Another benefit of the three-story thesis framework is that it demystifies what a “strong” argument is in academic culture. In an era of political polarization, many students may think that a strong argument is based on a simple, bold, combative statement that is promoted it in the most forceful way possible. “Gun control is a travesty!” “Shakespeare is the best writer who ever lived!” When students are encouraged to consider contrasting perspectives in their papers, they fear that doing so will make their own thesis seem mushy and weak.
In academic writing a “strong” argument is comprehensive and nuanced, not simple and polemical.
The purpose of the argument is to explain to readers why the author—through the course of his or her in-depth study—has arrived at a somewhat surprising point. Strong academic writing has to consider plausible counter arguments and contradictory information.
The model of the organically structured paper and the three-story thesis framework explained here is the very foundation of the paper itself and the process that produces it. The use of the three-story thesis stems from the assumption that you are writing to think and writing to learn as much as you are writing to communicate. Your professors assume that you have the self-motivation and organizational skills to pursue your analysis with both rigor and flexibility; that is, they envision you developing, testing, refining and sometimes discarding your own ideas based on a clear-eyed and open-minded assessment of the evidence before you.
- Think about previous writing assignments you have done. How did the three-point thesis required for the five-paragraph essay help you to write? Were there any times that you felt confused or limited by the three-point requirement?
- How many of your high school essays or work you have completed for previous courses would count as a three-story thesis? What do you think the biggest challenges will be to learn this new genre? What do you think the benefits might be?
Adapted from: Constructing the Thesis and Argument from the Ground Up by Amy Guptill. This essay originally appeared in Writing in College: From Competence to Excellence, an Open SUNY textbook.