If you regularly make purchases online, you’ve almost certainly run into reviews on sites such as Amazon or NexTag. Chances are also good that you’ve turned to your local newspaper or searched the Web for help deciding which movie to watch or which new restaurant to try. It turns out that product and media reviews are both plentiful and easy to locate. That’s not the case, however, for other types of evaluations. For instance, if you’re hoping to learn whether it would be better to work an extra ten hours per week or to take out a college loan, or if you’re trying to determine whether your community should invest in renewable energy credits or start its own wind farm, you’re likely to find that the best place to look for answers is in the mirror.

Evaluative essays allow you to address subjects — some as complex as genetic engineering in agriculture and others as seemingly straightforward as deciding how to travel between home and school — that connect to your personal, academic, or professional life. Like other academic essays, they also present some intriguing challenges for writers. In addition to choosing an appropriate subject for evaluation, you must identify criteria on which to base your judgment, learn enough about your subject to make an informed judgment about how well it measures up to your criteria, and convey your judgments in a well-written, well-organized, readable manner.

This section helps you tune in to the conversations around you and take on the role of evaluator as you choose a subject, conduct your evaluation, prepare your draft, and review and improve your draft. As you work on your essay, you’ll follow Dwight Haynes, a first-year student who wrote an evaluative essay about approaches to reducing alcohol consumption by college students.