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College Essays
Figuring out your college essay can be one of the most difficult parts of applying to college. Even once you've read the prompt and picked a topic, you might wonder: if you write too much or too little, will you blow your chance of admission? How long should a college essay be?
Whether you're a terse writer or a loquacious one, we can advise you on college essay length. In this guide, we'll cover what the standard college essay length is, how much word limits matter, and what to do if you aren't sure how long a specific essay should be.
You might be used to turning in your writing assignments on a page-limit basis (for example, a 10-page paper). While some colleges provide page limits for their college essays, most use a word limit instead. This makes sure there's a standard length for all the essays that a college receives, regardless of formatting or font.
In the simplest terms, your college essay should be pretty close to, but not exceeding, the word limit in length. Think within 50 words as the lower bound, with the word limit as the upper bound. So for a 500-word limit essay, try to get somewhere between 450-500 words. If they give you a range, stay within that range.
College essay prompts usually provide the word limit right in the prompt or in the instructions.
For example, the University of Illinois says :
"You'll answer two to three prompts as part of your application. The questions you'll answer will depend on whether you're applying to a major or to our undeclared program , and if you've selected a second choice . Each response should be approximately 150 words."
As exemplified by the University of Illinois, the shortest word limits for college essays are usually around 150 words (less than half a single-spaced page). Rarely will you see a word limit higher than around 650 words (over one single-spaced page). College essays are usually pretty short: between 150 and 650 words. Admissions officers have to read a lot of them, after all!
Weigh your words carefully, because they are limited!
But how flexible is the word limit? What if your poignant anecdote is just 10 words too long—or 100 too short?
If you are attaching a document and you need one or two extra words, you can probably get away with exceeding the word limit by such a small amount. Some colleges will actually tell you that exceeding the word limit by 1-2 words is fine. However, I advise against exceeding the word limit unless it's explicitly allowed for a few reasons:
First, you might not be able to. If you have to copy-paste it into a text box, your essay might get cut off and you'll have to trim it down anyway.
If you exceed the word limit in a noticeable way, the admissions counselor may just stop reading your essay past that point. This is not good for you.
Following directions is actually a very important part of the college application process. You need to follow directions to get your letters of recommendation, upload your essays, send supplemental materials, get your test scores sent, and so on and so forth. So it's just a good general rule to follow whatever instructions you've been given by the institution. Better safe than sorry!
If you can truly get your point across well beneath the word limit, it's probably fine. Brevity is not necessarily a bad thing in writing just so long as you are clear, cogent, and communicate what you want to.
However, most college essays have pretty tight word limits anyways. So if you're writing 300 words for an essay with a 500-word limit, ask yourself: is there anything more you could say to elaborate on or support your points? Consult with a parent, friend, or teacher on where you could elaborate with more detail or expand your points.
Also, if the college gives you a word range, you absolutely need to at least hit the bottom end of the range. So if you get a range from the institution, like 400-500 words, you need to write at least 400 words. If you write less, it will come across like you have nothing to say, which is not an impression you want to give.
Some colleges don't give you a word limit for one or more of your essay prompts. This can be a little stressful, but the prompts generally fall into a few categories:
Some colleges don't provide a hard-and-fast word limit because they want a writing sample from one of your classes. In this case, a word limit would be very limiting to you in terms of which assignments you could select from.
For an example of this kind of prompt, check out essay Option B at Amherst :
"Submit a graded paper from your junior or senior year that best represents your writing skills and analytical abilities. We are particularly interested in your ability to construct a tightly reasoned, persuasive argument that calls upon literary, sociological or historical evidence. You should NOT submit a laboratory report, journal entry, creative writing sample or in-class essay."
While there is usually no word limit per se, colleges sometimes provide a general page guideline for writing samples. In the FAQ for Option B , Amherst clarifies, "There is no hard-and-fast rule for official page limit. Typically, we anticipate a paper of 4-5 pages will provide adequate length to demonstrate your analytical abilities. Somewhat longer papers can also be submitted, but in most cases should not exceed 8-10 pages."
So even though there's no word limit, they'd like somewhere in the 4-10 pages range. High school students are not usually writing papers that are longer than 10 pages anyways, so that isn't very limiting.
Sometimes, while there's no word (or even page) limit, there's still an implicit length guideline. What do I mean by this?
See, for example, this Western Washington University prompt :
“Describe one or more activities you have been involved in that have been particularly meaningful. What does your involvement say about the communities, identities or causes that are important to you?”
While there’s no page or word limit listed here, further down on page the ‘essay tips’ section explains that “ most essay responses are about 500 words, ” though “this is only a recommendation, not a firm limit.” This gives you an idea of what’s reasonable. A little longer or shorter than 500 words would be appropriate here. That’s what I mean by an “implicit” word limit—there is a reasonable length you could go to within the boundaries of the prompt.
But what's the proper coffee-to-paragraph ratio?
There is also the classic "treasure hunt" prompt. No, it's not a prompt about a treasure hunt. It's a prompt where there are no length guidelines given, but if you hunt around on the rest of the website you can find length guidelines.
For example, the University of Chicago provides seven "Extended Essay" prompts . You must write an essay in response to one prompt of your choosing, but nowhere on the page is there any guidance about word count or page limit.
However, many colleges provide additional details about their expectations for application materials, including essays, on FAQ pages, which is true of the University of Chicago. On the school’s admissions Frequently Asked Questions page , they provide the following length guidelines for the supplemental essays:
“We suggest that you note any word limits for Coalition or Common Application essays; however, there are no strict word limits on the UChicago Supplement essays. For the extended essay (where you choose one of several prompts), we suggest that you aim for around 650 words. While we won't, as a rule, stop reading after 650 words, we're only human and cannot promise that an overly wordy essay will hold our attention indefinitely. For the “Why UChicago?” essay, we suggest about 250-500 words. The ideas in your writing matter more than the exact number of words you use!”
So there you go! You want to be (loosely) in the realm of 650 for the extended essay, and 250-500 words for the “Why UChicago?” essay.
If you really can't find any length guidelines anywhere on the admissions website and you're at a loss, I advise calling the admissions office. They may not be able to give you an exact number (in fact, they probably won't), but they will probably at least be able to tell you how long most of the essays they see are. (And keep you from writing a panicked, 20-page dissertation about your relationship with your dog).
In general, 500 words or so is pretty safe for a college essay. It's a fairly standard word limit length, in fact. (And if you're wondering, that's about a page and a half double-spaced.) 500 words is long enough to develop a basic idea while still getting a point across quickly—important when admissions counselors have thousands of essays to read!
"See? It says 500 words right there in tiny font!"
The best college essay length is usually pretty straightforward: you want to be right under or at the provided word limit. If you go substantially past the word limit, you risk having your essay cut off by an online application form or having the admissions officer just not finish it. And if you're too far under the word limit, you may not be elaborating enough.
What if there is no word limit? Then how long should a college essay be? In general, around 500 words is a pretty safe approximate word amount for a college essay—it's one of the most common word limits, after all!
Here's guidance for special cases and hunting down word limits:
If it's a writing sample of your graded academic work, the length either doesn't matter or there should be some loose page guidelines.
There also may be implicit length guidelines. For example, if a prompt says to write three paragraphs, you'll know that writing six sentences is definitely too short, and two single-spaced pages is definitely too long.
You might not be able to find length guidelines in the prompt, but you could still hunt them up elsewhere on the website. Try checking FAQs or googling your chosen school name with "admissions essay word limit."
If there really is no word limit, you can call the school to try to get some guidance.
With this advice, you can be sure you've got the right college essay length on lockdown!
Hey, writing about yourself can even be fun!
Need to ask a teacher or friend for help with your essay? See our do's and dont's to getting college essay advice .
If you're lacking in essay inspiration, see our guide to brainstorming college essay ideas . And here's our guide to starting out your essay perfectly!
Looking for college essay examples? See 11 places to find college essay examples and 145 essay examples with analysis !
Ellen has extensive education mentorship experience and is deeply committed to helping students succeed in all areas of life. She received a BA from Harvard in Folklore and Mythology and is currently pursuing graduate studies at Columbia University.
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Contents and form.
Length : The required length is between 10,000 and 20,000 words, not counting notes, bibliography, and appendices. The precise length of the main body text must be indicated on the word count page immediately following the title page . If a student expects the thesis to exceed 20,000 words, the student’s tutor should consult the Director of Studies. Please note that students’ requests to exceed 20,000 words must go through their tutors and that these requests must be made in early February. Any extension of the thesis beyond the maximum must be justified by the nature of the topic, or sustained excellence in the treatment of the subject, or both. Theses that receive permission to exceed 20,000 words can still be penalized if readers do not think that the excess length is warranted.
Acknowledgments : Please do not include acknowledgments in your final copy of the thesis. If you wish, you can add acknowledgments after your thesis has been read. Readers prefer not to know who directed your thesis, lest they be somehow swayed by that knowledge.
Illustrations : Illustrations, also called figures, might include anything from a photograph to a printed advertisement to a map to a chart. Illustrations may be inserted in the body of your thesis or included in an appendix at the end. Writers often choose to reference an illustration in the body of text, signaling to readers to refer to a particular figure that’s being discussed by turning to a nearby page or to an appendix (e.g., “See Figure 1.”) The inclusion of illustrations in a senior thesis, which has a fairly circumscribed audience, falls under fair use, so you do not need permissions to reproduce illustrations in your thesis. However, all images should be accompanied by a caption that identifies the image and may include brief explanatory text. You may also use the caption to attribute the source where you found the illustration (e.g., a url or the name of the archive where you photographed the item), or you can cite the illustration in a footnote or endnote. You do not need to cite your images in your bibliography. For more detailed guidelines on including illustrations in your thesis, see The Chicago Manual of Style or the MLA Style Manual .
Format : Pages should be 8 1/2" x 11". Margins should be 1 inch, and pages should be numbered. Do not right-justify. The lines of type must be double-spaced, except for quotations of five lines or more, which should be indented and single-spaced.
Style : If you have questions beyond those covered on this page, consult the University of Chicago's A Manual of Style or the Modern Language Association's Style Manual . Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers is a good, inexpensive, brief guide to Chicago style. The Expository Writing Program guide, Writing with Sources , is very useful.
Table of Contents : Every thesis requires a Table of Contents to guide the reader.
Quotations : Quotations of four lines or fewer, surrounded by quotation marks, may be incorporated into the body of the text. Longer extracts should be indented and single-spaced; they should not be included in quotation marks. Each full quotation should be accompanied by a reference. Follow the general practice in the best periodicals in your field, and be consistent. Foreign words that are not quotations should be underlined or italicized.
Appendices : An appendix provides additional material that helps support your argument and is too lengthy to be included as a footnote or endnote. Appendices might include images, passages from primary texts in a non-English language or in your translation, or archival material that is difficult to access. It is rare but perfectly acceptable for theses to include appendices, so make sure to discuss with your tutor whether an appendix makes sense for your project.
Notes : You may use either footnotes (at bottom of page), endnotes (at end of the thesis) or MLA style parenthetical notes. However, for a History & Literature thesis, Chicago style is generally better. Footnote or endnotes are properly used:
Bibliography : You must append a list of works cited to your thesis. It's a good idea to compile your bibliography as you write, rather than try to put it together all at once at the end (there are very powerful bibliography programs available, such as Zotero and Endnote, that generate bibliographies automatically). The purpose of the bibliography is to be a convenience to your reader. In the works cited list, primary and secondary sources should be listed under separate headings.
I analyzed a random sample of 61,517 full-text research papers, uploaded to PubMed Central between the years 2016 and 2021, in order to answer the questions:
What is the typical length of a discussion section? and which factors influence it?
I used the BioC API to download the data (see the References section below).
1. The median discussion section was 1,115 words long (equivalent to 43 sentences, or 7 paragraphs), and 90% of the discussion sections were between 482 and 2,230 words.
2. Compared to other sections in a research paper, the discussion was about the same length as either the methods or the results, and double the length of the introduction .
3. The length of the discussion does not differ between review articles and original research articles .
4. The quality of the journal does not influence the length of the discussion section .
Here’s a table that describes the length of a discussion section in terms of words, sentences, and paragraphs:
Discussion Section Length | |||
---|---|---|---|
Word Count | Sentence Count | Paragraph Count | |
Minimum | 40 words | 1 sentence | 1 paragraph |
25th Percentile | 824 words | 32 sentences | 5 paragraphs |
50th Percentile (Median) | 1,115 words | 43 sentences | 7 paragraphs |
Mean | 1,206.8 words | 46.4 sentences | 7.8 paragraphs |
75th Percentile | 1,480 words | 57 sentences | 9 paragraphs |
Maximum | 32,816 words | 2,006 sentences | 981 paragraphs |
From these data, we can conclude that the discussion sections in most research papers are between 824 and 1,480 words long (32 to 57 sentences).
If you are interested, here are the links to the articles with the shortest and longest discussion sections.
The discussion section constitutes 29.5% of the total word count in a research article, equivalent to the length of either the methods or the results, and double the length of the introduction [source: How Long Should a Research Paper Be? ].
The following table shows the median word count of the discussion section for different study designs:
Study design | Number of studies in the sample | Median discussion word count |
---|---|---|
Case series | 140 studies | 1,003 words |
Case-control | 443 studies | 1,016 words |
Randomized controlled trial | 842 studies | 1,066 words |
Case report | 407 studies | 1,077 words |
Meta-analysis | 1,481 studies | 1,116 words |
Quasi-experiment | 144 studies | 1,117 words |
Cross-sectional | 3,529 studies | 1,128 words |
Cohort | 5,180 studies | 1,164 words |
Pilot study | 686 studies | 1,185 words |
Systematic review | 689 studies | 1,210 words |
The data show no clear pattern since the discussions of review articles and original research articles have almost similar word counts. So we can conclude that there is no particular article type that requires a longer discussion section.
In order to study the influence of the journal quality on the length of the discussion section, I ran a Poisson regression that models the discussion word count given the journal impact factor. Here’s the model output:
Variables | Coefficient | Standard error | p-value |
---|---|---|---|
(Intercept) | 7.114 | <0.001 | <0.001 |
Journal impact factor | 0.001 | <0.001 | <0.001 |
The model shows that a higher journal impact factor is associated with a slightly longer discussion section. Although statistically significant, this effect is practically negligible since a 1 unit increase in the journal impact factor is associated with an increase of only 0.1% in the discussion word count. For the median article, this means that a 1 unit increase in the journal impact factor is associated with an approximate increase of 1 word in the discussion section.
Thesis outline part 2 – methods, results, discussion, thesis outline part 3 – conclusions, recommendations, and references.
In academic writing, a thesis is related to complex papers. Usually, it is called a Master’s or a Doctoral thesis and can be compared to a dissertation. The main differences between them are size and width of uncovered topic. How long should a thesis be?
Undeniably, it takes months to complete a well-researched work and it's easier to delegate this difficult task to professionals who will help write a thesis quickly and with quality in mind.
If we take the article length, a dissertation should be at least three articles long. Read our guide to identify how long is a dissertation . Thesis takes space of one article. When university students choose a thesis to work on instead of a bibliographic essay, they do it for leaving a possibility to evaluate a research in the future.
There are more questions related to thesis writing appearing. What to include into a good text? If people make theses longer, will they become better? This article is a universal answer to all specific questions concerning proper writing.
Every academic paper begins with title page. Its structure depends on the chosen formatting style. An abstract follows it. This is an important part that describes thesis utility. It must be short and take 1-2 paragraphs, about 400 words and contain short summary of results, methods, etc. Here are questions to answer in this part:
Avoid citations, try to use more numbers. An abstract for dissertation or thesis should be qualitative. After it, the table of contents follows. Group all headings and subheadings into one complex list. If figures and tables are used, enlist their names, point page number of each one.
The first big part is the introduction for thesis . It may seem similar to an abstract. It pursues different goals – reader hooking, providing background information and logical transition to your own research. Here is what you need to disclose in this chapter:
These sections must take three pages of paper, excluding contents and table lists.
These are essential parts. They contain information concerning your own research. Answering main question of our post (how long should a thesis be?), these parts must take at least 30-40 pages. Let’s find out what Ph.D or Master’s thesis paper shoud present in these chapters.
The methods section is text’s explanatory part. There you have to provide readers with clear information and details that allow repeating the research and experiments. Traditionally, methods section is divided into three parts – materials, participants, ways of analysis. Materials imply full description of all instruments and quntitative and qualitative methods used for making research.
Participants part, just like a research paper discussion , describes people or subjects analyzed, including regulations of choice. Ways of analysis present all research approaches used to get results. This part describes area and circumstances of your experiments and helps to identify if they were legitimate and relevant.
Results part contains relevant statements of observations with statistical data, graphs, tables, etc. The section is divided into paragraphs, where key results are arranged into sentences at beginning. Do not forget about negative results, if possible. The main goal of section is data structuring to be helpful for readers to make own conclusions. Mention the nature of data found.
Discussion part is where you interpret results and adjust them to a thesis statement and goals. Disclose patterns and relationships between the observations found, find possible exceptions and discuss if the results correlate with previous researches. Each interpretation you make should be supplied with sufficient evidence. Define if materials are working for the future researches as well. This chapter is the richest in referencing to background material and other parts of your paper.
Here you make the strongest statement concerning observations. Highlight the information you want readers to remember. Explain how the results correlate with the problems you have indicated in the introduction. Describe all new things that are significant in finding a solution and provide limitations examples .
The recommendations part is for giving advice and indicating other actions that will help to solve particular problems. Sound your own opinion about the direction of future research. Most of the time you have to write it. Just like a research proposal .
Acknowledgment for thesis is a paragraph where you mention everyone who helped you with composition. Place all cited and used information resources into one list or form an annotated bibliography if needed.
All kinds of data used in writing, not cited and used resources directly go to the appendices part. This section is last. Along with conclusions they may take up to 10 pages.
What is the direct answer to our question? How long should a thesis be? Experts from a writing site assume, it takes about 60-70 pages. It depends on your research and subject. The length does not matter, actually. The most important thing you need to do is make a complete and complex paper. Provide everything from A to Z - no one will recall the thesis length.
Have you started doing a Ph.D. yet? And now you wonder what it takes to write a dissertation. How long is it supposed to be? How much time will you need to complete it? What is the best way to approach a dissertation? Let us try to answer the most common questions associated with academic research o...
College puts every student through an obstacle course. Whether labs or essays or researches, every type of assignment requires scrupulous work. It means a student is expected to be switched on all the time. Is it possible to meet all the requirements? A better question is, do you need it? From study...
Writing a master’s thesis requires a lot of patience. It's not something you can create in a few days. It’s a large scale project, so you’ll have to make a strict schedule and write a little piece every day. Do you feel it's a difficult job for you and you need thesis help? Instead of devoting your ...
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Published on September 7, 2022 by Tegan George and Shona McCombes. Revised on November 21, 2023.
The introduction is the first section of your thesis or dissertation , appearing right after the table of contents . Your introduction draws your reader in, setting the stage for your research with a clear focus, purpose, and direction on a relevant topic .
Your introduction should include:
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How to start your introduction, topic and context, focus and scope, relevance and importance, questions and objectives, overview of the structure, thesis introduction example, introduction checklist, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about introductions.
Although your introduction kicks off your dissertation, it doesn’t have to be the first thing you write — in fact, it’s often one of the very last parts to be completed (just before your abstract ).
It’s a good idea to write a rough draft of your introduction as you begin your research, to help guide you. If you wrote a research proposal , consider using this as a template, as it contains many of the same elements. However, be sure to revise your introduction throughout the writing process, making sure it matches the content of your ensuing sections.
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Begin by introducing your dissertation topic and giving any necessary background information. It’s important to contextualize your research and generate interest. Aim to show why your topic is timely or important. You may want to mention a relevant news item, academic debate, or practical problem.
After a brief introduction to your general area of interest, narrow your focus and define the scope of your research.
You can narrow this down in many ways, such as by:
It’s essential to share your motivation for doing this research, as well as how it relates to existing work on your topic. Further, you should also mention what new insights you expect it will contribute.
Start by giving a brief overview of the current state of research. You should definitely cite the most relevant literature, but remember that you will conduct a more in-depth survey of relevant sources in the literature review section, so there’s no need to go too in-depth in the introduction.
Depending on your field, the importance of your research might focus on its practical application (e.g., in policy or management) or on advancing scholarly understanding of the topic (e.g., by developing theories or adding new empirical data). In many cases, it will do both.
Ultimately, your introduction should explain how your thesis or dissertation:
Perhaps the most important part of your introduction is your questions and objectives, as it sets up the expectations for the rest of your thesis or dissertation. How you formulate your research questions and research objectives will depend on your discipline, topic, and focus, but you should always clearly state the central aim of your research.
If your research aims to test hypotheses , you can formulate them here. Your introduction is also a good place for a conceptual framework that suggests relationships between variables .
To help guide your reader, end your introduction with an outline of the structure of the thesis or dissertation to follow. Share a brief summary of each chapter, clearly showing how each contributes to your central aims. However, be careful to keep this overview concise: 1-2 sentences should be enough.
I. Introduction
Human language consists of a set of vowels and consonants which are combined to form words. During the speech production process, thoughts are converted into spoken utterances to convey a message. The appropriate words and their meanings are selected in the mental lexicon (Dell & Burger, 1997). This pre-verbal message is then grammatically coded, during which a syntactic representation of the utterance is built.
Speech, language, and voice disorders affect the vocal cords, nerves, muscles, and brain structures, which result in a distorted language reception or speech production (Sataloff & Hawkshaw, 2014). The symptoms vary from adding superfluous words and taking pauses to hoarseness of the voice, depending on the type of disorder (Dodd, 2005). However, distortions of the speech may also occur as a result of a disease that seems unrelated to speech, such as multiple sclerosis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
This study aims to determine which acoustic parameters are suitable for the automatic detection of exacerbations in patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by investigating which aspects of speech differ between COPD patients and healthy speakers and which aspects differ between COPD patients in exacerbation and stable COPD patients.
I have introduced my research topic in an engaging way.
I have provided necessary context to help the reader understand my topic.
I have clearly specified the focus of my research.
I have shown the relevance and importance of the dissertation topic .
I have clearly stated the problem or question that my research addresses.
I have outlined the specific objectives of the research .
I have provided an overview of the dissertation’s structure .
You've written a strong introduction for your thesis or dissertation. Use the other checklists to continue improving your dissertation.
If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!
Research bias
(AI) Tools
The introduction of a research paper includes several key elements:
and your problem statement
Don’t feel that you have to write the introduction first. The introduction is often one of the last parts of the research paper you’ll write, along with the conclusion.
This is because it can be easier to introduce your paper once you’ve already written the body ; you may not have the clearest idea of your arguments until you’ve written them, and things can change during the writing process .
Research objectives describe what you intend your research project to accomplish.
They summarize the approach and purpose of the project and help to focus your research.
Your objectives should appear in the introduction of your research paper , at the end of your problem statement .
Scope of research is determined at the beginning of your research process , prior to the data collection stage. Sometimes called “scope of study,” your scope delineates what will and will not be covered in your project. It helps you focus your work and your time, ensuring that you’ll be able to achieve your goals and outcomes.
Defining a scope can be very useful in any research project, from a research proposal to a thesis or dissertation . A scope is needed for all types of research: quantitative , qualitative , and mixed methods .
To define your scope of research, consider the following:
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After weeks of hearing the near-constant noise from the periodical cicadas that have emerged in nearly 20 states this year, you may soon be hearing a lot more silence.
After spending 13 or 17 years underground and weeks above ground, some of the earliest periodical cicadas are completing their life cycle and starting to die off. The cicadas, the 13-year Brood XIX in the Southeast and the 17-year Brood XIII in the Midwest, are part of a rare occurrence − the two broods have not emerged together since 1803.
If you're in one of the roughly 17 states that has seen either brood (or both, if you live in Illinois or Iowa), the cicadas' time to eat, mate, lay eggs and die may be starting to come to a close.
Here's what to expect about when Brood XIX and Brood XIII cicadas will start to die off.
'One in a million': 2 blue-eyed cicadas spotted in Illinois as 2 broods swarm the state
The Brood XIX cicadas that emerged in mid-April are already declining, said Gene Kritsky, a cicada expert and professor in the Department of Biology at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Kritsky previously told USA TODAY the first adult cicadas were reported to Cicada Safari, a cicada tracking app developed by Mount St. Joseph University, on April 14 in Georgia, parts of Tennessee and Alabama. In the following week, they came out in North Carolina and South Carolina.
Brood XIII cicadas in central Illinois will see declines in about three weeks, Kritsky said, and in about four weeks in Chicago.
How long cicadas live depends on their brood and if they are an annual or periodical species.
The two periodical broods this summer are Brood XIX, which have a 13-year life cycle, and Brood XIII, which have a 17-year life cycle.
Once male and female periodical cicadas have mated and the latter has laid its eggs, the insects will die after spending only a few weeks above ground − anywhere from three to six weeks after first emerging.
That means many of this year's periodical cicadas are set to die in June, though some may have already died off in late May and others could last until early July, depending on when they emerged.
The nymphs of annual cicadas remain underground for two to five years , according to the Missouri Department of Conservation. These cicadas are called " annual " because some members of the species emerge as adults each year.
The life cycle of a cicada starts with mating. The female then lays eggs in holes made in tree branches and shrubs, National Geographic reports . The eggs will hatch after six to 10 weeks and the cicada nymphs will burrow themselves into the ground, attaching to the tree's roots.
The cicadas will remain underground for a " dormant period " of two to 17 years, depending on the species. Then they emerge in adult form, according to National Geographic.
The two cicada broods were projected to emerge in a combined 17 states across the South and Midwest. They emerge once the soil eight inches underground reaches 64 degrees, which began in many states in April and May and will last through late June.
The two broods last emerged together in 1803 , when Thomas Jefferson was president.
WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday ordered former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to report to prison on July 1 to begin a four-month prison sentence for defying subpoenas from the Jan. 6 Committee after a higher court rejected his appeal.
Bannon was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress in July 2022 for defying the committee’s subpoenas, but his sentence had been put on hold while he appealed the case. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols said Thursday he did not believe that the “original basis” for his stay of the imposition of Bannon's sentence existed any longer after an appeals court upheld Bannon's conviction. Bannon could still appeal Nichol’s ruling that he must report to prison.
Bannon was sentenced more than a year and a half ago, in October 2022, to four months behind bars, the same sentence currently being served by former Trump adviser Peter Navarro , who also refused to comply with a Jan. 6 Committee subpoena.
“The defendant chose allegiance to Donald Trump over compliance with the law," Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston, who now serves on special counsel Jack Smith's team, told jurors during closing arguments in 2022.
Bannon's sentence was put on hold pending appeal, and his lawyers made their case to a three-judge federal appeals court panel in November. The appeals court upheld Bannon's conviction in May , and federal prosecutors soon filed a motion asking Nichols to order Bannon to report to prison. Federal prosecutors told Nichols there was "no legal basis" for the continued stay of the sentence after the federal appeals court rejected the appeal.
Bannon’s lawyers argued that the sentence should be stayed until they appeal it to the full appeals court and the Supreme Court. Any delay, of course, would benefit Bannon if Trump is elected president in November and decides — just as he did on the last day of his presidency on Jan. 20, 2021 — to pardon Bannon on federal criminal charges.
In a post on his Truth Social website, Trump said the sentence is a “Total and Complete American Tragedy" and suggested that the members of the Jan. 6 committee be prosecuted instead.
Bannon is set to go to trial on separate state charges in New York later this year in a case involving allegations he defrauded donors who gave money to build a wall on the southern U.S. border. He's pleaded not guilty. Bannon had been charged in the same alleged scheme by federal prosecutors before Trump pardoned him just two weeks after the Capitol attack.
Bannon smiled as he went through security to enter the courthouse Thursday morning. A person nearby said “Trump ‘24!” to him and Bannon smiled and shook his hand.
Following the judge’s decision, he looked calm and stayed smiling. Bannon's lawyer, David Schoen, sprung into action, becoming much more passionate than he’d been during the rest of the hearing.
Judge Nichols told him: “One thing you have to learn as a lawyer is that when the judge has made his decision, you don’t stand up and start yelling,” adding through Schoen’s protests: “I’ve had enough.”
“I’m not yelling,” Schoen retorted, saying he was “passionate.”
“You’re sending a man to prison who thought he was complying with the law, we don’t do that in my system,” Schoen said, calling the decision “contrary to our system of justice.”
“I think you should sit down,” Nichols responded.
Nichols, a Trump appointee, has overseen a number of Jan. 6 cases. He's the judge who rejected the government's use of an obstruction of an official proceeding charge, which has been used against hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, as well as Trump himself. That case ultimately bubbled up to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on the use of the statute in April . On Wednesday, Nichols sentenced a Jan. 6 defendant who assaulted law enforcement officers with bear spray — and who was caught thanks to a sting operation that a woman launched on the dating app Bumble — to more than six years in federal prison.
Ryan J. Reilly is a justice reporter for NBC News.
Victoria Ebner is a researcher with NBC News based in Washington, D.C.
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In her honors thesis, recent graduate Amber Duffy describes how loneliness influences a person’s ability to respond to stress
Amber Duffy, who graduated last semester magna cum laude , didn’t always plan to write an honor’s thesis.
She came to the University of Colorado Boulder on a pre-med track, studying neuroscience, but an introductory psychology class knocked her off that path and inspired her to change her major.
“I really liked the behavioral aspect of psychology,” she says.
She liked psychology so much, in fact, that she wasn’t content simply to study it. She wanted to contribute to it. “If I’m not going to do medical school anymore,” she remembers thinking, “I should delve into research.”
Recent psychology and neuroscience graduate Amber Duffy won the the Outstanding Poster Presentation Talk award at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s Annual Convention in San Diego, recognizing her research on loneliness.
She contacted Erik Knight , a CU Boulder assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience, with whom she’d taken a class her sophomore year, and he invited her to join his lab . She ended up working there for two years, during which time she decided to write an honor’s thesis.
The topic? Loneliness and its effect on young adults’ stress responses.
Why loneliness?
Duffy’s interest in loneliness isn’t purely academic. Many of her friends and family have struggled with it for years, even before the pandemic, she says. And she herself, the daughter of a Taiwanese mother and a Pennsylvanian father, has often felt its sting.
“Growing up in a multicultural family in my predominantly white town”—Castle Rock, Colorado—“it was hard for me to connect with people sometimes,” she says. “I would learn about my mom’s culture at home and then go to school or talk with friends, and they just didn’t understand how I lived.”
Her concerns over loneliness only increased when she learned of Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy’s warning that the United States is suffering from a loneliness epidemic.
“The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day,” Murthy states.
Hearing this spurred Duffy to action. She wanted to contribute to the fight against loneliness and its potentially negative consequences.
“If we expand our knowledge of loneliness,” she says, “maybe there’s a way we can come up with a more substantial treatment.”
More gas, less brakes
For her honors experiment, Duffy gathered 51 CU Boulder undergraduates between the ages of 18 and 34 and divided them randomly into a control condition and an experimental condition. Those in the former provided a low-stress comparison to those in the latter, who were put through the wringer.
First, the subjects in the experimental condition had to interview for a high-stakes job Duffy and Knight had concocted specifically for the study.
“We told them, in the moment, ‘You have five minutes to prepare a five-minute speech on why you’re the perfect applicant,’” says Duffy.
Immediately following that, subjects had to solve subtraction problems for five minutes, out loud, perfectly, starting at 6,233 and going down from there in increments of 13. “If they made a mistake,” says Duffy, “they had to start over.”
While the subjects ran these gauntlets, Duffy monitored their heart-rate variability (HRV), or the change in interval between heartbeats, and their pre-ejection period (PEP), or the time it takes for a heart to prepare to push blood to the rest of the body. Both serve as indicators of how a person’s stress-response system is functioning, Duffy explains.
Finally, when the stress tests were done, the subjects completed the UCLA Loneliness Scale Version 3 questionnaire, which research has found to be a reliable means of measuring loneliness.
Duffy had hypothesized that lonelier subjects would have more pronounced stress responses than less lonely subjects, and indeed that’s what her data revealed.
Lonelier subjects had higher heartrates, stronger responses from their sympathetic nervous systems (SNS) and weaker responses from their parasympathetic nervous systems (PNS). Duffy likens the SNS, which controls the fight-or-flight response, to a car’s gas pedal and the PNS, which counterbalances the SNS, to a car’s brakes.
When met with stressful situations, then, lonelier individuals had more gas and less brakes, which Duffy says could have long-term health implications.
Yet she is also quick to point out that more research needs to be done, preferably with more subjects.
If we expand our knowledge of loneliness, maybe there’s a way we can come up with a more substantial treatment.”
“We only had 51 people. An increase in sample size would help with more reliable data,” she says. “It’s also important to look at more clinical and diverse populations because there are other factors that could affect loneliness levels.”
Posters, prizes and professorships
Duffy submitted an abstract of her research to The Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s Annual Convention in San Diego, where she hoped to present a poster, thinking this would be a nice, low-key way of getting some conference experience under her belt.
Her abstract was accepted. But then a conference organizer asked her if, in addition to presenting a poster, she could also give a fifteen-minute talk. She would be the only undergraduate at the conference to do so.
Duffy balked. The thought of speaking to a roomful of PhDs intimidated her. “Most of my life I’ve heard how cutthroat academia is,” she says. But she ultimately agreed, and she was glad she did.
Her talk and poster presentation went so well that not only did she receive interest and encouragement from several doctoral programs, but she also won an award that she didn’t even know existed: the Outstanding Poster Presentation Talk award.
“In the middle of my poster presentation, a woman came up to me—I didn’t know who she was—and said, ‘I have a check here for you for $500.’ I didn’t know that was supposed to happen, but it was great!”
Now graduated, Duffy isn’t 100% sure what her next steps will be, but she’s leaning toward one day pursuing a PhD.
“When you get a PhD, you get to do research and also work with students,” she says. “I think it would be fun to be a professor and give back in that way.”
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There’s a fine line between clarification and debate. Too often fact-checks stray into the latter
If you spend any time with members of our new establishment – academics, quangocrats, the BBC – and especially if you conceal your identity as a Telegraph reader so they speak freely, you will learn something rather strange. They are obsessed with misinformation and disinformation .
I assure you, people like this genuinely believe that in the new social media world the ill-informed populace is easy prey to false beliefs, conspiracies, and malign state interference. They believe that you are too stupid to make your own mind up about things or distinguish between the true and the false. And they think it’s the government’s job – or perhaps theirs – to do it for you instead.
One obvious problem with this thesis is that in recent years an awful lot of misinformation has come from governments themselves: Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia, the view that an economic crash was inevitable if we voted to leave the EU, the refusal to countenance the lab leak theory about Covid, and the reluctance for a long time, in the teeth of obvious evidence, to drop the belief that the Covid vaccine stopped transmission of the virus.
Perhaps sensing this, the authorities have smiled instead on the growth of so-called “fact checking” outfits, the best known of which is BBC Verify, ubiquitous on the BBC nowadays. Their self-regarding takes on the news may seem merely comic, but they are actually dangerous, and especially so during an election campaign – for in trying to convey an authoritative view they are more often, as Orwell once put it, giving “an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.
Take Friday night’s 7-sided “leader” debate , fact checked live by BBC Verify’s Ben Chu. What’s wrong with that, you might ask?
The problem is that they aren’t checking facts; they are also checking opinion. They can’t be experts in everything, so they have to go to other sources of authority, other supposed experts. But these people are often not neutral either. BBC Verify fact-checked Nigel Farage’s views on net zero on Friday by reference to the views of the Climate Change Committee. But anyone who knows anything about net zero knows that, while the Committee’s views may be received wisdom amongst much of the establishment, they are definitely controversial. They have to be open to debate. You can’t say that Farage’s views are just comment but the Committee’s views are fact.
Similarly, a month back Ben Chu looked on X at the UK’s post-Brexit trade performance, pointing to the OBR’s estimate of a 15 per cent fall in trade to make his argument. But that estimate is itself based on other estimates, now dated, and themselves questionable. It isn’t a fact: it’s a view, and one that can and must be debated.
This matters because very often in politics the facts only take you so far: it is the interpretation that counts. It’s a fact that net immigration to the UK in 2023 was 685,000 people. Is that good or bad? It depends whether you think it contributes to economic growth or not (which is controversial); on how you value social cohesion against the economy; and on how you value moral obligations such as taking in refugees. None of this is objective fact. It’s all open to interpretation and debate. That’s what an election is about.
That’s why the whole BBC Verify programme is based on a fallacy. On most political issues not only is there simply no authoritative interpretation of the facts, but what a fact tells you depends on the interpretation you bring to it. The only way to reach an outcome is to have free debate, allow all to make their case, and see who wins the argument.
So BBC Verify should confine itself to clarifying the issues, and then let people make their own mind up. But surely that is what the BBC should be doing anyway. So why do we need BBC Verify at all? Maybe we don’t.
Editor’s Note: This is the final article in a three-part series that challenges the conventional wisdom that stocks always outperform bonds over the long term and that a negative correlation between bonds and stocks leads to effective diversification. In it, Edward McQuarrie draws from his research analyzing US stock and bond records dating back to 1792.
CFA Institute Research and Policy Center recently hosted a panel discussion comprising McQuarrie , Rob Arnott , Elroy Dimson , Roger Ibbotson , and Jeremy Siegel . Laurence B. Siegel moderated and Marg Franklin, CFA , president and CEO of CFA Institute introduced the debate .
Edward McQuarrie:
In my first two blog posts, I reviewed the new historical findings presented in my Financial Analysts Journal paper . Relative to when Jeremy Siegel first formulated the Stocks for the Long Run thesis 30 years ago, better and more complete information on 19 th century US stock and bond returns has emerged. Likewise, courtesy of the work of Dimson and others, a far richer and more complete understanding of international returns is now in hand.
I summarized the new historical findings in my paper’s title: “Stocks for the Long Run? Sometimes Yes, Sometimes No.”
In this concluding post, I will highlight the implications of these new findings for investors today. I will address several misconceptions that I’ve encountered interacting with readers of the paper.
Nope. Rather, I want you to adjust your expectations for the long-term wealth accumulation that you can expect from holding stocks, especially a 100% stock portfolio, over your idiosyncratic personal time horizon.
Here’s why I think some adjustment of expectations is necessary.
Let me first acknowledge that no author is responsible for what readers do with their work once published and diffused, so what follows is not a criticism of Siegel or his research.
That said, some readers of Siegel’s Stocks for the Long Run conclude: “If I can hold for decades, stocks are a sure thing, a no-lose proposition. It could be a wild ride over the short-term, but not over the long-term, where buying and holding a broad stock index essentially guarantees a strong return.”
Siegel never said any such thing. But I can assure you, more than a few investors drew the conclusion that for holding periods of 20 years or more, stocks are like certificates of deposits with above-market interest rates.
The inference that my paper attempts to refute is that stocks somehow cease to be a risky investment once they are held for decades. I presented numerous cases where investors in other nations had lost money in stocks over holding periods of 20 years or more. And to make the demonstration more compelling, I first excluded war-torn nations and periods.
My point is: Stocks are NOT guaranteed to make you money over the long term.
In fact, stocks have often rewarded investors over the long term, despite large fluctuations in the short term. Patient investors have reaped huge rewards, especially US investors fortunate enough to be active during the “American Century.”
Huge rewards can be reaped from stocks. But there is no guarantee of any reward.
You make a wager when you invest in stocks. It remains a wager when you invest in a broadly diversified index such as the S&P 500. And it is still a bet even when you hold it for 20 years.
Odds are good that your bet will pay, especially if you are investing in a globally dominant nation, such as the US in the 20 th century, or the UK in the 19 th century.
But the odds never approach 100%.
It would be more correct to say that I wish to rehabilitate bonds from the disrepute in which they fell after their terrible, horrible, no good, very bad performance in the decades from 1946 to 1981. Those years dominated the record in the Stocks, Bonds, Bills & Inflation yearbook compiled by Roger Ibbotson and colleagues when Siegel first formulated his thesis.
The new historical record reveals that the divergent performance of stocks and bonds from 1946 to1981 was unique. Nothing like it had ever occurred in the century-and-a-half before. The most recent four decades look quite different, with stock and bond performance again approximating parity.
Here is where it becomes important to tread very carefully in constructing a forward-looking interpretation of the historical record with respect to the equity premium, i.e., the advantage of owning stocks instead of bonds.
If you calculate the mean or average stock performance relative to bond performance over the entire two-century US record, you get an equity premium of about 300 to 400 bp annualized. That’s huge. Compound that for 20 or 30 years and you’ll find yourself chanting “Stocks for the Long Run.”
Outcomes by Century
19 century: 1800 – 1899 | 6.68% ( ) | $322 | 6.98% ( ) | $594 | -0.29% ( | -0.27% ( ) |
20 century: 1900 – 1999 | 8.85% ( ) | $837 | 2.32% ( ) | $6 | 6.54% | 3.17% ( ) |
Note. Reproduced from “Stocks for the Long Run? Sometimes Yes, Sometimes No.” Arithmetic mean of real total returns. Wealth is the value of $1.00 invested for 100 years (compounded returns can be extracted by taking the 100 th root). Equity premium is the mean of the annual subtractions. Standard deviations are in parentheses. Means with superscript a are different across periods and those with superscript b are different within period (t-tests with heterogenous variance, all p-values < .01).
If you separate out the 19 th century from the 20 th century, as I did in the table, you find: The equity premium for the 19 th century was just under zero, while the equity premium for the 20 th century was just over 600 bp.
Average those two together, along with the omitted years from the 18 th and 21 st centuries to get a complete record, and you get the expected result: an historical equity premium of 300+ bp, in the new historical record, which is consistent with the old record.
But can you be confident that stocks will outperform bonds by 300 bp per year over your decade or two or three, over your personal horizon?
Of course not. The equity premium has exhibited too much variance even over very long intervals.
Let’s return to Misconception #2 and drill down. In the old historical record, first compiled by Ibbotson back to 1926 and then extended by Siegel back to 1802, a long-term investor had no good reason to own any bonds. At all.
In the old record, stocks always outperformed bonds, and the outperformance became increasingly dependable and grew larger in magnitude as the holding period stretched out to 20 years, 30 years, and longer.
The only justification for holding any bonds was if the investor lacked the stomach for the short-term volatility of stocks. Bonds were for the pusillanimous investor who didn’t have the spine to harvest the magnificent long-term returns on stocks.
Spineless investors had to settle for the much lower returns offered by a bond allocation because of their urgent need to dampen the intolerable short-term volatility of stocks.
Any financial adviser will confirm that many clients can’t abide the short-term volatility of a 100% stock portfolio. One of several contributions of Siegel’s work was to stiffen the spines of investors who were prey to such fears but who could be persuaded by evidence.
Such risk-averse investors could only maximize utility, net of return and risk, by including bonds in their portfolios, sacrificing return to reduce risk to a tolerable level.
Using the Ibbotson-Siegel historical data, the investor with a cast iron stomach would be inclined to invest 100% of their long-term funds in stocks. Given their high tolerance for risk, it would be irrational to do otherwise.
On the new historical record, in which stocks do not always beat bonds, the choice is less clear. A balanced portfolio, such as the 60/40 portfolio popularized by Peter Bernstein , might not produce any less return than a 100% stock portfolio. It might even produce somewhat more wealth if stocks go through a bad stretch.
Conversely, a 60/40 portfolio will almost certainly be less volatile than a 100% stock portfolio for reasons explained by the late Harry Markowitz : the expected lack of correlation between stocks and bonds and bonds’ historically lower volatility.
In the absence of certainty that stocks will outperform bonds, combined with the near certainty that a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds will be less volatile than a 100% stock portfolio and subject to more shallow drawdowns, a balanced portfolio becomes a viable option for any investor.
That’s the gist of the new historical record.
This one surprised me when I first heard it. I never dreamed that the tables in my preceding post would be interpreted that way.
In my paper, I tabulated bad periods for stocks — periods showing equity deficits where stocks underperformed bonds — across 19 nations outside of the US. I showed multiple instances of losses on stocks over 20 years, 30 years, and more rarely, 50 years.
But that doesn’t mean that international stocks are a bad bet for US investors going forward. I would expect that sometimes international stocks will outperform US stocks and sometimes US stocks will outperform. It varies by regime and can’t be predicted any more than the future performance of US stocks can be known in advance.
How then to interpret the woeful episodes of underperformance by international stocks tabulated in the paper?
First, each of those international results was cherry-picked. I had a 300-year record of UK stock performance available, courtesy of Bryan Taylor at Global Financial Data. That means I had 281 twenty-year rolls to choose from: 1700 to 1719, 1701 to 1720, etc.
I picked the very worst one for the UK entry in the 20-year column in my table. For the other 18 countries, I typically had between 150 and 200 years from which to cherry-pick the very worst episode.
The purpose of the exercise was to expand the sample size of stock market histories beyond a one-market, one-century record: the period from 1926 in the United States, which has dominated most investors’ historical understanding ever since Ibbotson first assembled the Stocks, Bonds, Bills & Inflation record in 1976.
In that one-market, one-century record, stocks always do well if you hold on long enough, and stocks always beat bonds over those long periods.
But that result was obtained in one market over one century. The 19 th century US data I compiled gave me a second century, but still only for that one market.
Paul Samuelson among others famously observed that “history has a sample size of one.” That’s true if you confine attention to one national history and one century. When the only historical record available covers but one nation, and only during the period when it rose to world dominance with the largest economy — the United States post-1926 — generalization is fraught indeed.
Would stock investors fare just as well in a nation less favorably situated, over a less sunny period? There was no way to know, decades ago, when Siegel first assembled the Stocks for the Long Run thesis. The international record was very sparse back then.
In my thinking, the newly emerged international record, launched initially by William Goetzmann and Philippe Jorion in 1999, takes the historical record from a sample size of one to a sample of about 40 (20 nations across two centuries). Or, if you will, from 100 market years to 4,000 market years.
As a rule, expanding the sample size helps to refine the estimate of the range of potential outcomes. If you walk down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan with a surveyor’s laser sight and measure the height of the first 100 adults you pass, you will likely infer that most US adults are between five and six feet tall. You might find a few individuals shorter than five feet, and you will probably find a few taller than six feet.
If it is a reasonably co-ed sample, you might formulate the hypothesis that US males are taller than females on average, but you wouldn’t have much confidence in that generalization if the sample consisted of only 23 women and 77 men.
To continue the metaphor, suppose you added to the sample by walking down the main street of Stockholm. Your estimate of the maximum adult height to be found in a sample of 100 people would probably increase.
Switching up the metaphor, suppose the first sample of 100 was taken outside the largest high school in Los Angeles just after Winter sports practice let out, and that you confined the sample to female students. As those basketball and volleyball players streamed past, how good an estimate would you get of the average female height globally?
That’s how I think of both the 19 th century US data I collected and the international data I drew from others: as expanding the sample size of stock and bond returns beyond what could be glimpsed from Ibbotson’s Stocks, Bonds, Bills & Inflation yearbook.
The expansion in size is greatest for longer holding periods. There are, after all, only 10 separate decade samples in a century, and only five independent two-decade samples. Once you have two centuries and 20 markets, there are 400 separate market-decades, and 200 distinct 20-year cases.
It should come as no surprise that the international sample included measurably worse stock market outcomes than anything seen in the post-1926 United States.
That’s an expected outcome from expanding the sample size. It says nothing about the future results that might be obtained from an investment in international stocks.
If you liked this post, don’t forget to subscribe to the Enterprising Investor .
All posts are the opinion of the author. As such, they should not be construed as investment advice, nor do the opinions expressed necessarily reflect the views of CFA Institute or the author’s employer.
Image credit: ©Getty Images / Ascent / PKS Media Inc.
CFA Institute members are empowered to self-determine and self-report professional learning (PL) credits earned, including content on Enterprising Investor . Members can record credits easily using their online PL tracker .
Edward F. McQuarrie, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. After retiring from Santa Clara in 2016, he pursued new research interests in financial market history and retirement income planning. Projects under way include errors of estimate in historical index returns, the fitful nature of size and value effects, fluctuations in the corporate bond premium, the annuity wager, and payoff analyses for Roth conversions. Working papers describing his research in progress can be downloaded at https://ssrn.com/author=340720. For more information, visit his website at edwardfmcquarrie.com. He posts regularly at bogleheads.org and occasionally at medium.com.
Once again, (1) Don’t try to time the market. (2)Timing is everything.
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She’s plotting a farewell tour. She’s starring in a documentary about her life. And she could only ever be herself.
At 70, Cyndi Lauper is charging back to action with a road show and “Let the Canary Sing,” a film that tells her life story. Credit... Thea Traff for The New York Times
Supported by
By Amanda Hess
One Friday afternoon in May, Cyndi Lauper stepped out of her Upper West Side apartment building and into the streets of New York City. She wore glitter-encrusted glasses, sneakers with rainbow soles and a stack of beaded bracelets on each arm. A rice-paper parasol swung in her hand. As she walked, she examined the crowds and remarked when glints of interest caught her eye.
“Of course, up here it’s fashion hell,” she allowed of her tony neighborhood. And yet, every few blocks she rubbernecked at another woman’s look, her famous New Yawk accent lifting and tumbling in pleasure at what she saw:
“Look at these dames, how cute are they?”
“Did you love those pants? I kind of loved those pants.”
“Look at this lady,” she said, stepping off the curb and clocking a passerby. The woman moved nimbly, tomato-red streak in her silver hair, body draped in shades of fuchsia and cherry as she pushed the gleaming metal frame of a walker. “Fabulous,” Lauper exclaimed. “Come on!”
At 70, the pop icon and social justice activist isn’t just charging back into the streets. On Monday, Lauper announced her final tour, the Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour, which will have her headlining arenas across North America from late October to early December. And “Let the Canary Sing,” a documentary about her life and career that premiered at the Tribeca Festival last year, is streaming on Paramount+.
Lauper has not staged a major tour — “a proper tour, that’s mine” — in over a decade. But now her window of opportunity is closing, so she’s leaping through it. “I don’t think I can perform the way I want to in a couple of years,” she said. “I want to be strong.”
And until recently, when she finally agreed to sit for the director Alison Ellwood, she could not envision committing her life story to film. “I wasn’t going to do a documentary because I’m not dead,” she said. More to the point, she did not feel particularly misunderstood. From the moment she danced across the city in the 1983 video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” she felt that she had articulated precisely what she wanted to say.
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Revised on April 16, 2024. A thesis is a type of research paper based on your original research. It is usually submitted as the final step of a master's program or a capstone to a bachelor's degree. Writing a thesis can be a daunting experience. Other than a dissertation, it is one of the longest pieces of writing students typically complete.
Here are some basic rules for thesis statement lengths based on the number of pages: 5 pages: 1 sentence. 5-8 pages: 1 or 2 sentences. 8-13 pages: 2 or 3 sentences. 13-23 pages: 3 or 4 sentences. Over 23 pages: a few sentences or a paragraph.
Step 1: Start with a question. You should come up with an initial thesis, sometimes called a working thesis, early in the writing process. As soon as you've decided on your essay topic, you need to work out what you want to say about it—a clear thesis will give your essay direction and structure.
A thesis statement . . . Makes an argumentative assertion about a topic; it states the conclusions that you have reached about your topic. Makes a promise to the reader about the scope, purpose, and direction of your paper. Is focused and specific enough to be "proven" within the boundaries of your paper. Is generally located near the end ...
Your thesis statement may be short or long, depending on your academic level. While there is no one rule on how long is a thesis statement supposed to be, experts advise 20-50 words. Long or short, your thesis should clearly state your paper's aim in one to four lines; leave out irrelevant words. If you need professional help writing your ...
Thesis. Your thesis is the central claim in your essay—your main insight or idea about your source or topic. Your thesis should appear early in an academic essay, followed by a logically constructed argument that supports this central claim. A strong thesis is arguable, which means a thoughtful reader could disagree with it and therefore ...
A good thesis has two parts. It should tell what you plan to argue, and it should "telegraph" how you plan to argue—that is, what particular support for your claim is going where in your essay. Steps in Constructing a Thesis. First, analyze your primary sources. Look for tension, interest, ambiguity, controversy, and/or complication.
Tips for Writing Your Thesis Statement. 1. Determine what kind of paper you are writing: An analytical paper breaks down an issue or an idea into its component parts, evaluates the issue or idea, and presents this breakdown and evaluation to the audience.; An expository (explanatory) paper explains something to the audience.; An argumentative paper makes a claim about a topic and justifies ...
A thesis statement: tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion. is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper. directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself.
Unfortunately, there's no one size fits all answer to this question. However, from the analysis of over 100 PhD theses, the average thesis length is between 80,000 and 100,000 words. A further analysis of 1000 PhD thesis shows the average number of pages to be 204. In reality, the actual word count for each PhD thesis will depend on the ...
A thesis should be around 50 pages long for a bachelor's degree and 60-100 pages for a Master's degree. However, the optimal length of a thesis project depends on the instructions from the faculty and the expectations of the supervising professor. The length also depends on the topic's technicalities and the extent of research done.
This is the largest part of a thesis containing a series of chapters. The chapters should flow logically and build your arguments from one chapter to the next. The length of the discussion is based on the total length of the thesis. So, for a thesis of about 20,000 words, the discussion section may be 15,000 words. 10.
This includes formulating an idea, doing the research, and writing up. A PhD thesis takes a longer time, as the thesis is the main focus of the degree. A PhD thesis might be being formulated and worked on for the whole four years of the degree program. The writing process alone can take around 18 months.
In the simplest terms, your college essay should be pretty close to, but not exceeding, the word limit in length. Think within 50 words as the lower bound, with the word limit as the upper bound. So for a 500-word limit essay, try to get somewhere between 450-500 words. If they give you a range, stay within that range.
Length: The required length is between 10,000 and 20,000 words, not counting notes, bibliography, and appendices. The precise length of the main body text must be indicated on the word count page immediately following the title page. If a student expects the thesis to exceed 20,000 words, the student's tutor should consult the Director of ...
The median discussion section was 1,115 words long (equivalent to 43 sentences, or 7 paragraphs), and 90% of the discussion sections were between 482 and 2,230 words. 2. Compared to other sections in a research paper, the discussion was about the same length as either the methods or the results, and double the length of the introduction. 3.
The Methods section can be up to 10 pages long. Results take 10 pages. Discussion can be placed on 15 pages. The conclusion takes 2-3 pages. Appendix and other auxiliary parts of work can take up to 30 pages. Complete paper contains 60-70 pages. If we take the article length, a dissertation should be at least three articles long.
The Thesis/Creative Project is an original piece of work developed by you under the guidance of your Thesis committee. If something in a class excites your interest, take the time to discuss with the professor how this topic might lend itself to a Thesis/Creative Project. A topic often emerges from substantial knowledge of a
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Overview of the structure. To help guide your reader, end your introduction with an outline of the structure of the thesis or dissertation to follow. Share a brief summary of each chapter, clearly showing how each contributes to your central aims. However, be careful to keep this overview concise: 1-2 sentences should be enough.
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