The Report Hack

An AP student’s guide to a flawless paper in 5 hours or less

The only things that are certain in life are death, taxes, and that Wikipeadia is not a reliable source for the serious, scholarly research that goes on in America’s public schools.

Unreliable academic sources caused this. Obviously.

As a former AP English student and professional writer, I am here to tell you that this is stupid and wrong. You can use Wikipedia for your paper, and you can get away with it, and it will get you an A+.

You just have to be sneaky and smart about it.

Here’s the thing about school reports…

Pictured: Modern Language Association passes judgement on a student who mistakenly used magazine citation for a newspaper article because the two formats are identical. He will go to jail for 10,000 years.

A high school research report is pretty darn basic in its requirements. Your opening paragraph is no more than 3 sentences, stating the topic and three points that support it. Each supporting detail gets its own paragraph’s worth of explanation, further supported by information you have learned and the sources you got it from. The closing paragraph is literally just the intro paragraph with the sentences reversed. Finally, the works cited page contains all the sources you used in alphabetical order.