All rationale essays should address Goals & Contexts, Guidelines and Requirements/Academic Expectations, and Professional Expectations (as appropriate).  Review the textbook pages on Writing about Goals, Writing about Academic Expectations, and Writing about Professional Expectations for specific suggestions about information to include in your rationale essay.

Then add to these sections as appropriate, referring to your degree plan in DP Planner.  There needs to be careful correspondence between what you discuss in your rationale essay and what’s in your degree plan.

• For example, review the page on Degree Structure and Design. If you are planning a degree that is more uniquely yours than traditional, it may be appropriate for you to discuss your particular degree design, including a discussion of progression, integration, and breadth.
• If you did additional research into other colleges or fuller research into professional or academic expectations—for example, if you intend to get a professional certification or attend graduate school as a next step—it may be appropriate for you to discuss the results of your research and how they influenced choices for your degree.
• If you intend to argue that knowledge gained from your experience has given you college-level learning so that you do not need a course to address a specific guideline, it may be appropriate for you to discuss that knowledge and make your case, especially if you do not intend, or do not have room to include, that knowledge via a prior learning request.

• Add any other information you consider important in terms of helping other readers understand the choices you have made for your degree, in terms of your analysis of how your degree addresses skills and knowledge expectations.

Make sure you also have an introduction-body-conclusion structure, and make sure that your heading identifies your degree type (B.A., A.S., etc.), area of study, and concentration (if applicable).  Finally, if you have quoted or summarized information from specific sources, make sure that you have cited those sources.

What not to include in your full rationale essay draft:

• Do not include course descriptions for ESC courses, unless there is a very specific reason to do so (e.g., only if you’re taking an independent study to address a guideline, and that intention may not be clear from the title of the study).
• Do not include a narrative of your whole educational journey.  A short narrative is fine as a means of introduction, as you move into a discussion of goals and contexts, but you do not need to go into depth with examples of your previous experiences with education.  Remember that a rationale is a reasoned argument for the validity of your degree choices, given ESC and other academic and professional expectations for knowledge and skills.
• Do not include any personal information that you would be uncomfortable for others to read.

If you like using worksheets, this Rationale Worksheet summarizes the main items to consider when drafting your rationale essay.