Kennesaw State University Paper Format & Writing Requirements

Kennesaw State University at a glance

Georgia's fastest riser — a 1963 charter that merged with Southern Polytechnic State University in 2015 and grew into one of the largest universities in the state, with the Coles College of Business, the Wellstar health colleges and a two-campus footprint in metro Atlanta's northwest corridor.

The campus sits in Kennesaw, Georgia, operates as a public institution, and enrolls about 44,000 students — a scale that directly shapes how writing support works. Founded in 1963 with an acceptance rate around 80%, KSU pairs selective admissions with the large-course writing loads typical of its category.

Citation styles Kennesaw State University actually requires

KSU courses predominantly require APA 7 or MLA 9. That is not a trivial preference: it decides your title page, heading levels, in-text punctuation and reference format on every graded document.

• APA 7: used across social science, nursing and business courses
• MLA 9: used across humanities and writing-sequence courses

Verify against the specific course syllabus anyway — instructors can override departmental defaults, and the first paper is where they enforce it.

The writing requirement, decoded

ENGL 1101/1102 anchors first years under the USG core, nursing and business majors add care-plan and case-memo loads, and the KSU Writing Center tutors on both the Kennesaw and Marietta campuses.

Plan the sequence early: composition requirements compound, and students who defer them discover the advanced seminars — where the writing-intensity lives — conflict with major courses later. The registrar's degree audit shows exactly which flags remain; check it each semester.

Three things about Kennesaw State University papers that surprise new students

• The 2015 consolidation with Southern Polytechnic State University created a two-campus university — Kennesaw's liberal-arts core plus Marietta's engineering identity — and the Marietta campus keeps its own labs, housing and school spirit.
• The university opened in 1966 as Cobb County's junior college, and its first 1960s buildings survive at the historic core of the Kennesaw campus, a short walk from the newest residence halls.
• The Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art anchors the Kennesaw campus with a collection heavy on Southern and Appalachian art, and art-history classes curate real exhibitions there as graded coursework.

None of these appear in the course description. All of them appear in the rubric. Students who learn them in week one report smoother first-semesters than students who meet them at the deadline.

Assignments Kennesaw State University students face most

• Essay — most frequently assigned across KSU's programs
• Research Paper — most frequently assigned across KSU's programs
• Coursework — most frequently assigned across KSU's programs
• Case Study — most frequently assigned across KSU's programs
• Literature Review — most frequently assigned across KSU's programs

Popular programs at KSU include business (coles college), nursing (wellstar college), engineering and computing (southern polytechnic college) — each pairs the assignment list above with its own capstone or practicum expectations, detailed on our subject pages.