The College of New Jersey Paper Format & Writing Requirements

The College of New Jersey at a glance

New Jersey's first state normal school, founded in 1855 and now one of the most selective public colleges in the state, known for a residential campus in Ewing near Trenton, a First Seminar that puts every freshman in a small writing-intensive class, and the Sarnoff Collection's archive of RCA broadcasting history.

The campus sits in Ewing, New Jersey, operates as a public institution, and enrolls about 8,000 students — a scale that directly shapes how writing support works. Founded in 1855 with an acceptance rate around 64%, TCNJ pairs selective admissions with the large-course writing loads typical of its category.

Citation styles The College of New Jersey actually requires

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

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

Every first-year student takes a First Seminar built around intensive writing and discussion, a two-course composition sequence anchors the general-education core, and the campus Writing Center tutors across every major.

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 The College of New Jersey papers that surprise new students

• Founded in 1855 as the New Jersey State Normal School, it was the state's first public teacher-training institution and now bills itself as one of the oldest public colleges in New Jersey.
• When Trenton State College renamed itself The College of New Jersey in 1996, Princeton - which had carried the name until 1896 - objected, though the rename stood and stuck.
• The Sarnoff Collection on campus preserves a leading archive of RCA artifacts, from early radios and televisions to documents from broadcasting pioneer David Sarnoff's career.

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 The College of New Jersey students face most

• Essay — most frequently assigned across TCNJ's programs
• Literature Review — most frequently assigned across TCNJ's programs
• Term Paper — most frequently assigned across TCNJ's programs
• Research Paper — most frequently assigned across TCNJ's programs

Popular programs at TCNJ include nursing, business administration, biology — each pairs the assignment list above with its own capstone or practicum expectations, detailed on our subject pages.