College is a lot stricter than high school when it comes to writing essays. Not only will you be expected to produce work that is free of errors, you will also need to quote any sources used in the writing of your college essay. You will need to list all the sources that you have used, such a list is usually known as a bibliography or list of the books and articles you may have used to research your work.
You will also be expected to use an accepted referencing system such as the APS or the Harvard system. You should be given information on referencing etc. and where to find information in your first few weeks of college.
As soon as you use a book, journal or website in researching your college essay you should write it down as these things are often hard to find at the end of writing your college paper. You may not think it's very important, but unless you have a proper bibliography and correct referencing; no matter how good your essay is you will lose grade points. It's very common for students to write a thesis statement or what they believe to be the case about a given subject at the beginning of an essay or research paper.
College essays usually have a structured format for introduction, the main part of the argument which may or may not use sub-headings depending on the length of the piece and a fully rounded conclusion. The middle of the essay is the place where you use resources to help you construct an argument and to support what you have to say.
In the academic world, scholars build on each others work, so you should give proper accreditation. Once you're at college you will be expected to learn the proper terms for something and if you're writing an English essay you will be expected to examine the authors use of language in the text.
At college you will be expected to demonstrate your thinking is growing by developing an understandable and well structured argument in term papers and essays. The way to use sources in a college essay is to summarize in your own words what you think the author is saying and then to reference the source in the appropriate way.
Most college essays are given as homework and are meant to give your professor an indication of what you have learned in your time at college so far. Whether you have learned to use that knowledge to help you in your academic work. When you start writing your essay they will probably be quite short, between five hundred and fifteen hundred words, but this will increase as you go through college.
An increase in the number of words you need to write will show whether that you can develop an argument further during the course of an extended piece of writing. Professors will use those essays to decide how well you are doing on the course and to see whether you have digested the information given out to you in class.