I often hear professors say that the students who write the best essays are the ones who first make an outline, and then write multiple drafts before finalizing the essay. Do you think this is true?

No. There is no one-true-way, singular, professor-approved writing process. Working from a detailed outline certainly is one way to do it, but it’s by no means the only way. I tend to break my writing out into discreet 5–10 page sections, with an essay consisting of two or more sections plus an introduction and a conclusion. I don’t outline what’s inside a section though. But just because that’s how my mind works doesn’t mean it will work well for you.

One thing I teach my students: reading and writing are inverses. If you want to improve your writing, maintain some meta-awareness as you read. If you are reading non-fiction, find a good writer—someone who strikes you as competent and a good model. Then, attend to how the author structures their essay or chapter. It is almost always true that an essay length chunk of writing has multiple sub-sections, so identify them. What job does each sub-section perform? There is a lot of bad writing out there, and you can learn from it by asking “where did this author go wrong?” An awful lot of what separates good expository writing from bad has to do with structure, including especially writing disciplined paragraphs. You learn to write by writing purposefully and with awareness—but you also can learn a great deal from reading as well.