An essay that lists accomplishments is the one essay guaranteed not to work.

The resume essay, diagnosed

Here's what happens. A strong student sits down knowing they have a lot to show for four years, and the essay feels like the place to show it. The draft tours three or four accomplishments, connects them with a theme, and closes on what it all taught them.

A reader has already seen the activities list and the transcript. The essay is the only place in the file where a person can appear, and a summary of achievements guarantees nobody does. Nothing happens on the page. The details would fit any number of applicants. The meaning is stated rather than shown, and the theme arrives in the last paragraph, stapled on.

It's worth saying where that draft comes from, because it isn't laziness. It's obedience. A student who has been advised since ninth grade has been told, accurately, to lead with impact, to quantify, to connect the parts into a narrative of growth. Every one of those instructions is correct for a supplement, an activities description, an interview, a recommendation brag sheet. Applied to the personal statement, they produce exactly the essay that cannot work. The strongest students get the strongest version of this advice, which is why the resume essay shows up most reliably in the most accomplished cohorts.

Those are the same failures that kill a screenplay, which is convenient, because diagnosing and fixing them has been my job for twenty years.

What replaces it is smaller and stranger. One thing that happened. A specific hour. The detail a student thinks is too minor to include is usually the one a reader keeps. Going narrow feels like a risk to a high-achieving kid, and it is the entire trick.

The schedule problem underneath it

The resume draft is also a symptom of time. It gets written at 11:40pm by a student who has been in motion since seven in the morning, and it takes the shape a tired brain reaches for. Finding the real moment means sitting still and remembering, and nobody in this house has an unscheduled hour lying around. So I put that hour on the calendar and take charge of it. Coaching hours run Monday through Friday 9am to 1pm and 4pm to 8pm PT, plus Saturday 9am to 2pm PT, and the evening and Saturday blocks fill first in the fall.

Families here come from Brentwood School and Archer right in the neighborhood, from Harvard-Westlake, Marymount, Marlborough, Windward, and Loyola, and from Palisades Charter and the other public options. Whatever the school, the students arriving at this page have generally had a great deal of guidance already, and the resume essay is very often what that guidance produces. Own Your Essay is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or working on behalf of any school. I work directly with families.

The drive, stated plainly

I'm in Calabasas. Brentwood is over the pass, and you can price that trip in your head better than I can describe it. I'm not going to claim to be a neighborhood coach, because the service-area map is the oldest trick in this business and you'd see through it anyway.

What I do instead is come to the Westside, ideally for the first session, because meeting a student in person at the start changes what the rest of the work is built on. Everything after usually runs on Zoom, which for a Brentwood family is often the difference between a session happening and getting rescheduled twice.

Who I am

A working screenwriter and film director of twenty years. I created TV projects that sold to ABC and YouTube Originals, with Kerry Washington producing, and to Warner Bros. TV, with John Wells producing. I wrote Sharon, the Osbourne biopic, named to the 2018 Black List, and the 2008 Fox feature The Rocker, and I wrote and directed This Is Happening. I studied History and Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, cum laude. For more than a decade I interviewed applicants for Penn as an alumni interviewer, never an admissions officer and never reading a file, just several hundred seventeen-year-olds and a clear sense of which ones stayed with me afterward.

I don't write or rewrite essays. Notes and questions; the student writes every word.

How it runs

Free twenty-minute intro call, parents welcome. Sessions of 45 to 60 minutes, with written notes on every draft and a conversation about them. Most ED and EA deadlines fall on Nov 1 or Nov 15, though each school sets its own. UC applicants get all four Personal Insight Questions developed together.

Services

Single Essay Review, UC PIQ Package, Full Application Package, and a standalone brainstorming session. See full service details →