If you work in this business, you already know what a good note sounds like.

The pitch, in terms this neighborhood understands

A college essay is 650 words of first-person nonfiction that has to make a stranger feel like they've met a specific person, fast. That's a craft problem. It's the same problem as an opening scene.

And the way these essays fail is the way bad drafts fail. No inciting incident, so nothing actually happens. No specificity, so the reader can't see anything. The writer states the theme in the first paragraph, which leaves the audience nothing to discover. The voice is borrowed. And then a lesson gets stapled on at the end, which is the page equivalent of a character explaining the movie to camera.

I've been giving and receiving those notes professionally since my twenties. 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, and interviewed applicants for Penn as an alumni interviewer for over a decade.

A word to the industry parents

You are, frankly, the most dangerous readers your kid has. You have opinions about structure, you can fix a sentence, and you want to help. That instinct is how essays end up sounding like a competent adult wrote them, which is the one outcome nobody wants.

I don't write or rewrite students' essays either. I ask questions, find the material, and give notes. The student writes every word. Part of the value here is simply that the notes come from someone who is not their parent, which changes how they land.

Families here come from North Hollywood High and Grant, and from Harvard-Westlake and Campbell Hall a few blocks off Ventura, Oakwood in North Hollywood, and Notre Dame and Buckley over in Sherman Oaks. Own Your Essay is not affiliated with or endorsed by any school. I work directly with families.

And you are usually not the only one. At most of the schools around here the student already has a college counselor, and frequently a writing tutor as well. That is three capable adults with opinions on a document whose entire job is to sound like one seventeen-year-old. You know what happens to a script with three sets of notes and no one protecting the voice. It comes out clean, competent, and impossible to remember who wrote it. My job on this page is the one job nobody else in that group is doing: protecting the voice.

How the work runs

Free twenty-minute intro call, by video or phone, parents welcome. Then sessions of 45 to 60 minutes, typically on Zoom. In-person is available; I'm based in Calabasas, which is a straightforward run out the 101.

Every draft comes back with written notes in the document and a short summary of what to fix first. Rounds continue until the essay sounds like a person.

For early applicants, the calendar gets built backward from the deadline. Most ED and EA deadlines fall on Nov 1 or Nov 15, though each school sets its own. For UC applicants, the four Personal Insight Questions get developed as a set, 350 words each, so they cover range instead of repeating one story four times.

Who this works for

Seniors in the middle of it. Juniors starting early, which is the calmer version. Transfer students, including UC transfer, who have a different essay to write with a different job to do.

Services

Single Essay Review, UC PIQ Package, Full Application Package, and a standalone brainstorming session for the student staring at a blank page. See full service details →